London - Due to issues surrounding me being a menace to British roads, I take a lot of taxis.
Have you lost a wing-mirror in the past decade? Me probably, sorry. As a driver, I have two motoring styles: Hatton Garden getaway, and myopic OAP tootling to Tuesday Club. It's better for everyone that I pay someone to ferry me, which since the Uber app arrived has became so beautifully simple to sort.
Excuse my gushing, but Uber - the minicab-hailing button - is one of the greatest miracles of the 21st century. It actually works. Just jab at your phone with a tipsy finger and a ride home appears - plus the driver's name, car reg and mugshot. I always loathed speaking to mini-cab office switchboards anyway.
Like doctors' receptionists and budget airline flight crews, these are people who have seen mankind's lowest ebb and seek revenge through a thousand pass-agg dickmoves. These people hate us and our silly plaintive mewling. And now the minicab branch of Misery Inc. is being eradicated, and I say jolly good.
THE RATINGS SYSTEM
Also, Uber rates its drivers. Five stars suggests, to me at least, a man driving a car that smells of Magic Tree, who offers me bottled Evian, and won't quibble when I sing “Move Closer” by Phyllis Nelson along with Magic FM for the last seven miles down the A12.
A 4.6 average hints at a driver who smells of mildewed shower curtain. The only snacks on board are the remnants of his last Wild Bean Café steak bake scattered over the back seat. One might notice I'm citing all Uber drivers as male, but I'm yet to be driven by a woman. Perhaps women don't enjoy the instant scrutiny.
Yusef - 4.9, Toyota Prius, looked like Alexei Sayle - drove me from King's Cross to Leytonstone recently and told me terrifying reports of 4.6-scoring drivers being called to Uber headquarters for thought-reprogramming. OK, he called it “training”, but his solemness suggested something more. Yusef himself needed to have no worries on the ratings front. He was wearing a pork pie hat and was being very generous with a bag of fruit sherbets. He was a shoo-in for five stars.
PASSENGERS RATED TOO!
“Anyway,” he said, turning the tables, “Uber says you're a very good passenger. You're a 4.8.” “Is this good?” I asked, suddenly feeling exposed. I'd forgotten that over the past 98 trips, I was being judged back. “Yes,” he said. “It means you look for the car, you don't just expect it to find you. You smile, you wave, you say hello.”
Now, I was feeling mildly irked. 4.8? Why not a 5.0? I smell of Issey Miyake. I listen intently when they moan about snarl-ups on the Hangar Lane gyratory. I give marriage guidance counselling on request and will nod along with even the most firebrand politics if it's going to make Aldwych to Bow in rush-hour more affable. And here I was, being marked at the same level as someone who simply smiles. I wasn't smiling now.
“Isn't waving at the car what everyone does?” At this point Yusef's countenance darkened. “No. Some people are bad. But then I sometimes accept a 4.5 passenger. I'm a people person. I like to see for myself why they're so bad.” Yusef then told me of some truly abysmal human beings: the spewers, the shouters, the bogey-flickers, the ones who need shaking awake.
“SO WHAT DID I DO WRONG?”
Hearing of these monsters, I was even more fixated with how I'd lost points. Am I too chatty? Not chatty enough? An aloof bitch? Do the places I'm ferried to - usually London restaurants - suggest I'm an over-indulged media twonk? Should I have agreed more heartily with the driver who cheerily told me that no man wanted a wife with a career. Goddamnit, I had a good go. I gave that sod five stars.
“Have you tried bribes?” my good friend Courtney - Uber rating 5.0 - asked. Her perfect score infuriated me. Here is a woman who takes Uber through the McDonald's drive-thru at 2am, a woman so forthright we have agreed post-death to run the bar together in hell. “Yes, Grace - McDonald's. But always a quarter pounder with cheese and fries. And a milkshake for the driver.” So there you have it. I gave them niceties. They wanted nuggets. To my mind, at least, I'm still the one with star quality
The Independent