Worse Than I Thought

Some years ago, when the Uber service first launched, I wrote in this space that while I couldn’t speculate on the eventual profitability of the company, the concept was something with which I personally would not want to get involved. On the passenger side, the company’s business model did not include any effective way for them to guarantee that you wouldn’t randomly get a ride from a serial killer, whereas on the driver’s side, the service seemed tailor-made for carjackers. Experience over the years since has proven my point on a number of dimensions, ranging from disputed claims of violence and abuse (from both parties) to the Uber driver who went on a shooting spree two years ago, but that hasn’t kept millions of people from driving for the company, and millions of others to paying for a ride. The company’s market value is now estimated as being in the $70 billion range, with new services being announced all the time…

Unfortunately, it would appear that working conditions for the full-time Uber drivers are actually worse than I suggested they might be. According to a story from the Bloomberg site, it has become increasingly common for drivers to work for up to eighteen hours in a day, and then sleep in their cars for a few hours before repeating the schedule. In some cases the drivers will pay for a motel room or a bunk at a hostel, but for large number of them this isn’t financially possible. It would seem that most large cities, where there is enough traffic to make driving for Uber full-time possible in the first place, the typical driver isn’t making enough to pay for living expenses. Accordingly, the drivers will live somewhere less expensive and commute to the city, where they will stay for days at a time, driving until they can’t stay awake anymore and then sleeping in their back seat…

I’d feel better about this story, and about bringing it to you in this blog, if I had more specifics about how many people are involved in the practices described, but there is no reliable information available. Since the drivers are considered independent contractors, not employees, the company knows almost nothing about them apart from their actual working hours, and since sleeping in your car in a public place is illegal in many cities, it’s unlikely that the drivers would respond to a survey even if somebody did one. The fact that there are places in several major cities where the drivers gather for mutual protection while the sleep, and that the Bloomberg reporters were able to find such locations in San Francisco, Chicago and New York (among others), suggests that there may actually be something to this story, however…

Now, I don’t mean to accuse the company of wrongdoing. Nobody forced these people to drive for Uber in the first place, much less quit their day jobs and attempt to drive full time. And as some of the drivers interviewed for the story indicated, there are people who actually enjoy this lifestyle, sleeping in their cars and all. It is possible that the classification as contractors, rather than employees, is making things worse for the drivers, and there are still allegations that the company has misrepresented the earnings potential for drivers. None of this changes my original point, however, which was that the entire experience sounds worse than any of the jobs I’ve ever had – and let’s remember that at least one previous gig of mine included cleaning the Incontinent Supplies aisle whenever the janitor called in sick…

I’ve often commented in this space that if laws are ever passed to outlaw making money off of the greedy, credulous, or stupid people in our society, the economy will probably collapse. But even assuming that’s true, it seems unfortunate to have to add the naïve, unprepared and optimistic to that list…