Day 4 – Updated CEO Undercover Uber Project
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 Evening
Happy hump day! Today might have been my favorite day thus far in my Uber career. I decided around 1:30 p.m. that I would turn the app on for at least an hour. I was leaving our branch office in Dallas and got an alert to pick up a passenger off of Ross avenue. This gentleman was extremely nice and wanted to grab something to eat for lunch at Trinity Grove over the Margaret Hunt Bridge. He was a real estate developer from Houston and in between meetings. The whole ride was about 20 minutes and I made the minimum of $4.00. So since it is my first week as a driver, I have a minimum of $4.00 profit for every ride. I guess they want me to feel some sort of accomplishment for the day if all I do is take people from block to block.
After this trip, I had about 30 minutes to spare so I left the app on and drove back over the Margaret Hunt Bridge and back into downtown Dallas. At this point it was about 2:00, so I decided to go by some hotels downtown and the convention center to look for passengers trying to go to the airport. I knew there were some storms brewing but I figured I could find someone who was wanting to grab a ride to the airport. As I passed by a bunch of hotels downtown, no luck. So I headed toward the Joule and Crescent hotels in Uptown. I hit an intersection on Commerce street near Neiman Marcus and I got an alert from someone at The Hampton Inn which was one minute away. I accepted the passenger and within seconds picked up a gentleman. I got out of the car, put his bag in my trunk, and asked him, “Where to?” He replied, “DFW.” So I agreed and got in the car. The first thing he said when we started to the airport was “Wow, you must not be busy since you picked up someone going to DFW.” I replied with my story of why I am doing this in the first place and he honestly thought it was really cool. He said “I’ve never been picked up by an UberX that is a Lexus!” The gentleman was an insurance adjuster based in Scottsdale who was traveling after the recent hurricanes and storms for the past 19 days and heading home. I gave him my card and we started discussing employment in Dallas. The gentleman brought up his concern that the insurance industry in Texas is so focused on hail, roof damage, and things of that matter. Any other city would have been thrown off and yet Dallas has not budged. We ended up talking the whole way to the airport about work, life, the economy, and basically anything we wanted to talk about. He actually happened to have some friends in Arizona who owned a hospitality company for staffing and wanted to introduce me to them. When we arrived at the airport, I got out of the car, got his bag out of the trunk, and then, he went to give me a tip. I was so confused, taken back, and honestly I didn’t really know how to react. I proceeded to tell him that I was not doing this for the money and that I was actually donating all of the proceeds to Hope Farm in Fort Worth. He then told me that he had such a good trip and thoroughly enjoyed talking to me that he wanted to give me money, $20 may I add, to say thank you and maybe for a car wash since it had begun raining.
Overall, I technically only made $24.91 today for 1 ½ hours of “ubering.” But something that I learned along the way, was that this is way more than just a driving system. The process is really all about the conversations you have and the connections you make with the passenger, and because of my conversations I gained an extra $20 bucks today! By the time I got back into my office and back in my desk, I felt very refreshed and positive. The trips I took today actually helped my mood and helped my attitude for the rest of the day. So whether it is a recruiter filling a position or an Uber driver completing his trip, completing a task and feeling great about the result is always a positive in my book.
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