Working my first customer service job - My experience with Uber part-time

I started working for Uber in January 2019 when I left a software company and was looking my next foray into my software development adventures. I usually take a month break between jobs or contracts but at the time I was facing some financial troubles making it difficult to pay for my living expenses. I searched for easy to get jobs but I knew I wouldn’t get something right away. Eventually, I settled for Uber, initially by necessity. Uber requires a lot of paperwork to start picking up riders including a safety inspection. You’re considered self-employed so you’re responsible for registering a business and handling taxes.

I was working long shifts. Starting from 5 AM in the morning until 10 PM. Then another 4PM-9PM shift. This was on the weekdays mostly to serve people going to and from work. On Saturdays, it was usually from 4PM to midnight to satisfy those enjoying outings on the weekends both sober and drunk. Sunday was my break day and work was slow anyways, few people seemed to go out on Sundays.

I gained quite a bit of respect for taxi drivers and bus drivers. Driving for 8-10 hours a day was really difficult with the constant concentration and physical activity. I came back home with cramps all over my body and pain medication was my best friend. I took weeks for my body to adjust and the after shift pain went away.

Navigating a city was much harder than I though even with Google Maps. I actually asked my friend who was a bus driver how I could know the city better. He suggested to purchase the large maps from the gas station and start plotting routes on it. Eventually, the road network in Ottawa became more and more lucid in my mind and I started to rely less on navigation.

The most difficult part for me was actually finding the rider after the request. Incorrect addresses, misplaced pins and imprecise GPS positioning made it really hard. Sometimes I got the name of a venue and in tight downtown Ottawa sometimes it might be hard to find that particular restaurant. Pickup and dropoffs required me to stop sometimes in the middle of the road and I started to realize how impatient Ottawa drivers could be with frequent honking and overtaking.

When commuting to work you see only common driving situations. However, when exploring the city you get to see how wild drivers can be. Sudden lane changes, people going against one way streets, accidents, etc. Safety becomes much more paramount and require diligent attention. It didn’t help that you had a stranger passenger on board, you feel more obligated to protect them.

The amount of multitasking was quite overwhelming. First, you had to find and drop off the passenger in a safe location. You were to drive the car more smoothly and carefully than usual. Navigation was difficult too as you had to pay attention to both your phone and the street looking carefully for street names and not getting distracting missing an intersection. You had to talk and entertain the rider while doing all of the above. It didn’t help that I was driving a manual transmission car and all my limbs were busy.

After a month, I was back into my field. My car took quite the beating running thousands of kilometers. Within a month I need an oil change and a thorough brake job. Most of the driving was in the city and the heavy stop and go pace meant heavy fuel consumption. I started to understand why many Uber drivers purchased hybrids.

However, I realized after starting my new contract that I actually missed working for Uber. I decided to become a part time driver working on Saturdays only from 4PM to 1AM.

Uber was my first customer service job and it was totally different from anything I’ve done sitting in an office. Honestly, it was quite the relief from the isolation in being in a cubicle. It wasn’t about making a big company bigger, but rather serving people. It felt way more fulfilling than anything I’ve ever done. I actually felt like I was making people happy and providing them a service they needed. Intoxicated people were no longer driving, instead I was sober able to them home safely.

It didn’t help that I’m extremely passionate about driving. The part I look the most forward to in the day is my commute to the office. Every Sunday, I take my car for a 100 km stroll. I find driving very satisfying and engaging. Although I’m not a car enthusiast in the sense that I want to collect them or know how they work very well, I’m a driving enthusiast.

The job became more of a hobby for me rather than work. I actually looked forward to every Saturday more even then the weekdays with my day job.

I don’t think Uber is a good full-time job as it seems to make little money. However, if you’re interested in the social aspect and driving, it’s a much more interesting proposition. For those who work in an office all the time, I highly recommend trying a customer service job just to see what it’s like.

Burnout isn't about work...

A few weekends ago, I found myself doing absolutely nothing. I didn't watch movies or shows, read reddit, have any meaningful conversations or even eat. I took naps to escape reality and slept-in as much as I could, much to my detriment with even more fatigue and tiredness.

I thought I was having a routine depressive episode but I realized that my mood wasn't actually that bad. However, I really did want to do nothing other than sleep, complain and stare out the window. Nothing was interesting.

My creativity and brainpower was sucked out me until it was completely depleted. What really happen?

I often blamed work for this but I'm still functioning there and considered a high performing employee. I always have the energy to do something there, but come home all of it disappears.

While some say burnout is clinically similar to depression, I'm not that sure. Depression is quite a constant uniform feeling of hopelessness, dread, negative thought patterns and perhaps a physiological aspect. Burnout doesn't exhibit itself when have to work, it's when you don't.

For most of us, work is our liveliness, it's literally what keeps up alive, income and passion. We put all our effort into it because we have to otherwise we're not meeting deadlines or that next performance review won't be so good. You're forced to perform.

When the pressure is off, the mental energy spent to do work depletes any sense of motivation left for any hobbies, relationships and so on. At home, you don't have deadlines or clients to meet or sales pitches to satisfy. All those obligations are gone, you're free to decide for yourself save your errands like groceries and laundry, though even those can be neglected sometimes.

The end result is fatigue and self-neglect.

Unlike depression, burnout probably has no major physiological causes thought it's effects maybe. Neglecting your body with lack of food and exercise won't help the lack of motivation and low energy.

Few resources have presented reliable treatments for burnout. I don't think it exists because everyone experiences it in a different way. One solution may work for another but would make another's burnout even worse.

One constant factor between all these 'treatments' however I noticed is breaking the routine of life. Things won't improve if you do the same thing everyday. You to have things to look forward to whether it's exciting times or times for rest. I can be really anything.

For me, for example, I'm an introvert-extravert hybrid (leaning more on the introverted side). I like doing things alone but I need to go out and chat with people. I need to go out and enjoy the views, the restaurants, the malls, the parks and so on. Knowing these things are coming gets me excited, even a chat at a coffee shop. Being locked in drives me nuts but sometimes I want to be locked and left alone.

For others, vacation time might help 'recharging ones batteries' though one must be careful as vacation can be equally as tiring. Especially long trips and vacations relying on heaving planning full of activities.

I noticed that others simply like to retreat and escape. Binge on TV shows and movies, spend hours on Reddit and read fiction novels. That's also breaking the routine if all you do is work.

There really isn't a single solution for burnout and I really can't say I found the ideal one for me. I hate to say it, but the best solution is trial and error. My solutions ranged from changing the colour temperature of the lights at home to going on more meetups. Some did help and others didn't.

I don't believe that burnout is about self-worth or how one views one's self at an organization. That may be effect of burnout but not the cause. The reason for burnout is simply fatigue, lack of energy and motivation and one must find the way that works for them to help them restore that energy.

Please post in the comments in how you recover from low-energy energy and burnout? How did you keep the fire burning when you get home?  Do you hit up the gym, cook a fancy new meal, or take a day or two off and spend the day watching Netflix? These discussions are key to understanding this relatively new concept and how treat it.

The Million Dollar App Idea

If you're a mobile developer, this almost certainly happened to you. A friend or relative makes you swear to secrecy about what he's going to tell you next. His secret idea will change the world and make millions. He comes up with the idea (usually like Uber but for X) and you do all the development work, split share 50/50.

Most people think that coming with an idea is hard, but it isn't. Everyone has a ton of ideas all day long, many of them ridiculous and some few genius. However, execution is the difficult part: development, marketing, building a company and so on. That sucks in every available time slot in your day as you try to make your idea into reality.

What's worse however is most of these ideas fail. Startups get a ton of investment money that is sunk into nothing. People quit their jobs hoping their new business will let them retire early. None of this really happens.

People are mesmerized by what they see in the media. A teenager who made a soundboard app makes millions and buys a mansion at age 17. Another makes thousands of dollars in ads from his YouTube videos or Twitch streams. However, all of this is a form of survivorship bias.

How many Twitch streams are watched by virtually nobody compared to the few famous ones. Pennies are made from most YouTubers who put ads up. The reality is that these successful people are the exception not the norm, they can almost attribute their success to luck.

I've seen people with no fame make excellent content and vice-versa. Producing good work isn't guaranteeing success. Not the best product is always the one that makes it to market. If we can call it that, fate, results in success.

However, to succeed, one must play the lottery game and hope to make it there. You can't beat the odds if you don't try. But don't approach the idea with naivety, but actually study what people want. Notice how informercials sell mundane things you never thought of and they sometimes make great success even if their products are garbage.

Think of a problem that you actually experience day to day. Something that bothers you and perhaps others. Maybe finding a solution to that would increase your success. Don't just imitate another streamer or blogger, because they succeeded out luck mostly. You need to do something novel that no one has ever thought of yet, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be making a few bucks.

When working on a project, your goal shouldn't be fame or money, but rather passion and learning. That growth is so much more valuable as the new skills you learn can be put into use somewhere else, maybe in a job that actually makes money.

Why I hate the weekends…

It's Monday, the dreadful countdown has started. You're already thinking about the end of the week, and it barely started. As the days go by, you are fixated on Friday 5pm. By Friday afternoon, your mind is so overfilled with the prospect of the two-day break that you can barely get anything done anymore. Some of your co-workers are not even at their desks anymore; they left early. When it's your turn to leave, you breathe a sigh of relief. It's the moment you've been waiting for. The start of the weekend.

However, what's so odd is that it's already Monday again. The weekend was a blur. Everything that didn't fit the workday was squeezed into the weekend. Groceries, laundry, chores, medical appointments and so on. By the time you've finished all that it's Sunday evening. Just like work, the weekend made you tired. You want to idle, but tomorrow's Monday and you've already begun thinking about work. You don't have time to do anything anymore because you need to sleep early to wake up for work on time.

Our lives are high maintenance. We need to maintain our relationships with our spouses, friends and family. We need to take care of ourselves with exercise, hygiene and so on. Our houses need to be kept clean and our fridge full of food. And to be able to do all that, we need work to make a wage so we can pay for what keeps us alive.

With only two-day weekends, we find ourselves squeezing all that maintenance in such a short span of time. We meet with our friends on Saturday. We do the groceries on Sunday. We do the Laundry on Saturday morning. Little time is left to do what we enjoy. For some, it's simply watching TV shows. For others, it's learning a new art.

The worst part is there is hardly any time for resting the mind and body. Our jobs can be mentally and physically demanding. Our relationships and our chores demand it too. It feels like being on an endless treadmill and there is no way to stop it. Many experience burnout or depression due to excessive stress and little break.

It's clear that the two days we yearn for so much every week are not enough.

Almost every month, there is a statuary holiday which extends the weekend by a single day. Oddly enough, after those weekends end, I find myself more at peace and rested. The first day of work after feels smoother and I'm not as stressed out.

Personally, I have tried to extend the weekend as much as possible. I do the laundry on weekdays, I shop for groceries on a weekday late at night. I try to meet my friends on weekdays. I do all that hoping that my weekend would be empty of such obligations and I would have it all to myself.

I want to spend time partaking in my hobbies on the weekend. However, I often find myself lifeless and staring blankly out the window. My mind is tired, my body is fatigued. By the time I'm fully rested it's Sunday night. At that point, it's time to head to bed and start the cycle of work again.

I feel like my whole life is centered around work. Even though I work a (what is considered) reasonable 40-hour work-week, I feel like too much of time is taken away from me. Not only is it actually being in the office but commuting too. My morning are devoted to getting ready for work: dressing up, packing up a lunch and so on. When I get back in the evening, I have to empty my mind of work and that can take a while. Only a few hours a day are left for me.

I'm a backend software developer and writing code requires plenty of creativity and thought. There's only so much I can muster before my mind quits. On top of that, I'm mentally ill and thoroughly medicated meaning I need even more rest. However, I hear co-workers who are healthier and more productive than complain about the same things I do. No matter how much fun I have at work, I still get tired. Everyone does and everyone needs rest after that. Even caffeine, energy drinks and modafinil can't fix that.

When I first started writing this, I thought that the problem was the weekends were too short. However, it is that weeks that are composed of 168 hours are not enough to account for 40 hours of dedicated work. Our body and minds cannot optimally function without adequate rest and breaks. We're not made for it. Our lives are demanding and work is demanding too much of our lives.

Even though modern society has allowed us to come really far when it comes work ethic, I don't think we are far enough yet. Our basic needs, our own desires, our dreams, our physiologies and psychologies need to be taken into account when we rethink what an ethical and humane work-week looks like.

We are no longer factory workers where our output is proportional to the company's sales figures. Machines and automation are taking over the remedial roles that we used to do. Today, we are artists and developers and managers and service providers. What we do might not make any money at all. Still, what we do demands of us quite a bit and to provide more, we need to do less.

I'm convinced that we need more time devoted to ourselves and those we care about. I want to spend more time caring for myself but I can't because I'm stuck in the system. To live, I need to pay my bills. I'm not lucky so I have to spend most of day working for it.

Someone has submitted this blog post to Hacker News. I encourage to continue the discussion there.