The UBER Chronicles: Volume 1

As some of you may know like two weeks ago I started driving with Uber. For someone with... lets call it "limited real life responsibilities" like me it's perfect, I can drive people around for extra money when I'm bored. Well let me tell you in two weeks I have already had some rather interesting experiences driving for Uber, and now I'm going to share them with you. Oh also if you are interested in joining and driving with Uber use my code: "RYANM3551"

Gotta give credit to my friend Pat for planting the idea in my brain. Basically we were talking about wanting to go to David Ortiz' final regular season home game and how I'm gonna need a miracle to afford a decent seat. So he suggested driving with UBER. Wednesday I signed up, it took like maybe 20 minutes and Thursday I was out on the road.

I didn't really know what to expect, I've only used UBER like 2 or 3 times before. Surprisingly it's actually kind of fun for a part time gig, I can work basically whenever I want. You get a notification that someone needs a ride, you either accept it or deny it, then you pick them up and bring them to where they wanna go. Pretty simple stuff.

I do not like that as the driver you cannot see where a potential clients end destination is until the ride officially begins. That kind of sucks. Anyways, in my first week I completed 29 trips and I thought some of you would maybe like to hear about the ones I found most interesting. If this is a hit (literally 1 persons tells me think like it) I'll do it every week......

I've been trying to figure out a way to blog this for two weeks I've written an entire other blog but was worried about the reaction so instead for the first UBER Chronicles I'm going to do a favorite moments from my first two weeks driving. Again I'm just reporting the news, some stuff may offend people but it's supposed to be funny, so take the stick out of ya butt. 

My First Official UBER Ride

So my plan Thursday after I got out of the dentist office (luckily they did not mention dozo-the-dentist.html to me) was to drive to Newport to start UBERing, knew it'd be way busier there. But I turned on my app just to see if people on this side of the bridge needed rides. Lucky for me some family at the Holiday Inn needed a ride to Newport. This ride was rather uneventful (aka not funny) but I just thought it was note worthy that I got so lucky with that. As I said, as the driver you have no idea where the rider is going until they're already in your car. For the record, I could be wrong, but I have not found out how to figure out the end location yet.

Anyways it was awesome to get paid to drive to Newport when I was already planning on go, great start for me on my first ride. What I love about going over the bridge is that UBER automatically gives you $4 for the toll even though with an EZ pass it's like 86 cents. Not that matters to me.....I don't pay for that shit..thanks pops. After I dropped them off ride one was officially in the books and I was ready to start grinding. ​

Real Life Rain Man

via GIPHY

It's Thursday night and I've been driving for like three hours. I get a request to pick up somebody by the Dominos on the Middletown/Newport line. Then I immediately get a call from some old man telling me I need to bring his grandson to East Providence. This is where being a nice guy with a guilty conscience really gets me in trouble. I was NOT trying to go all the way up to East Providence but I already had accepted the ride and didn't wanna back out on this kid. Plus I felt bad because the kid needed a ride and didn't wanna leave him there. 

Now I meet up with this guy who's around my age and I'm not making fun of his condition, I'm laughing at how ridiculous of a statement this was. After all he's still a normal human and all human should be allowed to get made fun of.  That's my motto.

Anyways the kid leads off by telling my he has aspergers and lost all his money playing slots at Newport Grand. Now to me, that is a very odd thing to lead off with. Talk about getting really heavy, really quickly. At least say what's up or ask about the weather first. I'm a perfect stranger.

Also I thought people on the spectrum were good at gambling? If Rainman or the Hangover taught me anything it is that.  Maybe it's because he was playing slots and not table games?  

Anyways, It's a decently long drive so we talk a lot. Mainly about music, dude was realllllly into the Talking Heads, so being the 4.86 star UBER driver I am, I played some for him. When you're in the car with me it doesn't matter who you are, I'm gonna play what you wanna hear. Some loser the other night asked for EDM and I played it for it. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. He was a cool kid and if he didn't tell me he had aspergers I never would have noticed. As a fellow gambler myself, my biggest message to him was to not play slots. That shit is a racket. Table games or bust. They're a racket too but at least there's a human screwing you over instead of a machine.

Also I want to give my man credit for sitting in the front seat. Idk if it's just uber/taxi life but sitting in the back seat is weird to me. Especially when it's a long ride or there's 3 people in the car. That family I drove to Newport on my first ride was 3 people and they all squished in the backseat. Like I'm not gonna hurt you up front, idk it just bums me out like are people like scared of me? Idk I'm kinda just thinking out loud. I'm just saying don't be afraid to sit up front and interact. 


(DOL disclaimer, if you get offended by a great Rainman/Hangover reference or joking about things that actually happened in real life, don't shoot the messenger, I still need to be able to find a job) 

I'm Just Telling You What He Said

It's like 6 PM Saturday and I'm in Warwick. I get a request to pick someone up at the Chick-Fil-A. It's two young RISD students. As I always do, I asked "what do you want to listen to?" Seeing as they were RISD students and by the way they looked I asked "Is BRU cool?" Because it's my favorite station, and I mean they looked like alt-rock fans. 

Then the guy speaks and has the meanest gay lisp I've ever heard and says "Do you have any trashy pop? I wanna hear some reaaaaaaaally trashy pop". 

Again, I'm just reporting what I heard. I've said it a million times, DOL is an extremely gay friendly publication, but come on bro, gays have been fighting for years for rights, and equality and then you give literally the most stereotypical answer a gay RISD student could ever give? Be better than that bro.

​Also what is "trashy pop?" I'm a big music guy and was kind of blown away by that term. Is it like music by trashy musicians? Really shitty pop? I was lost.  My guess is he just wanted to hear Ke$ha because she's trashy AF.  But I just kept on WBRU. 

Bringing 6 Basic White Girls to 2nd Beach

It's a Sunday morning and I just dropped off someone on Thames. I immediately get a call from this chick who's ride I just accepted. She asks if it's cool that they squish an extra person in the car. Now TBH I hate doing this but I wanted to be cool and a good driver, so I played it off cool and say sure it's fine.

After waiting a couple minutes these 6 goddesses come out and it's like I was living inside of instagram. I didn't think girls this hot were humanly possible, but they were. Of course they had all the wicked basic hot white girl beach gear too. Like these chicks had body glitter, temporary tattoos, wicked cool clothes, the hippie headbands, and those hot like metal arm bracelet things. Idk how to describe it but it's something only 9-10's can pull off. They had a fucking inflatable swan too jammed in my backseat like I think they were gonna do a photo shoot or something. Oh and the smell. I don't think I've ever smelt something so good in my entire life. It was like liked this mixed perfumes. Which if you watch It's Always Sunny, you know that doesn't work. Yet for these ladies it did.

So we finally start driving, first I ask what music they want. They wanted that new chainsmokers song. Of course they did. Should've known. Again basic city: population these 6 chicks. Then they are talking about my barstool sticker on my jeep. One of the girls told me she was a smokeshow before because of course she was.  We start talking about that and how you become one, basically told me Pres just creeped her on F book. Again, should've known. She said she'd text him to hire me..still waiting to hear back.

Then they start asking me why I UBER and one girl asked why I "bought a car with no aux cord?" Like only these basic white bitches could ask something like this. I hate using the term "privileged" but holy shit wanna talk privileged?...Umm yo, we weren't all given white BMW's by our daddies. Some of our daddies gave us 05 Grand Cherokees babe. Aux-cords were still years away. 

Now we're approaching 2nd beach and this is where I start to worry because I have way too many people in my car and there are like 4 cops doing detail work and I'm really not trying to get a ticket to start my Sunday. I tell the girls to duck and luckily they were cool AF about it. But then when get to 2nd beach I'm like where do you want me to drop you off? They say "right here is fine".... Right here being two feet away from the little booth thing and the attendants working. So now this older guy, like mid 60's trying to be some big hardo, starts busting my balls about having too many people in my car. Like bro, I know, but I'm just an UBER driver trying to make a living, get my 5 stars and maybe some sympathy butt. Be more of a cock-block. Now obviously I don't have a snowballs chance in hell with any of these ladies but at least let me look cool for 20 seconds. He's like this could be a $600 ticket, and I just go "but it's not right?". He's not a cop so he couldn't do shit. I help these hotties get their inflatable swan out of my car and go on my way. 

Still waiting on that text from Pres. 

I Got Pulled Over 

It's Thursday night and I just picked up 5 people (1 too many for my car) from some house to go to another party. Again, like the girls in Newport whoever bought the ride called me and asked if it was cool to squeeze an extra in? Again, I hate doing this but said it was cool because I wanna be cool and who knows maybe they'll actually tip or something. 

I start driving and go past a rotary then see a cop following me. I think in my head, damnit I went too fast or something and know I'm gonna get pulled over. I tell the people in the car I think we're gonna get pulled over and because they're naive college students they're like "nah you're good" but I knew I wasn't. 2 Seconds later I see flashing lights and start to panic. I mean I'm driving UBER with one too many people in my car and figure I'm dead meat. 

Cops asks for license and registration, you know how it goes. Asks about my driving record and I tell him the truth, it's great. Haven't been in an accident in 6 years, no tickets. Then I say the magic words and let him know I'm an UBER driver, and man let me tell you, you wanna talk about a literal "get out of jail free" card that was it. I don't know if he didn't notice or was just cool AF, but he didn't say a word about the extra person. I was let go right away and the cop was super chill. So let it be known that not all cops are bad, in fact most are good. 
​
And no they didn't tip for letting an extra person ride. 

So I guess that's it. Those are the trips that really stuck out in my memory. Hope you enjoyed. I'll be driving more this week, hopefully (nobody throws up in my car) I'll have some more good stories to tell!