Yeah, I gotta be honest with you, I’ve never tried any of these services, and literally every single thing I hear about them from every side makes them sound like an absolute horrorshow.
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Maybe, taxi drivers often get bennies and unions, and uber/lyft drivers don’t?
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Taxi implies a specific level of service. to me that is the point.
Not to me. Both give me a ride somewhere. I don’t expect more service than that from a taxi driver.
Edit: both sell me a ride somewhere.
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This is like saying, “I want Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse service, but I want to pay for McDonalds”. Two different services…though steak disgusts me. And so does McDonald’s. But I believe you know where I’m going with this.
You get for what you pay for. McDonald’s isn’t high dining. It fills your stomach. Temporarily. You’d be an asshole for expecting the same service. If you came at me with a list of demands that were suited to the steakhouse, I’d say you were a fucking entitled brat.
And that said, in no way am I absolving these COMPANIES of anything…I’m defending the drivers. Often women and men that are trying to pay rent and this is often the only way they can. Why do we feel the need to shit on service workers on BoingBoing all of a sudden???
Not sure when that happened. Somebody provided their scoring rubric, you insulted them, and now you continue to frame your argument by calling Uber something that it isn’t. (Doesn’t matter what Uber calls it to fend off regulations.) Nobody here has said the kid in the video or the family expecting you to put away their groceries for them were in the right.
As a driver you also score passengers. Are you going to dock me because I was at work all day and my deodorant is failing? Hey man, I thought we were just sharing a ride.
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You’ve got the two people-ferrying services backwards.
With Uber, you can compare and then chose which kind of car and service you want first before you order a ride, and know in advance who your driver is, and can decline them if they have a lot of negative ratings. The cost is determined in advance, not dependent on the driver’s honesty or meter accuracy. If there’s a problem, you have all the identifying information on your phone.
With a taxicab, you get none of that.
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Only asshole drivers rate anyone less than 5 stars with the exception of the passenger being a complete asshole.
I get it…long day??? God damn that might be smelly. There is a reason windows open and I carry Febreze. If the person is respectful of me, they get a 5 star rating. I’ve picked up several homeless people that were given rides to the hospital by someone else…reeked. They needed to see a doc…that’s all I cared about. They are people and they paid money for me not to judge them. Or someone paid money for me not to judge them. I treat everyone with the respect I would these folks…and as long as I get the respect in return, 5-stars. Respect isn’t something anyone needs to earn, however it can be lost pretty quickly.
Edit: I know some drivers that claim to rate non-tippers as 4 or less. Fuck that. Is it a service industry job? Sure. However, it should never be expected. Most of the drivers on rideshare forums call these assholes out for giving less than 5 stars. 5 stars isn’t going above and beyond, its being a decent human and paying the bill.
And yet, you pay far less for all this service!!! I’m cool with it, I knew what I signed up for. And it’s a fun hobby.
I almost always ask my driver for their best passenger story. I’ve gotten some great responses.
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Um.
The taxi driver isn’t there to be a servant either. He’s a service worker.
And a regulated and inspected one. Who _is_ required to act professional. (But isn't a servant, or someone who is required to take abuse. Taxi drivers are 'human', paid to perform an agreed service. Just like you are.)
Except he pays for all that, for the good of us all: In licencing fees that fund regulation and inspection. And secondly in that if he fails those standards significantly and repeatedly, he loses the right to practice his livelihood.
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To be clear, and fair:
You made some very good points up there in response to what can easily be seen as a contentious statement.
But now, things are getting hot because people are criticising the effects of the system that you’re using (accepted unreservedly: as a hobby, without any malice) that’s itself engineered to undermine the protections in place and the actively fights to resist the same protections being applied as to comparable services.
Lyft may be better than Uber, sure, I see that - but the model’s the same, and it does seem to rely on being cheaper by virtue of avoiding applicable regulations, as a business model.
It’s that that people here are raising objections to here, not you yourself.
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I don’t think they are either. HOWEVER, it is a far more regulated industry where roles are far more defined. I think taxi drivers have it easier in this regard…be an asshole to a taxi driver, they will throw you out without a second thought. They could also lock you in and wait for cops. No person should have to deal with any of this. However, taxidrivers have the ability to tell someone that is being abusive to shut the fuck up without worrying about losing income because their ratings are going to go down. They have quite a few more rights than we have. And this is because of the highly defined role that isn’t there in ‘ridesharing’.
The entire post comes from the fact that an Uber driver had some passengers that were assholes to him and he told them off. This is what their entire thread is predicated on. In ANY other industry, we would have been applauding the driver for not putting up with the blatant disrespect. Instead, he is being called an asshole, a mysogynist, unprofessional, and all sorts of other things. We have people bragging about how they punish drivers that are not getting on their knees and orally satisfying them. We have people just out and out disrespectful to the folks in this industry. I can TOTALLY get behind the hatred of the assholes that run these companies…however, the drivers are FOR THE MOST PART, good people that just want to do a job and go home.
One of the big reasons I started doing this was to understand the new economy a little better…I’ve been blessed / lucky / whatever in my life where I have always had things easy. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up in a poor household where for 4 years I remember my parents driving me and my sis at 2AM folding and rubberbanding newspapers in the back of a pickup truck in Arkansas so they could deliver the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (at the time, it was the biggest newspaper in the state) …did this as a preteen and had to go to sleep right after school so we could be up in time for the newspaper delivery. After I moved out of my parents house, I got lucky…and for the last 20 some years, I’ve really had a life that I can’t complain about. I wanted to understand how all this worked and I wanted to see where society is going…I don’t depend on the money, but I enjoy talking to people…both passengers as well as other drivers. And knowing both, I met a girl last night that would have had to quit work if she had to take a taxi…a ride to the only job that pays well enough to support her and her kids both ways is $30. Lyft? It was $5. She told me that she actually gets a ride to a coworkers home and then gets the ride because it saves another dollar.
I know one guy that drives down and lives in his car during the week…gives all sorts of tips of where we can all pee if we need to! And then drives to his home on weekend where he can see his kids. Tells me that he’d make more money if he just drove three days on the weekend, but those are the days he has family.
I meet so many people that these services have helped – on both sides. And yes, it needs to be better regulated, I kinda wish there was a union for these folks…I wish there was protection against the ratings (i.e., I had a guy give me a one star rating because I had my Human Rights Campaign sticker on the back of my car…something I didn’t even know what mouthbreathers knew was…berating me for ruining society)…I wish that things like Lyft – you are forced to drive 20+ minutes away for a $5 ride or face ‘deactivation’ if your acceptance rating goes down below a certain amount. There are a lot of things that need to change.
However, this entire thread is based around bashing a man that just had too much of assholes being a dick to him. Fuck that. I can understand how people can get to the breaking point. And if you do get to the breaking point, the answer shouldn’t be “find a new job” it should be “how can we teach others to be more human to one another”.
There’s a lot to agree with in there, and some nice anecdotes. I’m glad we agree on the ‘human’ and service workers bits, I’d hoped that was overstated.
I’m also close to calling it a night, so we might have to pick this up later (accursed BST) However, there are a couple of parts that I want to respond to:
Taxi drivers may have it easier in the regards that you mention, but that’s back to them paying licencing to the council/state, that the Uber model deliberately and actively strives to avoid - it’s there in part to keep the driver safe as well as the customer, and I’m a strong advocate that customers and drivers should get the consequences of being abusive.
While I admit it’s my own reading of the topic, I’ve read both views presented about the driver and the passengers ‘being arseholes’, And came away with the impression that neither of them exactly covered themselves with glory there, so I’m not convinced for myself that the overall argument pans as strongly ‘anti’ the driver as it seems to you.
That’s just another perspective, of course, but maybe another view helps?
Also, I damned well hope that Taxi drivers who are abusive to their clients certainly do lose trade/money - that same licencing system means that complaints about the driver to the council/state certainly should carry weight and censure up to five and or lots of licence. That’s another part of the licencing system, that the not-an-employer-but-it-screws-you-if-they-drop-you-for-bad-ratings ‘carshare’ companies actively avoid.
I’m also bound to agree with you about unions and related protections - the likelihood of the ‘carshare’ systems allowing that to happen (when they can drop drivers at will, without comeback), is another reason why I’m concerned about the long term effects of this particular manifestation of the ‘new economy’.
(Just to be clear, while I’m concerned about the ‘rights/protections grab’ that I see as an integral part of the new scheme(s), I assure you that I’m not intending any of this to be a dig at you, long-concatinated-compound-nouns notwithstanding.)
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Uber is above or outside or beyond the regulations passed by your fellow citizens for your work in public?
Got it. thanks for the assertion of your special place. Uber is clearly a special snowflake.
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In most cities, taxi drivers don’t have to worry, with the exception of ripping off passengers. Even then, it is hard to get the city involved. Most taxi companies run as almost a monopoly within a city, which brings in a lot of money through licensing. The cities then turn a dead eye to said companies as a result.
No, Uber seems to be within the regulations for the 4 ride share companies that are in my state that I know of. If you are ‘rideshare’ you follow one set of rules. If you are a ‘taxi’ you follow another. Taxis actually get more rights as a result. They also pay for these rights. For instance, even though we see Uber drivers sitting in ‘taxi zones’, they can actually get ticketed for doing so. In my city, taxis are allowed to do U-Turns. Normal citizens and ride shares cannot. Apparently this right comes with having a commercial vehicle license. Airports allow taxis a loading zone, where as ride share (in my city) have to sit in the cell phone lot and wait (its the only place we can legally accept a ride and we are geofenced from accepting them if we stray outside of this area). Taxis are also allowed to charge a premium for picking up from the airport. We are not. This is supposed to be a result of the airport fee – anyone picked up at the airport pays an additional $1.75 that goes directly to the airport…though only taxis get the benefit of being able to charge more as a result.
The point is, we are exactly within the regulations passed by our city / state. Go figure, different types of trade are regulated differently. Even when they perform similar roles. In all aspects of live. Go figure.
That said, I switched to Lyft…who has been pretty much the squeaky clean version of Uber. I’m sure they are still bastards…but in comparison they come off better.
Either way, I’m not here to defend the companies, I’m here to defend the drivers. Not sure how this keeps evolving to folks asking me to defend the companies. I’m not. However, I will explain the facts as I know it.
I bear1 no ill will towards weasels. They are fine creatures, and even when they’re being slippery little bastards, they’re still fundamentally being true to their own natures. What troubles me is finding the same properties that make weasels so good at being weasels so aptly embodied in the behaviors of my fellow humans who, frankly, should know better. 
Fun fact: when I was a kid, my parents bred and raised ferrets, so I have some passing familiarity with the general type, even if ferrets aren’t quite the same thing as weasels. They’re not very smart, but they can make fun and delightful pets. And the sounds they make are nothing like what you’d expect (I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that!).
[1] dammit, I had to look up the difference between bear and bare.
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I think you’re personalizing this too much, to the point where you’re imagining that other posters are saying derogatory things that they aren’t actually saying.
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Then the solution is to fix that, not to produce an alternate system where everyone concerned has less rights, except for the company running the scheme. Also, where I live, it’s not that hard to do, and kick up a stink. Mileage (ahem) varies.
And I’m afraid that means that in your particular state, they’ve found a useful set of rules to cover their activities, but that’s all. It meets the letter of the law there, but no rides are being ‘shared’ (not by any common definition of ‘rideshare’ [Well, any definition that isn’t an attempt to legally codify a cooperative practice to generally save fuel and pollution by all sharing a ride you were all making anyway, together, for the good of the planet and to reduce costs for all parties.])
The Ubers (especially) and their ilk run the same service lots of places where ‘ridesharing rules’ don’t exist (like near me). And it’s the exact same service which you’ve yourself have described in collection as ‘like a taxi, but with less protection for everyone’. And their lawyers and management fight just as hard in those places to wiggle away from protections. (and worse!)
(The ridesharing bit is kinda like the reasons that McDonald-corporate cheerily gives their new staff about the perils of unionising. It’s legal, but rotten and bad-faith on their part - an attempt to use and stretch local law as part of a deliberate business model, not an attempt to follow local law as good citizens - as proved by what happened when they first opened in Germany.
It’s their figleaf that they use for staff - this isn’t about people who all go in the same direction splitting costs to make more efficient use of their four seater vehicles, It’s about ‘taxi-light’, where the companies hold all the cards and visitors and drivers and customers alike hold all the risk.)
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