Driving for Lyft on the 4th of July Morning
Recently I had my first Lyft customer who wasn’t an ideal experience. I don’t want to say rude more just on the obnoxious side. If I hadn’t said it before I do ride and drive for Lyft. Driving isn’t a thing I do often, but once in a while when I have the time I will. It’s easy money on the side along with the fact that my electric car uses no gas which is nice. A somewhat unpleasant ride made me think I would rant about a little. And remind people why I think it’s usually worthwhile to be considerate of your driver.
About two nights ago, it’s very early in the morning on the 4th of July. Around 1:00 AM or with my insomnia kicking in I figure I might as well spend some time being productive. At that time its prime time for people leaving bars. I figured I would catch a few fares, do a bit of work on my PC, and then call it a night. But alas, the best of plans.
The first thing which happened which I find happens often is a ride which canceled. Fair warning, people do this semi-often in my experience driving for Lyft. A ride came in, it was about 20 minutes away. I dislike getting fares that far, but I swiped up to accept it. They didn’t cancel within the first 30 seconds, so I thought maybe this was legitimate. 11 minutes in they suddenly cancel the ride which naturally leaves me a bit annoyed.
I don’t mind canceling a minute or two after but now I’m away from downtown where all of the drunks are. Turning around, I begin to head back. All of a sudden a ride comes in and I’ll admit this was my fault. Without really thinking about it, I accept it only to realize the ride is 30 minutes away. DOH!
While I entertained the thought about canceling it I decided to soldier through. Lyft gives you incentives if you have a high ride acceptance rate and I didn’t want that to take a hit. Driving along I realize that I’m being taken to some out of the way place near Akron. Ugh, mistake. ><
Anyway, I pull up to a bar in a small town and notify my ride I’m there. I assume he’s at the bar the GPS pointed me near but I call to verify. He says he will be out in a minute after closing his tab. Over 5 minutes later I’m still waiting for him. I briefly debated on leaving since I gave him the time I’m supposed to wait. Realistically though it wouldn’t have been worth it. Finally, him and another guy get out of the bar and load up in my car. That’s when I get the drop off which is another 30-minute drive up in Cleveland.
I’ve driven drunk people before, so I expect people might be a bit noisy, but I’ll admit these two were pretty obnoxious. Probably pretty drunk too. The guy who called the ride called a female and kept telling her we would be there in 22 minutes. Even though I pointed out more than once the GPS said 32 minutes.
The volume of the conversation didn’t annoy me as much as the content. This whole 30-minute drive I listen to these two college aged guys talk about woman. Specifically, it resolves around if they would sleep with a girl or not (actually they were saying “yeah I’d **** her”), if they would be getting lucky tonight. Apparently, the one guy’s girl was on her “rag” (TMI for me) but he planned to score anyway.
This went on nearly the entire car ride. Aside from asking me to turn on the car radio, they barley said two words to me which I was fine with. Don't get me wrong, I understand we all have guy talk. But this got beyond tiring. Finally, we arrive at our destination. The two of them aren’t fully sure where it is and seemed to think that I had driven the wrong way. I pointed out that I took where the GPS took me and was happy to drive them around. They opted to just walk to their destination since it was close by. Being done with that I decided to drive to my girl's place since it was closer and get some sleep.
)All was fine until I woke up the next morning to see an email from Lyft saying my rider had complained that I was driving slow. And he had given me a bad rating. Needless to say, I was a bit miffed. Unless someone does something really bad I always rate drivers or riders 5 stars. As obnoxious as this guy and his drunk friend were they didn’t do anything wrong per say. I think I also felt extra annoyed because I knew I didn’t go any slower than 55 in a 60 MPH area.
I was honest with the guy that I was being careful about watching how I was driving. Since we were driving in an area I wasn’t familiar with and it was Fourth of July morning so I didn’t feel like a bored cop pulling us over (my being paranoid was increased by the fact that on that 30 minute drive we saw four different cops who had pulled people over). I almost decided to go back and edit my review and knock down his rating. Guy gave me a slightly lower rating knocking me down from 5 to 4 stars.
What annoyed me the most is the guy never mentioned that he thought we were going slow. He didn’t say much of anything to me. Naturally, I felt really annoyed that he would report me for that. After taking a minute to chill I realized, though it wasn’t worth it to change his reviews. Best to get on with my day and move on.
So moral of the store? Eh, not sure. I’d say if you’re a driver driving at 1:00 AM expect to drive around drunk obnoxious people, lol. If you’re a passenger try and cut your driver some slack. Hope you enjoyed my little rant/story. As always, feel free to reply below and I’ll decide on what I will be posting next.
Wow this is crazy! I didn't realize being a Lyft driver was so hard! I've used Lyft. but I only leave 5 star ratings! Thanks for sharing this! That guy sounds like a total jerk!
As a driver, I will personally say thank you, lol. But I'm the same way. I'm the kind of person where I won't complain at a resturant or give a bad rating on uber/lyft unless you do something really bad. Trust me, you are the kind of passengers we like to drive around. :-) Thankfully people like this have been the exception, not the norm. My pleasure, maybe I'll share more crazy stories if I have any. My guess the guy didn't get lucky and blamed it on my slow driving. ~_^ hah.
Moral is don't let petty shit get you down. You could have messed with the rating which you didn't. You moved on and that's the way life is, assholes are all over the place, it will catch up to them, don't let it drag you down.
This is true and thanks. You're right. I wanted to knock down his rating in return but realized it wasn't worth it in the grand scheme of things. Like you said move on to better things in life. That and he still paid me $25 so I can't complain to terribly much.
I got a four ⭐️ rating with Uber one time because some girls said they were cold, so I turned on the heat, and they got pissy. And the night before that I picked some drunk couple up in West Hollywood and had to spend 30 minutes of hearing them call me Chadwick and make terrible jokes the whole way. Uber is not for the faint of heart. 😨💔
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A friend of mine started driving for lyft since they came out. He makes like 800 usd a week. He said it's flexible work but work nonetheless. Overall a great opportunity for people to make extra part/full-time income.
You got it right exactly. Driving for Lyft when I have free time you can make like $20 an hour. It's not bad money. But like you said to make good money it is work just like any other job. Just you get flexibility. I do think it's a good option for anyone who wants to make some cash on the side or even full time. Only thing would suggest is to drive a hybrid or electric car so gas doesn't kill your profit. I just try to drive a few hours a week when I can.