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!