Many of my friends and personal acquaintances don’t know that I’ve been a Uber driver the last two months. I decided to become one to receive some income while I was in the job market, but largely to address the need of doing something between interviews. I needed to do it for my mental health… I could no longer sit around the house thinking about what might have been at my previous employer, if I had stayed at my employer prior to that job where would I be now (?), or constantly worrying about my interview performance with prospects. I needed an outlet while doing something I enjoy doing… driving around observing people, places and things.
What triggered the desire to drive for Uber was the crushing news that an organization I’d been interviewing with for three months decide not to extend an offer. After the mental and emotional investment of building a project, flying to Chicago, presenting the project, being involved in consecutive interviews with people across that company, waiting to receive the latest update from my assigned recruiter… the whole emotional roller coaster of getting to the next round of interviews, being told there is tremendous interest in your candidacy, finding out you job requisition was no longer available but there was another manager from a different part of the company that was interested, to finally being told the committee decided to pass… I couldn’t even muster tears or anger from exhaustion.
I just remember that Friday after receiving the disheartening news on Thursday afternoon spending the entire day in bed… depressed, drained, discombobulated… there was desire that emerged to feel in control again. I opened the laptop to read about driving for Uber (or possibly Lyft). That Saturday I filled out the online application and all the information needed to they could do a background check… making sure I wasn’t some reckless driver, a creep or pedophile. Two weeks later I got the notification that I was approved. I drove to the Sprint store, got the Uber sticker to place in my passenger side window and instructions on using the driver app. By that next evening I was in downtown Washington DC picking up riders.
Driving for Uber has given me an opportunity to observe not only the diversity or kaleidoscope of cultures in my area, but to see upfront the impacts of gentrification in Washington, DC… streets that were deemed unsafe or poverty-stricken 15-20 years ago that now feature a Whole Foods or Harris Teeter with condominiums priced in the 800s on top. The nightclub I used to go to now reopened as a bar/restaurant targeting a different demographic, or getting the sense of nightlife as it has evolved while being tucked away in a leafy, soccer-mom oriented suburb the last 14 years.
As time progressed I became more in tuned with the types of folks you were likely to pick up during different times of days in different geographical areas or with different social-economic strata. The Caucasian woman with her dog in McLean, VA who is the owner of a wine shop, the executive in Great Falls needing to catch a flight out of Reagan National, the Hispanic day laborer needing a ride back to his apartment in Germantown, MD, the two young black women – minimum wage retail workers in Pentagon City needing a lift to Capitol Heights, MD, the Indian programmer constantly peering over my shoulder to look at where we were via the app. Or simply the intoxicated millennial who I have to wake up to inform them we are in front of their apartment building in Arlington, VA.
Largely driving for Uber has given me a portal into the life that many Americans live – something I’ve been removed from (many call it being blessed) the vast majority of my adult life. The economic realities of some barely scraping by – the fares you earn commensurate with the hours you put in. The wear and tear you place on your personal automobile not to mention fuel costs. The fact that Uber offers meager incentives ($70 to $90) to pick up that 43rd or 100th passenger before 4:00 AM Friday or Monday – the psychological games of “if I keep driving I can make $700 for the week!”, only to hear your youngest son demure that he missed spending time with you last night.
Never has the contradiction of the life I had been living and the one I currently had become so stark when a passenger, a young and witty Asian man in his 20s asked who drives a 5-series BMW for Uber? My vehicle in of itself was a representation of my economic strata prior to being forced out of my last job. The fact I was stuck in traffic on the 14th Street Bridge at 8:15 AM carrying this man and another millennial to their tech job in DC – a young woman oblivious to our conversation bobbing her head with headphones – this was my present reality. My mind immediately turned to that unread email sitting in my Gmail inbox regarding the next interview.
Chronicles in the Black 
Leave a comment