Uber Boober

“Oh yeah nah, busy night mate?” How many times you have said those words to an Uber driver while off your face on whatever that evening’s concoction happens to be? Now imagine how many times your average driver has been forced to listen to them. Uber driving is, in my opinion, one of the worst jobs that has been created in the 21st century. It has the bad parts of taxi driving, the listening to drunk people, the constant cleaning of your car and the low pay, with none of the benefits. And on top of that, your boss is an app. That being said, Uber driving is a job with no interview, very low training requirements and the ability to pick your own hours. So, is it an ideal job for a student trying to work around a busy study schedule, or is it a curse in disguise? 

I jumped in a few Ubers (sober) to find out. On my travels, which was only around the block a few times, I met a wide variety of drivers who do it for all sorts of different reasons. 

Steven* was driving in his new 2020 Prius, a pretty common choice in car for some reason. He has a professional job during the day, but drives Uber some nights a week so he can continue to make the payments on his car. He sees Uber as a temporary job, at the end of which he will have a new car. When asked about the other tasks Uber driving involves, he said it was very simple: Just jump in the car, boot up the app and go. 

Other drivers, such as Sandeep, also drive for Uber part-time. Sandeep told me that he works full-time at a fast-food joint and drives Uber every night. Neither job, he says, can support his family on its own, so he works hard at both. Interestingly, he also had a business degree from an overseas university. Much like Steven, he said the job was pretty straight forward, but lamented the cleaning he had to do after people had made a mess in his car. 

Tina drives for Uber and other rideshare companies full-time. She doesn’t have a family to support and lives with her partner, who also works full-time. The money is comparable to a minimum wage job she says, but she tries to avoid the busier Friday and Saturday nights, because drunk people aren’t her cup of tea. Tina said her driving experience was very straight forward, as people were normally quite respectful during the hours she was driving. Her worst experience was a young baby being sick in the back of her car, but the mother was very apologetic and at least it was a baby with a small stomach. 

These three drivers are indicative of larger trends in the pool of Uber drivers. There are those such as Tina who make it their full-time job, those like Steven who are doing it for a bit of extra money and those like Sandeep, who drive out of necessity. All of the drivers that I met, and most of those who I have ever gotten a lift from, fit into one of these loose categories, and also drive for multiple companies. Drivers say that the latter allows them to pick up more lifts and accept a job from one company while carrying a passenger for another. Have you ever been waiting for a lift when the driver starts going in the opposite direction, or takes a wrong turn on the way to pick you up? That’s because they have another passenger in the car, and have to finish that ride before they get to you. Rideshare companies aren’t massive fans of their drivers doing this, which is why you’ll sometimes see a driver with multiple phones on their dashboard, as a workaround to the apps’ efforts to stop the practice. 

While the driver’s perspective on their day-to-day job is insightful, how do the companies which run the services treat their drivers? The word Uber has become synonymous with ridesharing due to their massive initial market share, but Uber as a company is possibly the shittiest of the lot. Their office culture and business practices were put under a microscope after allegations of widespread and accepted sexual harassment came to light, with the CEO Travis Kalanick eventually being forced to resign in 2017. Other internal policies were implemented after this scandal to help clean up Uber’s corporate reputation and little has been in the news about these issues since. While Uber has seemingly cleaned up its internal problems, they still act contrary to the public good when it comes to lobbying. Uber, Lyft and other large technology companies spent over a combined $200 million dollars lobbying against a law in California, where they are based, that would have forced them to treat Uber drivers as actual employees instead of contractors. This law would have forced Uber to pay their drivers more and provide them benefits such as health insurance and paid time off, not just in California but across the world. Sadly, it seems that, in America, throwing money at a problem can solve it and the law did not pass, allowing these companies to continue to exploit those who make their business possible. 

On that happy note, is Uber a good part-time gig for a student? (For now, let’s ignore UberEats, as that’s a WHOLE other barrel of eels.) The most obvious issue with being both a student and an Uber driver is the hours that one needs to drive to make some actual money, those being Friday and Saturday nights. If you’re not the kind of person who likes to pilgrim to the altar of dance, drugs and debauchery on one of those nights then you only have a few more hoops to jump through. The biggest hurdles facing those who don’t mind missing out on a party is having had full licence for more than a year, getting a passenger (P) endorsement, being over 21 and having a car which is less than 10 years old. Other things to note about the job include having to pay for your own petrol and having to pay out of pocket if someone vomits in your car, even though Uber charges the rider a $100 cleaning fee. 

What you really want to know, however, is how much your average Uber driver gets paid. Uber drivers are meant to get 75% of the fare for a ride. This is before all the costs which a driver incurs out of their own pocket. These costs include petrol, insurance, maintenance, an infinite data phone plan, cleaning and, of course, tax. The drivers I talked to said they took home a widely varying amount, mostly dependent on the hours they chose to work, and often a different amount each week. They said it was stressful having to worry about all the additional costs that came with driving in their own car, and when their cars broke down or needed maintenance the impact on their earning ability and take-home pay was substantial. The self-directed and self-managed nature of the job was a big positive for all the drivers which I talked to, but they also said it was often hard to find the motivation to go out and drive without external pressure. Sandeep said he had friends who had tried to drive, but didn’t have the motivation to succeed due to a lack of pressure that wasn’t solely the financial motive. It makes sense that all the drivers that I met were motivated and had the ability to work in a self-directed way, as those who cannot do this would no longer be driving. 

Our parents and teachers used to tell us that meeting a stranger from the internet was the most dangerous possible thing we could do, but now we summon them to our exact address and get in a car with them. It seems that these days, those who are summoned are taking higher risks than those ordering the ride. From having to clean the car, an uncertain financial future, and the taking of orders from an app, Uber driving definitely has its downsides. But the freedom to choose your hours and the simple fact that you can be paid to drive attracts many people to the job. If you’re the kind of person who studied during lockdown or spends their Fridays at the library then you might have the tenacity to be an Uber driver, otherwise you better keep hitting those books. 

* Name changed for privacy reasons