Rideshare services like Lyft and Uber are quite popular these days, supplanting taxis, having to own a car, or just getting rides from friends and family. The extraordinary number of people contracting themselves out to these services is also a testament to how broken our economy is, but that's fodder for another article. All I'm here for today is to tell you why it's bad business to cash in on referrals from these companies. It's actually rather simple.
I've talked about this before. I don't talk about being homeless a lot. It's painful, living in hotels for two and a half years. It's a short story if I leave out a lot of the detail. Two and a half years ago, around Christmas, we were evicted from our apartment in Mission Viejo because my publisher sat on their asses getting my advance check to me for my book, Getting An IT Help Desk Job For Dummies (available on Amazon, cheap plug). I worked my ass off to finish that book. 330 pages in three months. They didn't care. Companies don't care, so we were screwed. We figured we'd be out for a month or two then find a new place.
Day 1: Welcome To Uber, n00b
Went online and hung out near John Wayne. Within five minutes my phone started buzzing. I accepted the ride and was surprised to discover that I was being directed to the North side of the airport. I picked up my fare at a private building, likely a jet charter. It turns out that the destination was in Beverly Hills, 45 miles North. I asked her if the temperature was acceptable and offered her a charger for her phone. She had an iPhone, and I hadn't picked up a thunderbolt cable yet. She had her own, which I connected, and she thanked me. The rest of the trip was silent.