It all started in the morning and this lady locked her in the car not on purpose. She said she was embarrassed I don’t know why, I’ve locked my keys in my car several times not this car though, but many other cars including my Mitsubishi back in Australia, the old Toyota Corolla I used to have in San Diego, it’s just one of those things in life I guess. She started feeling around the car and I don’t know why she started touching the door she started touching the dashboard she started touching my business cards were in the center console the the sun visor everything it was really strange I’ve never seen anything like it before but just ignored it. She was late for work so I made it as quick as possible and dropped her off she thanked me and off she went.
Next customer was at the airport he’s name is Jeff Jeff with a G g e o f f text to speech is obviously very hard for my phone. I said speech to text. The cool thing was is that he was from Singapore and IT Chap and he lived all the way over near Lynden. Essentially give me a big fat payout for the one trip. We talked about Australian fact he’d been there approximately 10 times he’s business that he works for has it head office in Sydney of all places which is where I was born. I had a lot of time to talk and he was pretty happy that I was able to take him to his home he mentioned he doesn’t normally get many Uber drivers in his area and I said I can always pick you up if necessary. He was super thankful in fact he booked me in 2 weeks time. As we walked up to his gate we went through and I was amazed at how big his house was it was incredible in fact it was one of those old colonial-style homes from South beautiful white two-story home are the beautiful yard he complained about because he has to mow it and tend to it and clean up all the leaves. I laughed and I said you know what at least sometimes you might be able to appreciate it from time to time. Of course he agreed. He used to live in California as well and said it was too expensive and I said I agree. As I dropped him off I turned around and went all the way back down South for my next customer.
As I got into town I got to a ping immediately. It was a gentleman that was studying physical engineering now that’s the kind of person that combines physics and Engineering together, fascinating. The analogy he gave me was you have a boat that has large amounts of water coming into the boat what’s the solution? I don’t know I replied. He said avoid the water all together and I said what do you mean? He stated build a plane instead. Oh that makes sense I guess. I said what about wormholes or teleportation or something like that? You said yeah that could come into effect but it’s more day-to-day problems where you can use physics to handle day-to-day problems. I was listening to the cricket in the background and was pretty impressed with the strategies batting at the time and I apologize because I wasn’t sure if my passenger would not like it or be offended by it, it’s not music. He said no it’s fantastic, I replied really? Apparently in the morning his friend was playing pop music and it was not helping his hangover situation. So the nice calm commentary of the cricket panel, was in fact very soothing for him. I said yeah I can understand that. As I dropped him off I realized I was in Suddenly there’s a Valley. I took a happy snap, because I rarely see it in the day.
My next passenger was heading off to work a tattoo artists that have been doing it for about 10 years. Wow that’s a long time to be drawing ink on bodies for goodness knows how long oh yeah 10 years. I asked him if it was pretty steady said he gets five tattoo customers a week and certainly pays the bills cuz you can get small ones big ones you name it. He also told me he was playing video games this morning when I said that sounds fun I play video games to buy make Jesse back in Australia. I mentioned pubg which is a shoot-’em-up kind of game. And he says he plays that one all the time. He also said he encounters New Zealanders Australian people from all over the world. I said I believe that. That’s the thing about video games you can actually bring people together I don’t understand why people would think that they make Psychopaths out of people I don’t believe that at all.
After I dropped him off I went and picked up another guy works at BP. He’s been there for 31 years I said do they reward that customers? His responses every 5 years you get a bonus and more of an incentive to work there. I was taking him to go pick up his truck that is broken down. He’s one of the few passengers is set in the front seat I feel like that’s normal for me people that sit in the back seat it seems weird to me. Maybe it’s a cultural thing because in Australia most people I know it always sit in the front if the front seat was open. Sitting in the backseat seems weird because chauffeur-driven and just an Uber doesn’t make much sense but I have made a comfortable so people do want to sit in the back seat and a fuel chauffeur-driven kind of makes me feel like a limousine driver. As I driving I got an immediate ping close to his drop off point. I accepted immediately.
After dropping off the BP veteran. I went to pick up my next customer who is off to pick up that car. There’s a lovely couple that lives out in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t bother me much nice 15-minute drive out of the way. I love the fact that I was from Australia and we were talkin about advertising and how people will companies use certain techniques to attract people. Classic one is the most annoying commercials you hear will see on TV radio whatever it might be. And at that moment as I was talking about that this, annoying ad came on the radio and I said see this one I cannot stand this ad it’s George from mission Motors whatever it is, it’s bloody annoying I have to mute it every single time I hear it. They laughed. They enjoyed the conversation with me. In fact they told me as much as I dropped them off.
Looked at my messages and a former customer had messaged me his name was Muhammad I picked him up in my first or second week I can’t even remember now. He was off the boat at Cherry Point in BP. He wanted to lift around 5:30 or 6 p.m. that night. I agreed and said I would see him there.
I have one more customer for that day prior to Muhammad and that was Tim in fact it was a lady cold Susan. She was using her husband’s phone. I said to a you didn’t look like much of a team no offense if it is your name. She laughed and said no it’s Susan. Right. Told me it’s her hubby’s name. They were in town, because he was working on a project at the dock.
After I dropped her off. The mother of all glitches freaked me out. For about 2 hours. I tried to see what was wrong by clicking the arrow. That didn’t work. I then tried to ring tech support, then I got the following message. “The number you have tried has been disconnected or changed”. What??? I looked it up online I read various articles of people being fired this way. I thought what? How could I have been sacked? I kept reading and all I could see was negative results. It was horrifying. My only source of income, what would I do now? Fear, turned to sadness, sadness turned to anger and frustration. The dark side was taking over. I was weighing up all the options in my head and I had so many questions. What on earth is going on? Did a passenger get freaked out by me? Did I smell funny? Did I say something bad? What could have caused? Irrational thoughts were swelling through my brain. I started to blame the sole reason why I moved to Whatcom County in the first place. All that money to move for a what I thought would be a steady career path leading to spectacular things. Then I remembered my passenger waiting up at BP. What do I say? What do I tell him? Sorry I my app is glitching, I can’t take you. He said it was fine he’ll sort it out. OK then…
I got near to Ferndale when I tried called Uber support again. It’s ringing! Praise the Lord! (I’m not religious, but I was willing to praise anyone at this time). It kept ringing. I was now on hold after going through the prompts. Driving I thought it’s taking a bloody long time. Still stressed out, my composure was coming back to normal. Mainly because the customer service line was working. I got to BP where I waited for my passenger. 36 minutes on hold and finally the answers I seeked were presented. The lady assured me there’s currently a glitch across the country and that I’m not the only one ringing about it. Well that’s a relief. I wasn’t fired. That’d be my luck I thought. Fired twice in a year. Never been fired before and get a double whammy in a year. Fair Dinkum.
As I sighed a big relief. My passenger eventually showed up. I told him what was going on and he was just thankful I was there to pick him up. He had been on the boat for 60 days. He’s the merchant marine I dropped off early in my uber beginnings. We chatted and he said he had another 60 days to. A mechanical fault is the reason he’s coming home to see his family for a day or two. He’ll board the ship again at Port Angeles. We stopped to get some energy drinks on the way through. He purchased me one for picking him up. I was very thankful. I said I’ll drink this tomorrow night. As I dropped him off at the airport. Elation was felt when he paid me a whopping tip. I needed it mate, my day was hell.
Till fruitful Fridays. Never lose your cool it’s a waste of energy.
