‘I hate to generalise, but ...’ What Uber driving has taught me about humanity

This story is part of the August 10 edition of Good Weekend.See all 12 stories.

You are so indiscreet. Do you realise what you just said? In the back of your Uber? In the presence of a stranger? You said more than you should have. And someone was listening. Not a Google or Amazon speaker but a real person who, depending on the traffic and their disposition, was either distracted and uninterested or hanging on your every word.

As a sometime writer and occasional Uber driver, I’ve hung on to most of these words. And, oh my, the passenger seats of a rideshare ­supply oodles of words. Don’t worry. I haven’t rung anything into the newspapers (yet) and, really, you’re not that newsworthy. But every day, you supply scenarios or quotes that intrigue, amuse or sadden me. After each shift, I should drive straight to a TV writers’ room and dump the latest “You won’t believe this one …”

Surprises happen when you don’t know who you’ll pick up. It could be a junkie or a multi-millionaire, a joker or a misanthrope. The junkies tend to be more entertaining, ­including the stoner who couldn’t accompany his mate into the bottle shop because “it’s one of my bail conditions”. But you leave me wondering. So many rides end as cliffhangers. Often I want to ask, “What happens next?” as my rider walks into the near-distance, leaving a scenario as intriguing as that six-word story usually attributed to Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

I’m hesitant to draw generalisations from my time driving because on the whole, people are decent and good-natured, even if they don’t tip. Yet it confirms many preconceptions. For ­instance, it’s always lawyers who know a quicker way to work than the Uber app’s ­algorithm, even though the latter is constantly calculating the fastest route in real time.

Most riders think Uber-driving must be a side-hustle. It can’t be a “real” job. Admittedly, it isn’t a real job because there’s little income after the costs of insurance, hyper-­inflating petrol, a police check, servicing and Uber’s 28 per cent cut, while you strip years from the life of your car. So yeah, there is some shame when I pick up people I know. There are positives though, including a ­renewed appreciation for my city while seeing it through tourists’ eyes. Not so much the rider who said Sydney “feels like Gotham City” but the gasps of “Wow!” from a carload of New Zealanders as Bondi Beach appeared over the crest of Lamrock Avenue.

Nor will I take people for granted again, as was my wont. You meet some extraordinary, unheralded people driving an Uber. Like the woman picking up her cancer medication who’d been a foster carer for three young ­children in another state before adopting them in a bruising, three-year process and moving to Sydney to protect them from their abusive parents. All I do is coach my kid’s sports team.

Women sit behind the driver so they can’t be seen in the rear-vision mirror. They expect leering.

Dispiritingly though, instances of female trauma resonate. Hearing women plead with lawyers to extricate them from a partner’s ­financial coercive control. Conversely, hearing men blithely accept their partner’s complaints about their boozing, gambling or absence ­before laughing about it with their mate on the next call. And why on speakerphone?

There are too many traumatised or nervous women. Women sit behind the driver so they can’t be seen in the rear-vision mirror. They expect leering. One woman took a call from the hotel she’d just left, asking if she would return. “No, I don’t feel safe in your hotel.” Incredibly, the concierge just said OK and hung up. Then there was a 10pm job in a leafy, affluent suburb that didn’t require any transport. My job was merely to ensure a young woman moved safely from her parked car to her front door. What event or fear prompted that?

The timid nature of many younger people is something else, though. Most under-30s enter with headphones on, screens lit and no inclination to converse. Which is fine by me. But Uber Pool, in which strangers share the car, shows just how many struggle to converse. Uncomfortable silences? That’s Uber Pool. Even when they talk, kids don’t know how to relate. One rider, after a couple of minutes of chirpy conversation, deduced she’d actually seen her co-rider perform on stage. The conversation then stopped dead. Another cliffhanger for the writers’ room.

Amusingly, hearsay, half-truths and speculation litter many discussions as fact. Half-truths are particularly funny when people talk about themselves. Self-awareness is a rare commodity. This mass of fuzzily informed conversation is harmless enough, I suppose, because who wants to speak with the cold precision of a ­barrister directing me down Oxford Street?

In one discursive conversation among a ­carload of unfeasibly talkative 20-somethings, a tangent leads to Europe and the observation: “The Vatican’s kinda sketchy.” That encapsulates 2000 years of religious history more precisely than any scholar could. And it came from the back of my car.

Wallace Noble is a Sydney-based writer with a 4.97 driver rating. This is not his real name.

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