Mornings, I despise them. Getting out of bed each day is one of the hardest things I do each day. Even when I’m fit. I’m a night owl. When I wake my phone is the first thing I look at. Sometimes it gives me good news, sometimes awful news. This morning in particular was awful news. I open up my app to see if I got any tips or compliments in the night. No I didn’t there it was staring at me right in my face my 5 star rating went to 4.99. Oh what? Why? Another 4 star rating? It wasn’t. It was a 1 star rating. What the bloody hell? There’s no feedback sitting in my app at all! I thought they were changing it so if you get lower than a 5 star rating you have to say why? There was nothing. Just the following staring me right in the face. I get it, no one is perfect, but my OCD hates seeing this 4.99. It should be a 5!
It made it difficult for me to fathom. We all get criticism in our lives, but this was a bad rating without no feedback. You can write a report or dig a hole and someone can always add their 2 cents in. “Paul don’t use passive voice” “Paul read that out loud back to yourself” “Formatting” “That test pit looks like a bathtub”. It’d be like if someone says they don’t like you and they didn’t give you a reason. I immediately rang uber to see if there was any feedback I couldn’t see. There wasn’t. They couldn’t tell me anything at all. Then I wondered if it was the puker. Maybe he got upset he had $150 taken from his account to clean my car. I didn’t think they could do that. There was no feedback. I said to them you shouldn’t be allowed to give people a 1 star rating without feedback. The lady on the other end agreed with me, but didn’t change it on my record. It can go back up to 5 depending on how many stars you get etc, but it took me a whole month to get back up to a 5 star rating.
I turned on both apps after getting ready. Lyft and Uber are ready for action. I barreled down the i5 and ended up picking up my first customer for Lyft. She was nowhere to be seen. I was figuring out where her point was in relation to me. I rang her. She didn’t answer. I started driving around. Couldn’t find her, until I noticed a valet area. There she was an elderly lady waiting to be picked up. I said her name and she responded. “Tried to ring you”. “Oh sorry I thought you were a spammer”. “It’s totally possible, damn spammers making it hard for us”. She had a walking frame. I folded it up and placed in the boot aka trunk. First way it didn’t fit, horizontal it is. Bam it fits. Told her it’s my first day using Lyft. Just figuring out the kinks. I dropped her off and she said she wouldn’t be long and that she will call me. I was going to give her my number after I got her frame out, but Speedy Gonzalez had literally gone into the building. Oh well maybe I’ll get you later then.
Next was an uber customer. He was needing to go to culinary school at Bellingham Community College. He told me he was making ricotta and mozzarella cheese from scratch. Oh how do you do that? It’s usually off milk with bacteria added to it. The stinker the cheese the more bacteria and mold is put into it. So yeah blue cheese is the grossest cheese. He described the history of the process and he said the first time cheese was even noticed was off milk in a sheep’s gut. Yuck! Who in their right mind turned around and said I’ll eat that? Was it a dare? “Mate I’ll bet you 10 denari you won’t eat that”. “Oh yeah?” *eats it*. “Actually it’s pretty good”. “Oh whatever”. *eats it* “crikey that’s some top notch old milk”. We discussed this at length. Some things in history happen by accident. We were both perplexed about someone eating rotten milk from a dead sheep’s stomach. My rider said “the guy who tried to drink cows milk must have been a pervert”. I laughed at this comment, because the thought of it was pretty strange. To be honest it was most likely people trying to find an alternative to women’s milk. Perhaps the mother died in childbirth and there were no women breastfeeding at the time. Let’s try cows milk, it was probably goats milk initially because it’s a smaller mammal. I’m speculating here, but I know if it was me going up to a fully grown cow to retrieve milk, it doesn’t sound like an easy task. Moo! Kick! Trampled! Skull crushed! The oldest archaeological evidence of cheese was found in Kujawy, Poland dating back to approximately 7519 BP or 5500BCE (Subbaraman, 2012). In ancient times food used go be stored in inflated animal stomachs to preserve food (Ridgwell, 1986). Obviously someone left the milk in the gut too long and boom the rest is history. By Roman times cheese was a very important staple. Pliny the Elder discusses cheese as a sophisticated food group. Even the Ancient Egyptians had cheese being made in murals.
OK enough about cheese. I dropped him off then I got a Lyft passenger. On my way to pick up my Lyft passenger I saw a man doing karate on the side of the road. Kicking and punching his invisible assailants. I hope he won. I picked up up and coming rapper Jibri. He only uses Lyft. Good to know that people prefer either one or the other. Jibri also is a tattoo artist by trade. Will have to check out his content. It’s actually not bad. He said he doesn’t make a lot of money from it, but hopefully one day he’ll be loaded. After to listening to two songs he might actually make it. The voice is commanding and the beat is pretty awesome. Energetic and wholesome. It’d fill a club for sure.
After dropping him off uber just took control of my day. A mathematics student who witnessed a domestic dispute in front of her house. She showed me the video of all the coppers coming in to break it up. Three Patrol cars, two bicycles, two motorbikes. Take that domestic violence. Bellingham takes that seriously.
Then uber gave me a medical tech who uses Lyft and was forced to use uber because of his lady banker friend. Poor bugger I’m both. So it’s kinda Lyft.
Another uber ping eventuated after I dropped them off. A journalist student who I had picked up a couple of times before. She told me about the head of a charity organisation in town. She wrote positive pieces on them them to help her reporting skills. Unfortunately the CEO has been charged with using $150,000 worth of charity money for gambling and drugs. He also purchased the most pristine bongs for his weed intake. It’s unfortunately a success story that went sour. He was once a homeless man himself. He set up a community for the homeless people in Bellingham, so they were indoors with shelter. There’s also an accusation of sexual harassment from a resident in the new homeless community. It’s a huge shame, now the organisation will have two people monitoring the funds entering the charity.
Next was another uber passenger at the uni. She’s studying communications. Then a Lyft rider also doing comms, but with web design attached to her major. She wants to start her own page and see how it goes. Ha me too. After dropping her off another lyft rider from California doing psychology. She only uses Lyft because she was charged a $200 cleaning fee once from uber and it wasn’t her fault. So she boycotts uber and only uses Lyft.
Shortly after dropping her off another uber rider needed to go home. She said she was playing hookie after working so hard. Don’t know what that meant, but she got her nails done etc. She normally works in New Orleans teaching principals how to be better at their job. Sort of like a life coach. She hasn’t been able to do much business locally, but most of her work is virtual or she has to fly down to Louisiana. We got onto the subject of my 1 star rating. She told me she had given a driver a 1 star rating after joking about the #metoo movement. Yeah understandable that she did that. The lady admitted to being a feminist and that she wanted to make sure she never rode with him again.
Next we have an environmental worker from Alaska heading to his daughters meet the parents do at university. He knows a cultural anthropologist from Alaska (Richard Nelson) who heads down to Australia frequently. He has conducted numerous studies observing hunting and fishing in Alaska. The name certainly rang a bell, but I couldn’t pick where. I told the man about my blog and he gave me his awesome business cards. Curved and hard. They almost looked glossy.
After dropping him off at the airport I picked up a guy who works as a maintenance guy. He told me this story about his mate who lucked out and dated a mayor in Australia. She gave him unlimited funds to shop and do whatever. A credit card of $150,000. Wow! The guy sounded like a deadbeat who didn’t have any cash at all and was leaching off of this woman. It was an online dating situation that ending abruptly when he refused to shop at a particular store she wanted him to go to.
Next I had Captain munch. A lawyer who ravages my sweets in the back seat. He ate 90% of what I had back there and didn’t tip me. He gave me a potential gold mine spot though. Where he was he normally has to wait 10 minutes for a driver. Hmmm. Might wait there from now on.
I picked up a Filipino lady who needed an uber home. She was works at an embroidery place in town. She told me her struggles as an immigrant and I totally understood.
Finally I picked up an elderly lady who needed a Lyft. She was going back home. She was a great grandmother and her daughter ordered the Lyft for her. She worked at Motorola and General Motors in her lifetime and had never left the country. I couldn’t believe that. She had travelled all over the country though. From New York to Carolina to Arizona. Her husband had died in 1979 in a car accident and was forced to raise her five children on her own. Wow what a life she must have had. She oversaw the construction of military vehicles at GM and the evolution of technology at Motorola. Fascinating.
That’s it for whacky Wednesday. 5 trips Lyft and 10 trips uber. I turn off an app if I get a ping from the other one if you were wondering.
Sources
Cheese Making Hieroglyphs. Oregon State University.
Ridgwell, Jenny & Ridgway, Judy Food around the World, (1986) Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-832728-5
Subbaraman, Nidhi (December 12, 2012).“Art of cheese-making is 7,500 years old”. Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2012.12020.
