After driving for 45 minutes today, I discovered that I had earned only $4.16. And this after having the air conditioning give out once, having the engine overheat twice, and having to change which direction I searched for building number 210 three times before I found the guy’s second-floor apartment and delivered his 40 chicken nuggets and two large orders of McDonald’s fries. Normally when it takes that long to deliver food over more than 10 miles of city driving you make more for the effort. But they don’t start paying you until you pick up the food, and from home to Ronald’s place in Irving, Texas was easily eight of the ten miles.
Really scary story, huh?
But that’s what Uber driving is like. It is benign sort of slavery where you use your own car and gas money, your own car insurance to protect you from Texas Bubbas in Chevy pickups, and your own wits to survive and deliver hot food in the punishing Texas summer heat.
The worst experience I got from this summer’s food delivery came at the hands of a fellow school teacher. I had to deliver faculty lunch to an elementary school in the last week of summer school classes. It was a large lunch with two bags of burgers and a tray loaded with drinks in flimsy cardboard cups. It was a short drive from the restaurant to the school. But when I got there, it was a school with many entrances and kids playing on two different sides of the building. I went to the door I thought the Uber navigator was directing me to. I knocked. When I got no answer, I called the lady who ordered everything. I told her I was at the west door. She told me that I had to find the main door on the south side of the building. So I managed to juggle the two sacks and the easily spillable drinks to three different doors on the south side, all locked. I called again and was told I must have the wrong building, so I went to the school building across the street and found an office building with only kindergarten and daycare kids present. I called again.
“How can you mess it up so badly? Our food will be cold and we have no time left to eat it. And you are at the wrong building! None of the other Uber drivers had this much trouble.”
So, after having been called an idiot, I quickly found a playground guardian to ask and was directed to the proper door on the NORTH side of the building. I apologized and delivered the food. She made complaints to Uber and told them that my behavior was unprofessional and the food was late. So my job as an Uber driver was briefly in jeopardy. I called the Uber driver masters and offered to refund my four-dollar fee to the customer to make amends. They told me they appreciated the sentiment, but they NEVER give the money back. So I went home grumbling, dripping gallons of sweat, four dollars richer and an hour’s worth of misery wiser.
I hope you appreciate that I waited four weeks to write this horror story. It was the only way I could write it without profanity or bad words.
And back-seat drivers all have visions of the bloody, fiery car crash you are going to put them through in return for their $5.00 riding fee.
Catch a Falling Star 
Uber Dooby Doo
Yes, I am an Uber driver. I have combined passenger fares and meal deliveries 118 times in the 4 months I have been doing this. I have made a few hundred dollars in that time that have at least temporarily allowed me to continue to buy food for my family as I try to pay off my bankruptcy debts.
And there is absolutely no way to explain why anybody in their right mind would ever want to do such a job, so I won’t try that. I will, instead, try to explain why someone like me who taught middle school long enough to get brain damage actually kinda enjoys it.
You see, a teacher does his job each day by standing in front of a motley mob of hormone-crazed immature higher primates and talking to them with the insane hope that they might actually listen, and even more insanely believe that they will learn something from it. And as a side benefit, you get to listen to them talking to each other and to you. You learn about who they are, come to appreciate them as unique individuals, and sometimes even love them (though never in a way that will get you thrown in prison; rather, only through Christian agape-type love).
Driving Uber is the same thing with all the responsibilities and consequences greatly reduced. You take somebody somewhere, talk to them if they want to talk, don’t talk to them if they are giving off “Shut-up!” radiation, or just deliver food to them, and then Uber gives you money… like magic.
I can effectively Uber drive because I spent seven years driving all the way to Garland, Texas from Carrollton in order to do my teaching job. Forty-five stop lights and a thirty-five-minute to three-hour commute. That’s a lot of city driving for practice. And of course it is driving experience in Texas where any idiot who can get behind the wheel is allowed to drive, and many of them have guns. I have learned how to do defensive driving pro-actively and aggressively.
I have put up with paying passengers who are backseat drivers and complain about every passing motorist and lane change. I have experienced an Uber navigator app that sends you to the wrong location routinely and sometimes advises you to make a u-turn in the middle of a major highway intersection. I have had to juggle two meal deliveries at once on opposite sides of the city. I have also driven drunks to liquor stores to buy more crazy sauce. (You wouldn’t believe what kind of wild stories you can hear from drunk guys.) And restaurant managers that I’ve worked for more than once are often relieved to see me rather some of the drivers they have to deal with.
So here’s my assessment of life as an Uber driver. I don’t make much money, but I can make enough. The hours are good because I can drive at any time of day or night and for as long as I feel like doing it. I don’t have to do it at all if I don’t want to. So it is practically a perfect job for retired and sickly crazy old me.
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