I’m the Wife of an Uber Driver and I Have Stories
Some of his rides are straight out of the movies!
In a cliche straight from the silver screen, my husband, a career professional with two degrees and a blinding work history, is driving an Uber.
We knew something was wrong when his real job ended Christmas 2019 and he was still out of work a month later. He’s never had a career gap before.
Disasters and upheavals have been the name of the game for a while. I think we’re under a hex that can only be undone by taking an odyssey over the seven seas looking for giants, sorcerers and dragons to slay with swords sharpened on the skulls of demons.
So there we are at the end of January 2020 in dire straits, primary income gone and, along with the rest of the country, wondering what’s going on with that bat disease over in China.
“For real, you want to drive an Uber?!”
My husband is the type who sees solutions where others see problems. He looked to the zero-hours economy as a way to bypass the hurdle of job-openings and interviews and found driving a private hire vehicle to be the fastest, most stable route into a regular income.
“For real, you want to drive an Uber?!” All I could see were hussies, drunks and racists. Covid wasn’t in everyday language yet so worrying about that would come later.
He signed up for the training and sat his final exam on the eve of the UK lockdown in March 2020. His licence came through in June 2020 when he hired a car and got on the road.
Covid was rampant by then and we made a clean-up kit consisting of sanitary wipes, hand-gel, masks and disinfectant spray to clean up after every passenger. We also outlined a decontamination routine that he promised to follow every night when he got home.
Drivers were a high-risk group due to the confined nature of their workplace. There had been some driver deaths already that my husband tried to play down to his worried family. It’s not like there’s much choice when there are bills to pay and you’re not eligible for furlough or government support.
“You know there’s a high chance I’ll bring home Covid,” he said in his usual matter-of-fact way.
Drivers are essential workers
Uber wasn’t recruiting because of a reduced demand for drivers so he was using the Ola and Bolt apps. There wasn’t much business and on a good day he’d bring home £70 from a ten-hour shift.
Drivers were classed as essential workers and allowed to work during the lockdown to transport key workers, carers, people doing essential shopping and people making hospital trips.
He phoned me one afternoon. “Someone’s hired me to courier a bag of rags to somewhere near Westminster.”
I asked if there was a ticking sound coming from the bag.
No, no sound. No wires either.
“I don’t think it’s a bomb,” he said. “It looks more like dirty chuds.”
That was his first time doing a ride without a passenger, rides without people soon became his favourite hires.
“Stab him! Stab him!”
Apart from dog-walkers and born-again joggers, there were three main groups of people out and about during lockdown:
- Essential NHS staff and blue-collar workers
- Motley workers too rich for government support, not eligible for furlough and too poor to stay home and not work
- People unhindered by rules to stay home
His first few months as a driver introduced him to all the poor estates in South London, some tucked away in places I’d thought were affluent all the way through.
A good chunk of his rides were gangster types who rolled joints and blue-toothed drill music through his speakers.
He drove them to secret parties and to midnight meetings in deserted unlit car-parks. No masks, they’re all exempt. Sometimes they’d ask to stop to pick up electric scooters from well-masked mates — straight transfer from one boot to another. They talked about deals and booty and they all said “thank you for the smooth ride, Boss,” when they left.
One afternoon he picked up a lad who said, “hey Boss, I got stops to make.” My husband didn’t mind and told him to book them into the app. There were several stops at various street corners where the lad invited waiting women into the car. Each one handed over a wad of cash and left.
Debt-collection, drugs or pimping? Never found out.
One morning he picked up a couple of teenage boys. They’re wearing those trousers that hang like a full nappy’s dragging them down. They’re rolling the obligatory joint and using the N-word liberally at the boys on the street while deciding who to stab-kill and who to stab-hurt.
I know from my own culture nobody hauls you in front of a judge for using racist language against your own people. I don’t think it’s even a racist slur under those conditions, maybe a swear word rolled in an insult. What do you think?
The excitement climbs up a few notches when they see a particular kid sitting on a wall. One of them punches the other, “Look he’s there! Stab him! Stab him!”
My husband carries on driving pretending he hasn’t heard.
“Oh, Shit!”
One night he calls about two hours into his shift, around 11pm. He loaded a tracker app on his phone for my peace of mind and and I can see he’s in Balham.
“Guess where I am,” he said.
“I can see where you are. You’ve been there for a while, are you taking a break.”
“I’m cleaning shit.”
“What?”
“Just had a bastard smear dogshit into the mats. I’ve been trying to clean it for half an hour but the smell… I can’t take any passengers with this smell in the car.”
He came home and I washed the mats. A night of lost income with the car rental not covered either.
A routine settles in place
As with all jobs, the first few weeks are the hardest.
A lot of people treat him as if he’s invisible, thick or deaf. Sometimes they bitch to each other that the driver’s scamming them by choosing the longest route on purpose, even though the route and price are both set by the app.
One guy with a Yorkshire pudding for a brain spends the entire ride heckling my husband. “Like FUCK that’s your name! Just admit your name’s Abdul! I’ve been with all your cousins.”
My husband doesn’t care about the idiots. He’s trained in close-quarters combat which gives him the freedom to choose the higher path. He responds to arsehole rides with one-star reviews, even when the review hits the mate who booked the cab on arsehole’s behalf.
The skin on his thighs and back developed a rash from rubbing against cloth for so many hours at a time. Talcum powder in the morning, Sudocreme at night fixed that.
He develops back issues from sitting so long. An hour of cross-fit in the mornings and a beaded car-seat cover help with that.
He gets better at identifying problem rides and starts enjoying the people. He chats with them about their day and their worries. Passengers thank him profusely for basic human niceties that it turns out not everyone does.
Niceties like driving a passenger to the right place when the app ends the journey in the wrong place and the fare officially stops. Like helping people with their shopping. Like not cancelling a call after accepting it. Like not making a passenger get out in the rain before the destination because roadworks mean having to take a more circuitous route. Like letting their dog ride along in the car.
Loo-breaks are a continual stressor. Everywhere has restrictions in place because of Covid. He identifies supermarkets with facilities and tries to be in the area at strategic times. He soon discovers this isn’t always possible because the rides can take him anywhere and takes to avoiding drinks.
One day he carries a passenger who tells him his cousin used to drive a taxi. He got kidney disease through not drinking water all day because it was so hard to find a loo.
Uber opens up a different demographic
When he gets the Uber app he notices a different passenger demographic. For the first time, he starts to get tips. While he still goes to the occasional estate, the passengers aren’t rolling joints or playing drill music through the speakers.
Lockdown’s loosening up, people continue choosing taxis over public transport and there’s a lightness in the air as everyone reintroduces themselves to the outside world.
They all want to chat with the driver.
Proud teenagers go into detail about what their parents do for a living. Drunk angst-ridden couples pour out their troubles and tipsy girls flirt and giggle. Some get increasingly naughty with the things they say, “Driver, do you want to see me naked?”
He always smiles and deflects, thankful his rental company installed an interior camera.
One day he picks up a female passenger in Croydon. BLM matters are in the news and as the black Head of Diversity for a big city consultancy, she’s putting together a panel to discuss diversity issues.
She’s on the phone to one of her panelists, a black guy who’s not sympathetic to the BLM cause. He wants to present his view on the panel and she’s not having any of that. She tears into him, strong-arming him into the Kingdom of Woke with a barrage of insults strong enough to corrode paintwork.
If you watch a diversity panel on television and all the black people are agreeing with each other, I wouldn’t rush to believe it.
There are so many stories to tell, I feel I’ve barely started and the article has already ended.
I asked my husband for a message for ride-sharers. Ever practical, he says, when you order a cab, stand somewhere where it’s easy and safe for a driver to stop. Under a traffic light or the inside/outside lane of a roundabout isn’t it.
UPDATE: My husband has a real job now… and someone said I was a micro-aggressive racist for being happy about it. Here’s the story: It’s Not Racist To Want A Better Job
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