I'm an Uber driver in Houston, USA ... ask me anything.
 

no three musketeers bars?

the three musketeers killed lover true. they are not welcome in my car. :mad:

i been doing amazon mechanical turk as a side job. payin' the bills and shit. about to get a job evaluating search engine results, too. $11 an hour is shit but hey i get to do it at 3am while laying on my bed. i already am hired i just have to pass 3 tests. i passed the first one tonight. i'll do the next two over the weekend.

plus a few other things. prolific.ac is a legit survey site. i make like $30 am month from them. and usertesting.com you make $10 per 10-20 minute test. I've made $60 in a month. they pay exactly one week after you do the test. prolific pays out above 5 pounds (UK monies) which is very easy to get to. i generally pay myself out of mech turk and prolific on sundays.

also got approved for rev transcription. they pay you for training which is nice but then all the shit they have up is way too hard to hear for me. don't think i'll be doing much with them. they only pay beginners like 38 cents per transcript minute which is terrible, after a while it goes up to about 50 cents but idk if i have the patience to get there. im too much of a perfectionist to do well enough to get paid but not worry so much to make it not worth doing profit-wise. if that makes sense. it's not worth doing to an excellent level but i dont think i can help myself. therefore it's not worth doing.

some of that sounds dope, rep. is it worth looking into survey sites? i always assumed the pay was bogus or something scammy.

Survey says...

"SO, HOW DO YOU LIKE BEING AN UBER DRIVER?" :mad::dammit::dead:

My brother drove Uber for a while in Asheville, NC and did pretty well. He said some of the best money he'd make was from regulars who would just text him personally if they knew about a scheduled trip (airport, casino, etc) and bypass the app- paying him direct. If he wasn't available, no problem they'd just get a random from the app. He's a pretty personable fella like you which definitely helped.

thanks for this, reprise. i am thinking about working online myself.

Payin the bills and shit.

That would be dope.

do you have your driver's license?

No. I used an ID I found on the ground.

prolific.ac and usertesting.com are absolutely worth it. if you do prolific, there's a chrome extension (prob one for firefox or whatever too) called prolific assistant which will check it every 60 seconds to see if there are new surveys. really though, the best thing is to keep both sites open and listen for them to ding. usertesting you'll also have to do a test test (lol) to get approved. there is software and they will record your screen while you talk. they also have higher paying stuff, like $60 an hour for actual conference calls but i my webcam is not working so i've never tried those. but yeah, just for doing some misc usually not too boring surveys:



there was a lull while universities were out but they are coming back now. to be clear these represent multiple surveys per week. i think the highest paid one i ever did was 5.50 pounds. most are about 1

mturk is where the money is but it's a lot more work than just doing some survey that pops up. although there are also a lot of surveys/experiments, there's lots of other stuff and a lot of competition for stuff, some scammers etc. you gotta kinda learn from the community so it takes a lot more patience and time. for example there's a forum i usually read while i am turking and i read a ton of guides to getting a good setup when i first started in late october.

also, this just in:

Do you initiate conversations with your riders?

Is it true only white people party in Midtown?

Not unless they do. I give a greeting, help with bags etc. Most of my riders have been quiet/on their phone/sleeping and I just keep my music low and drive. If the rider goes beyond a greeting, I'll talk; if they don't, I won't.

Only a couple have been up for talking. Mainly cuz my main hours are morning ones and people aren't fully awake probably.

I don't know enough about Houston nor am I in a place in my life where I would know anything about partying. :rofl:

I subscribe to the Uber Reddit and apparently the drivers ding riders a star or two for not tipping. Which is weird to me, but I guess they are doing this as an actual living so maybe it's my more personal for them.

I always rate people 5 stars. The only time I'd rate someone under 5 would be if they fucked my back seat up or smoked in my car or something ridiculous. I'm not pedantic enough to ding people for not tipping. Fuck it.

I usually follow the riders cue and only chat if they start. Otherwise, I should let them drive how they need to drive. The most raucous convo I had was with a woman who was driving me to an interview one morning. She'd been doing her thing already for a couple hours and could tell I was morning person or something.

Hmm. Come to think of it, older people usually talk to me but young ones and millennials don't know how to have small-talk (which doesn't have to be boring or about the weather) and I think it's a "thing" now for one to say they hate it instead of that they suck at it. Much cooler that way.

Soooo have you had a favorite rider? Do you offer snacks and put up l'il signs to your passenger like 'Please buckle up' or 'Don't forget to give me a five star rating.."?

dang. tim was just in houston. when did you move to houston?!

Spot on about the small talk. I don't mind it, either.

My favorite riders so far were these Mexican older ladies, sisters, who did not act their age. They were talkative and funny and just goofy and I loved every minute of the ride. They teased me about "looking Mexican" but not speaking Spanish and we just chatted about EVERYTHING and it was great. It was so comfortable and I could have driven them around for hours tbh. They did throw down some Catholic stuff, but I just nodded politely. I would be their regular driver if I could be.

We moved last June. We'll probably be here til July of this year.:cool:

i really don't hate small talk but i really suck at it sometimes

i feel the same way about life

do you pronounce it yuber or uber

I rode in the back of a car with snacks and I didn't even take any. I didn't want to make noise when I opened the wrapper and sound like someone who just takes free food whenever. I didn't even take one to go since I figured they were meant to be eaten in the car by current riders. I did take a l'il water bottle that was offered, though.

Btw, I do not have a smart phone (or a cellphone at all for the last two months) and have to get in touch with Tim via however if I want an uber called, which he can put on my card. People pick me up and say "For Tim?" and I say ''Sort of". One time we ordered at a pizza counter and they asked us the name for the order and we both said "Tim" and then I said, "We're both named Tim."

D. what's the most you've made from a single ride? not including tip.

Some people pay mad money to go 3 miles when the train would have been faster.

which scent of vent clip air freshener are you currently employing?

and why did you end up going with Midnight Storm?

flush down that floater, cork soaker!

don't talk to corky.

you are such a rampager, yo soy el major!

oh christ... the virus is spreading!

BANNED

I feel like if it was my full time job, i'd invest in snacks and such; but, for the first week working the minimal hours i do, minus gas it comes out to about $10/hr. Which ain't great, but it's fine for a part time job/walking around money i don't even really need.

from my neighb to hobby airport, which is typically 45 mins with low traffic; but with traffic it was like almost an hour. we get paid a pittance for gas and time, so i think it came out to about $32? luckily i found a pickup on the way back.

it's some strawberry thing you put under the seat; i had it before starting uber because i am a vacant vince and have more than once forgotten a trash bag in my trunk (intending to drop it on the way out of the apt complex)

paul mccartney rolling in his grave

Do you get a lot of high schoolers? In Singapore many kids even as young as 11 or 12 get Ubers on their own - they have the app on their phone, linked to their parents credit card, and then just book them when they need to come home from basketball training or whatever. But a lot of parents don’t drive in SG because it’s so expensive to have a car. So I wondered if it is the same in Houston...

I've taken two sets of high schoolers. One was a dude near.my kid's school who was going to a Jewish school a ways out.

And one was a three-person pickup. One of the young ladies had a kid so we stopped by the daycare and then their next stop was their high school (the same one V played in the soccer league last fall). Not sure why I was a little shocked to see a teenage mom but I was a little.

Those are the only two high school age peeps I've had thus far. Not sure how widespread it is for them to use Uber. I see a lot of kids walking tho.

Run them over!


AHAHAHHAHAHAH!