What people don’t tell one about Uber is that it’s only partly a rideshare app. It’s also a sociability app. Drivers expect to socialize during the rides and react with incomprehension and resentment if one tries to read or text while being driven.
As a result, one gets to meet quite a lot of strangers one would never meet otherwise and discover how complex people are if one takes Uber often.
Today, for instance, my driver was a 47-year-old fellow who started out with an anti-Michael Brown rant. That immediately made me wonder how I would stick out the rest of the 1-hour-long ride. From Michael Brown and exuberant praise for brave police officers, the talkative driver with a Bible prominently displayed on the dashboard (I’m not being critical or anything since my Bible is bigger than his Bible) segued to the subject of Muslims.
“God have mercy on us,” I thought.
But it turned out I was too quick to place the fellow into an identity box. He offered a very nuanced and insightful discussion of the Koran. And then moved on to praise Canada’s state healthcare system and conclude that, “Say what you will about him, but there are things this Bernie Sanders guy is right about.”
After that, he shared his profound dislike of Bosnian refugees (who are a large local community) and informed me that there are women who actually like working even though they are married.
Don’t think I was just sitting there quietly, though. I used the opportunity to convert the driver from a very pro-Russian stance to a more Ukrainian-friendly one.
Clarissa's Blog 
This makes me never want to take Uber. For some reason, I don’t like chatting with strangers when I’m in transit. (Chatting with strangers while flying is absolute torture to me. All I want to do on planes is read or sleep.) Perhaps I should stick to taxis where I can sit in the back in silence. Ha ha.
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I heard that it’s considered rude to sit in the back on Uber rides. I still sit in the back to discourage sociability but it isn’t working. People don’t take the hint at all. 🙂
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“Drivers expect to socialize during the rides and react with incomprehension and resentment if one tries to read or text while being driven”
Sounds like hell. One of the reasons to pay for a taxi is to not have to pretend to be friends with the driver, they have their role and I have mine. I don’t mind talking a little but I don’t initiate conversation, I prefer to stare out the window and think deep thoughts.
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Looking on the positive side, I’m sure I will get many bloggable stories out of this experience. 🙂
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We used Uber once, in London, going from downtown London to Gatwick. The driver was a man from Congo, who spoke decent Russian. According to him, in the 90-ies he went to study in Moscow. He thought he was going to study philosophy and law, but upon arrival found himself in some geological / mining institute. In retrospect he thinks it was not so bad, because now that the civil war is over, he can return to Congo and find a good job in the mining industry. The sad part of the story is that he lost most of his family in the war…
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You see? Fascinating people.
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Why are you Ubering so much right now? You’re either out of town, your car is in the shop or you’re going to write an article about gig economy driving apps and jitney cabs. 🙂
My take on it is that the Uber drivers are often more educated than taxi drivers so they seize on anyone who is likely to talk or listen because they’re bored out of their minds. There’s only so many podcasts, radio programs and whatever you can listen to before becoming insane or falling asleep. 😛
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I can’t drive right now because if a health condition. But the health condition requires me to be at a hospital that’s an hour away 3 times a week. I’m happy St Louis got its own Uber because even Uber is costing a packet and any alternative option would cost at least twice as much.
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