I Requested a Ride, Not a Supporting Role in Doug's Divorce
I spent more than an hour in Ubers today. Shackleton spent longer than that in a lifeboat, but he didn't have to listen to a man named Yianni explain the Boca Raton condominium market while turning all the way around in the driver's seat.
I know Boca Raton is expensive. I knew that before I entered your Hyundai. But do I have to hear about it through fourteen red lights over eight miles, with the turn signal on because your hands are busy describing a two-bedroom near Mizner Park?
It wasn't me, Yianni. I did not personally make Boca expensive. I do not sit on the HOA in a linen suit, pulling a brass lever marked RAISE INTEREST every time you get within ten grand of a down payment.
I'm in the back seat with a box of CatBagz zines that cost more to print than we can legally charge for them, trying to reach a UPS Store before it closes early again. I need, for maybe fifteen minutes of my life, to be left the fuck alone.
It doesn't have to be monastic. You can cough. You can tell me the air conditioner only works when the car turns left. You can make noises while navigating your Wagoneer through an alley tight enough to be arousing. I am not a rear-seat sultan demanding that you remove your tongue and place it in the glove compartment beside the insurance paperwork.
That is what the service is now. A Honda Sentra arrives, the door opens, and there is a new show inside—already halfway through episode 906 of Thoughts Near an Intersection. The meter runs while the host merges across three lanes, trying to remember where he left off in the story about his sister's pool guy.
Hey Jasmine, I Don't Think the Cones Are Supposed to Go Under Us
Jasmine was extremely nice in the way of someone who would help you move a couch and then back directly over your mailbox.
She also hit cones. Not one cone. One cone can happen through poor visibility or the pure randomness of three-dimensional space. Jasmine ran over enough cones that the underside of the Nissan began playing a little song:
Thump. Scrape. Thump-thump.
"They're doing construction," she told me.
Yup. That's what the cones mean.
She had asked whether I lived nearby, and I made the critical mistake of answering with a complete sentence. Soon we were discussing the weather, Gatorland, her weird hotel experience, and her fucking multi-level marketing scheme.
Thump. Thump.
Jasmine had found her flow. She was doing numbers like she'd brought the segment home and started taking calls from the audience.
So we hit more cones.
I do not need Uber to teach its drivers how to drive. I need the app to display two words in a font large enough to read while the car is moving:
STOP TALKING.
Budank, I Will Buy You a Phone Holder if We Just Survive This Ride
Budank's phone was in his lap.
There was no cradle. The phone sat loose on his right thigh like a sleepy guinea pig. Every time he touched the brakes, it slid toward the floor. He would catch it, put it back on his leg, and ask whether we should stay on this road or take the highway.
Fuck if I know, dude. I don't fucking live around here.
"You don't have a holder?" I asked.
"It blocks the vent."
Budank, my man, my beautiful air-cooled king, I will buy you a phone holder. I will buy you two phone holders and a second phone if we can just survive the ride. CatBagz has not turned a meaningful profit since Obama was choosing a second-term cabinet, but I will find twelve dollars. We will sell the good chair. Theodore can sit on the bucket under the ceiling leak.
But he did not want a phone holder. He wanted to show me a video in which a chiropractor cracked a man's neck so loudly that his allergies went away.
No, please, I believe you. I will sign something saying every chiropractor is one brave yank away from curing seasonal allergies or separating the skull from the patient. Put the phone back on your crotch and place both hands somewhere near where the state of Florida loosely suggested you put them.
This should be an Uber expense: a phone holder, a charging cable, whatever keeps the machinery of the trip between the white lines. The company took enough from my fare to buy Budank a clamp that holds a fucking iPad. He could navigate from a maritime chart table. I don't care.
Instead, Uber sent me a receipt with a "marketplace fee" and asked for a tip.
Uber Is Not the Solution to the Male Loneliness Epidemic
Men are lonely, according to every magazine and every man who bought a podcast microphone because he no longer has anyone to call when he needs to move a couch.
I feel for them right up until Uber routes the entire afflicted population to my apartment in a Kia Soul.
- Donny wanted to know whether I had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior before we cleared the Walgreens parking lot.
- Genghis had an eleven-part theory about why Publix chicken has gotten smaller.
- Phil was going through something with his son.
- Doug was going through something with his ex-wife and tried to show me the texts while driving.
- Joe spit chewing tobacco into an extra-large 7-Eleven Styrofoam cup.
- Nami did not own shoes and smelled like it.
For legal reasons, these names have been changed except Phil, because there are sixteen million Phils and he'll never know which Phil he is. The uncertainty may finally give him something to discuss with his son.
I heard about divorces, foreclosures, probation officers, a contentious fantasy-football league, and a boat "stolen" by a brother-in-law who appeared to be its registered owner.
I was trying to answer an email from the printer explaining that I understand black ink costs money, but maybe not that much money. CatBagz is still a publication in the same sense that a raccoon under a porch is still a tenant. Several readers expect us to put something on the internet every few weeks.
But every time I looked at my phone, Phil stopped talking and stared at me in the mirror until I supplied another "damn, that's crazy."
Do you know how many "damn, that's crazy" tokens a human gets each day? Not enough for Uber. I had used twelve before lunch, and three of those belonged to people I love.
Then there is the rating. If I sit quietly, does Donny think I hated his testimony and give me one star? Does Phil mark me down for insufficient interest in the boat? Am I supposed to perform friendship because we are trapped in the same moving room and now he knows where I live?
So I nod. I make sympathetic noises. I tell Yianni that Boca is out of control while he misses my turn. I tell Jasmine "that's crazy" while another cone disappears beneath us. I reassure Budank while considering whether jumping from the vehicle is statistically safer.
By the time the app called it a ride, I had performed forty-three dollars' worth of unlicensed therapy and paid forty-three actual dollars for the privilege.
Please Add a Fucking Button
Uber, your app can split a fare, add a stop, change the destination, order pad thai, and summon a larger automobile because your mom brought her fucking wheelchair.
Please add one more button. Label the son of a bitch NO TALKING.
Not "quiet preferred." That sounds like I'm asking a maître d' to seat me away from the kitchen. I need language with panic in it:
NO TALKING, PLEASE. PASSENGER HAS HAD FUCKING ENOUGH.
Tell the driver I am not angry, withholding a tip, or lowering their rating because they failed to ask whether I have visited a Great Lake. I just want to sit there. They can play music. They can mutter about traffic. What they cannot do is rotate their entire torso toward the back seat to explain how a former business partner mishandled a pressure-washing company.
And buy Budank the phone holder. Take it out of the marketplace fee. If Uber cannot find twelve dollars, have him call us. We are CatBagz.com, a business held together by sheer fucking grit and a bucket we can shit in, and even we can find twelve dollars when death is the competing option.
Doug just circled the block. I think he wants to finish the story about his brother-in-law, so I have to go.
Thx.
