The 1st Night

Thursday...

Starting a new job can be nerve-wracking. You spent weeks, maybe months trying to land something good and you finally do. Your boss, your coworkers, your subordinates (if you're lucky to have any), and your clients all seem like pieces of the puzzle you're struggling to put together.

Ub3r is no different, except you spend 1 week waiting for your background to clear and voila! You get an iPhone 4 in the mail and a nice suede box welcoming you to the family.

My first night I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd heard horror stories of drivers being robbed, stabbed, raped, and almost being murdered. But this was LA, this is my home city that I left for almost 6 years only to come back and find myself in the driver seat of a lost path.

So I sign in to my Ub3r driver app and hit the road. Within a couple of minutes I get a call to an address at a dead end. I hit the "Arrived" button on the cell phone and two guys jump in.

"Make a left on Ohio, left on Santa Monica, and a right on Westwood. It'll be on the left hand side, don't speed, and don't kills us."

$5.50

I made $5.50 in 10 minutes. This can't be too bad can it? Taking orders from someone in the back seat?

The next couple of rides were quick, Point A to Point B locations, small talk here and there.

The down time spent in between rides waiting for a dispatch, I spent mainly looking out my driver side window at the city night. Here I am, 26 years old, with a graduate degree, driving people around to their boutiques and lavish lives. 

I noticed that almost every other car I saw on the road had the Ub3r placard in the windshield: the competition was fierce.

At the end of the night, my gross earnings amount to $122.32 (7pm to 1 am). The catch with this is that only 80% is mine and at the end of the tax year I am responsible for reporting this income for deduction purposes. As a single male in California with no dependents, I am looking at a 25-30% tax rate, taken from the already lowered 80% earnings of every ride. 

Account for the gas spent on Ub3r and I end up looking like a chump.

The night life can bring out interesting layers of human behavior and I couldn't wait to see what was in store the next day.

Introduction

Things are different in the dark. Sometimes the shadows of the night play games on you. What seems to be a dog turns out being a black plastic bag blowing down an alley. Walking into a 7-Eleven after 2AM in California is like walking into a movie that started 30 minutes ago. You're trying to figure out what the f-ck is happening and why only bits and pieces of the characters make any sense.

This darkness brings the worst out of some people, specially those who make a career out of victimizing others. 

But for others, things aren't so grim.

Human behavior also looks and feels different after dark, when the nightlife opens up endless possibilities.

This small blog is a recollection of past, current, and future observations I've made of human behavior after dark.

Join me, as we take a small ride in the back seat of my memory, and as I tell you what it's like to work as an Ub3r driver.

- Crenshaw