Why I Stopped Driving for Uber and Lyft

I haven't driven for rideshare (or a delivery service) in a hot minute and have taken a recent break from working to reflect on life and get back into a career track again. Having lived on my own for awhile without a job, in order to maintain independence, I had to do something. But what did I do? How did I survive without having a scheduled job for 2.5 years?

When I first lost my job, I had some money left in my savings account, as well as some remaining checks to receive from the job. While that was all dwindling away, my friends told me I could make a living driving for Uber and Lyft as my new fulltime job. I thought I was doing fine, but I was burning a hole through my wallet and then some. My car needed a lot of repairs and gas cost a pretty penny. Having to full up several times a week and taking away the value from my car, I wasn't aware how much I was spending. After awhile of driving, I also wasn't taking care of myself because I felt the urge to chase paper. By that I mean I was driving myself to exhaustion and driving for unsafe amounts of time to make as much money as possible. I also gained the 60 pounds back I worked so hard to lose. I felt like I was fishing for scraps and not getting anywhere. Rideshare was winning and I was losing...

Eventually, I decided I needed to cut back on driving. The amount of money I lost exceeded the amount I made and I needed to find other ways to make money while excessively job hunting. Job hunting sadly had no use. I would find some jobs I'd take in any respect such as data entry, dog walking, and verifying background checks. Sadly, I took all of those jobs for the money and not for the passion and lost them all pretty quickly. In the interim of many failed jobs, I would take a bunch of day jobs from people I knew (luckily I know a lot of people), doing crazy things such as working a street fair at a friend's Mexican food and ice cream stand, cleaning houses, working merch tables for music shows, hanging posters, delivery driving, helping people move, and much more. I also sold a bunch of my belongings for some spare rent money. Sometimes, a few people, including my parents, would throw me some financial bones, but not really; I did not depend on help from others. It soon hit a point where I needed to drive to a minimum...

Down the road towards the end of my pure gig shindig, I "did not want to drive no more" and needed to find something else to do. While continuing to job hunt and do odd/day jobs, I eventually discovered the world of gig apps. A gig app is a website that runs on a mobile platform (application) where you can look up and pick up day (or multi day) gigs by clicking a button. Some of these apps are Shiftgig, Jobble, and Wonolo. There are also companies (staffing firms) that host day gigs such as Arete. For awhile I was able to survive solely on odd jobs and gigs, but it is quite the unstable and not necessarily sustainable life. I was in a lot of debt, I needed help (I eventually sought help from a social services place) because I was barely getting by, and I was "making too much to receive government assistance". I also couldn't afford insurance or to pay my student loans back (they're in deferment). It was super lame. I'd get thrown a few financial bones here and there, but not really. I'm sure people were sick and tired of hearing about me struggling for so long. 

By the end of this stint, I was worn out, unhappy I had no stability, I gained a bunch of weight, I wasn't taking care of myself, and I eventually hit a dead end when the apartment I had got bedbugs. I completed a few endeavors in my field of choice, but most tasks I did were in the $11-15 an hour range, which isn't a ton of money. I eventually had to move back home, but could have continued to make it on my own had it not been for that. My rent was also extremely inexpensive. 

Would I recommend this life to other people? Not really unless you were an entrepreneur or did higher paying gigs that didn't send you into debt... But I survived and that's all that matters!

All of my Favorite Conversations Are Made in the A.M.

All of my favorite conversations are made in the a.m.


A lot of notable adventures happen to me in the bufu hours of the morning... Mostly consisting of smoking too much weed. From January 2016 to July 2018 I drove for Uber and Lyft way too much for anyone's own good and had plenty of conversations with passengers.


The second day of my Lyft driving ventures I picked up a passenger from River North and drove him to Gage Park at 3:30-4:30am. This guy proceeded to tell me his life story... And pull out a chillum and some weed. For the next hour he's packing bowls and we're passing it to each other as I'm driving around Chicago at fuck o'clock am and am "working". When he gets out of my car, he thanks me and I go home because my car wreiks of weed.


Towards the end of my driving ventures, I had a 6 person Uber XL ride and all of a sudden it smells like weed vape in my car and I audibly say something. The person asks if he can smoke it in my car and I tell him, "only if you share"!

I also had a few unpleasant misadventures as well...

1. I was driving as usual at night owl o'clock on a Saturday night and I ended up picking up a drunk older man who appeared to be between 40 and 50 years old in an Uber pool at around 3:30am in the oh so lovely River North. He got into my car and looked super sloppy drunk, enough to where I thought someone his age should have his shit together more than he did. He told me his address and I proceeded to tell him I had another passenger to pick up because he requested a pool. I arrived at the second person's destination and waited for a bit. The drunk man in my car was being impatient and I ended up contacting the person I was waiting for a couple times. They didn't answer and I ended up canceling on them. I don't like canceling on people, but as I was waiting for this passenger, he fell asleep in my back seat and was snoring rather loudly. The fact this person seemed like he had a "tude" and was snoring made me feel super uncomfortable. I turned up the volume to my music and fled to his house as fast as I can without attracting cops or risking my safety. About 10 minutes later, I see his address, blaring, bold, and purple outside of his building. "Hey, I think we're outside your place now", I exclaim to him loud enough not to startle him and point to his building on Adams Street. He thinks we're on Lake Street; I pull closer to the intersection to make sure I'm not mistaken and listen to his back seat driving. A minute or two later, he realizes he was wrong and gets out of my car. How awkward...


2. I ended up on the far south side in Pullman/Roseland, then Hammond, Indiana at the Horseshoe Casino. I've never been there before and had peemergency so I figured I'd give myself a grand ol tour while I'm at it. On my last stop, I wanted to check the buffet and upstairs out and run into this beautiful floral sculpture. As I'm snapping photos to put on Instagram, a lady's glasses fall off and her man asks me how to distribute an epi pen. I was the only one around and had zero idea how to use it. Then the lady wanted an ambulance, so I made my first ever 911 call. Security shows up to the scene and I wait to make sure the lady is ok. She begins puking. Gross! The ambulance and security arrive super fast because security didn't realize I called them. Tehehehe. The lady is ok. As we're waiting the security guard begins hitting on me and asks for my number. I was tempted to give him a fake number because this dude looked 15 years older than me and I wasn't interested. At least he was being nice and respectful. He wasn't creepy. I give him my number and am not gonna answer his call. But why does being a good samaritan mean getting hit on by the head of security? Weird... At least there's faith in humanity and nice men around. When I'm ready and know it's right I'll pursue, but for now I'll go home with a gold star, pretty pics of flowers, and knowing the right man will come along who I am interested in mutually will happen at some point!


3. Oh boy, driving St. Patrick's Day weekend (the weekend Chicago dyed the river, not the actual day of St. Patrick's Day) on that Saturday. What a great idea, even though I wanted to make some money. It was about 1:30am and I had just finished taking 2 people celebrating a 21st birthday to the Mad River bar in River North who could apparently handle their liquor than the next 2 people who would come in my car. I received another request from the Mad River bar. When the men who looked to be around my age (early/mid 20s) entered my car, the "I feel like this person may get sick in my car" senses were acting like fire alarms going off in my body. I knew those people were super sloppy double dare drunk, enough to know next time to never let people that wasted in my car ever again. And instead of the usual 10 or 15 minute drive, they wanted to go from River North to Arlington Heights by Mitsuwa Marketplace. I had to get the hell out of there fast because I have a fear of people tossing their cookies in my car. I flew down the expressway as stealthy as if my car had rocket boosters. I also made sure to drive as close to the shoulder as possible so I can pull over if needed and kept my trash bag handy. A few miles down the highway, one of the passengers alarmed me I need to pull over; thankfully, I had just got my brakes replaced and froze from 80 to 0 in 4 seconds. He opened the door, tossed all of his cookies outside of my car, and we were back on the road a couple minutes later. The other passenger fell asleep. A half hour after that, I finally dropped both of the people off and called my friends to tell them what happened. Fuck that.

Time to go home! No more Uber. Ever again!

Update to "Shameless Advertising"

I definitely learned a valuable lesson from all of this: don't advertise anything on your car while driving for Uber and Lyft (or any other rideshare companies). In the beginning of 2017, I had some nasty papers mailed to my parent's house (where my car was registered to). I was about to be fined $4000 dollars for "bullshit violations" of posting the blog URL and "Your Friendly Neighborhood Uber Driver" on the back of my car and had to go to court to fix everything and not get fined more than any reasonable person can afford. When I went to court, I was going to fight for my life until my mom noticed they were going to fine a Toyota Sienna instead of a Toyota Highlander like I had. When that information was presented to the judge, all of the tickets were dropped and I owed nothing (and erased everything written on the back of my car). Be careful, folks, and make sure to check all the laws and read the fine print before doing anything "risky"... #neveragain

Top 5 Reasons Not to Drive for Rideshare

Top 5 reasons why not to drive for Rideshare (from my experience):

1. The wear and tear on your car. Companies don't pay your car repairs and you're stuck fronting a bagillion dollars you don't have to keep your "business" running. As soon as they got rid of most of the "guaranteed hours" perks, especially in 2017, all of my business expenses minus my income ended up being a monetary loss. Luckily, that was good for tax return purposes, but still not worth it!

2. Not getting paid when it's dead outside. If no one is requesting rides or if you ended up in the boonies, have fun spending your gas and time to find a ping somewhere and possibly make no money!

3. Customers don't care about your car and will not take good care of it. If you want to keep your car in pristine condition, don't let strangers in your car on a "full time job" basis

4. The best times to work were at unsafe or odd hours. Some of my Uber drivers (when I was a passenger) told me stories on his they were robbed (sometimes at gun point). The unsafe hours are mostly when the drunks are out (Friday and Saturday night from 10pm-7am) and the odd hours are morning rush hour (weekday mornings 5-10am). I missed having my weekends, which were traded for epic misadventures around the city, a couple people almost throwing up in my car, and a couple passengers offering me money and/or weed to do them "special favors". Those people were banned from their respective platform after I called customer service!

5. Promotes unhealthy habits (at least for me). Wanna drive as much/long as possible? No problem, have an energy drink (or worse). Hungry? You don't want to miss a beat and run to the nearest McDs to grab a bite to eat, which you eat on the go and then go back to driving a few minutes later. Gotta pee? Good luck finding somewhere to pull over, especially with passengers in your car and having 30min left of the long drive to go before even being able to Google the nearest place with an open public bathroom on a Tuesday at 3am. I would stay up for way longer than anyone should ever stay up (1-3) and drive as much as I can until I either had an appointment or was so RIP to where my driving would have been compromised. I almost passed out from dehydration a few times, but always carried water on me and was fine. I wouldn't give myself breaks/days off very often and would burn out a lot. I gained a bunch of weight from being sedentary and poor eating habits and my wallet was still crying because all of my earnings went directly back to gas, which you had to pay for. My mental health went down the toilet. And my wallet crying turned into my wallet screaming after "using alternate sources" to pay my bills because I wasn't making enough with my large SUV (tips were scarce) and I ended up in a giant money pit of despair.

Tl;dr there are too many rideshare drivers. Don't drive for rideshare!