I didn't buy any skinny jeans, and I don't like PBR. However, I decided a few weeks back that I should take on a second job to help clean up the medical bills I racked up last year and the loan for replacing the AC uptake unit a couple months ago. For those of you who don't know what an uptake unit is and haven't tabbed over to Google Image Search yet, it's the big airflow unit that most people envision when you say "AC unit in my garage" or somesuch. The thingy that pulls in the air, cools it, and throws it all around your house. It's called an uptake unit because it takes air... up... ?
The problem with getting a second, part-time, job is that I already have one that eats up at least 40 hours a week, and has a tendency to need me on weekends and evenings with constant but irregular frequency. So scheduling would be an issue. Also, I am a grown-assed man, so I am not gonna go flip burgers or push carts or whatever. I have the luxury of not
needing the income, so I can be a little picky. And like most things, I quickly allowed a little power and choice to go to my head quickly.
I found an ad for a pedicabbing company that was hiring. For those not familiar, pedicabbing was easily described to me as "rikshaws that white people drive". In this particular case, it was a little trailer I hitched to the back of my bike and would pedal people around downtown Austin. It seemed like a pretty good plan - the pay was completely in untrackable (untaxable) tips, my bike was in pretty good shape, I myself am in pretty good shape, and I'm pretty familiar with the bar district.
Pretty familiar.
So after contacting the guy, I was told there would be some licensing I would have to pay for. Understandable. Something to the tune of $50, which seemed ok, and the kind of money I would make back in a day or so. The annoyances, though, started early. The dude let me know I had to do a background check and a driving check, which I had to get one online and one in person. After spending time taking care of that, I went back to him and he had me fill out an application... one I could have done beforehand. At that point he told me to go downtown to some other office and hand all this stuff in plus another filing fee. So I did. Then there was a test that no one told me about. It was really starting to feel like some godawful WoW quest chain where you went back to the same place over and over and you yell at the monitor "HEY JUST TELL ME THE WHOLE LIST OF SHIT TO DO, I CAN GET IT ALL DONE IN ONE TRIP GREAT THANK YOU."
So finally after getting the license itself, come the rules. Or rather, that's where the rules were vaguely hinted at to me, and well after the rules should have been explained in full (or perhaps someone could have told me these rules even existed before I got $70 into fees to start). Now, I understood at this point that this is a city-regulated service, so there would be rules and regulations to follow. But it was starting to feel like one of those situations where you had to guess and
hope you guessed right. Because any sort of "what should I know about this" question was met with "read the (300+ page) regulations online", but people were MORE than happy to jump in with "Oh you shouldn't have doooonnee thaaat!" whenever I took a step. People were already happy to get on my case anyway, as I guess the usual age for these folk was early to mid 20s, and I had to be a card carrying member of the Pitchfork music commentary squad or something. The fact that I had a decent car and didn't have the current "I'm looking homeless on purpose" costume going for me also alienated some folks.
But that's fine, because they had the personal odor part of "homeless on purpose" down pat. This isn't to say they were all stereotypical beardy I'm-not-a-part-of-your-SYSTEEEMMMM folk, but many of them were very much so. Everything seemed to revolve around how pedicabs were better for the environment, local co-op groceries, and what local shows and/or indie publications they just digested. It was seriously like a Mr. Stereotype Pageant, I honestly thought I was being fucked with for a little bit.
My training consisted of a nice guy following me in his pedicab for about ten minutes, making me drive him one lap around the drinky district, and then saying "alright!" That was really it. Where I could and couldn't park, how I got the trailer hitched if no one was around the shop, where I pay my rent or what the rent fees were, how the scheduling works.... none of that was explained proactively, only in jabs of "hey why haven't you done X".
As for the cabbing itself, it was alright. A ridiculously intensive leg workout, at the very least. Most of the customers were your usual downtown bar folks, which meant I loved them all in various ways. Angry drunk lesbians. Obnoxious drunk fratboys. Condescending drunk 50-somethings. WOOOOO-ing drunk party girls. Cause-headed drunk hipsters. You know, my people. The problem really came from two other groups - the cops and other cabbers.
The other cabbers were just about 20% nice, conversational types, and 80% cutthroat assholes. I don't really blame the assholes, because their ability to pay their bills and eat was living or dying with their ability to get asses on the cab. So when other cabbers literally cut me off, ran stop signs past me, or other such techniques to get riders that were waving me down, I didn't get too pissed.
On the other hand, apparently Austin has a problem with bored cops picking on pedicab drivers just for sport. Cabbers getting tickets for having their bikes parked somewhere that was fine last week. Cabs getting stopped and inspected by one cop, then inspected by the bike cop that was with him two blocks later. I managed to get harassed at least twice a night, all times I was able to get out of any trouble mostly because I know when my options are "shut up, shrug, and apologize for whatever it is" or "get fucked with by people who want you to give them an excuse and won't be taught a moral lesson, guy" that the former is usually the best bet. Unfortunately for the other drivers, they were definitely the types to yell at cops, call them pigs, holler about how the man is keeping them down, etc etc.
So, in other words, my fellow drivers were happy to screw out their peers for cash and then lose it all because they can't keep their mouths shut. It's like they do and don't want the money all at the same time. Very Zen, I guess.
After one particular night where I made literally $0 the night before and was busting my ass yet again the next night to have a grand total of $30 in my pocket after four hours, I stopped and analyzed my situation. My "boss" and fellow drivers gave me zero advice on how to really get rides, I was running around AND parking in places to get rides, realizing that I was paying for the privilege of being harassed by cops... I decided I was done for the night and any other night. Even if I made a decent wad of cash, there was an endless line of hoops to jump through, no real guarantee business would be good even if I broke my back at it, and one power-tripping cop looking for a little confirmation of his awesome power could make a whole night's profit vanish.
So I just put the bike rack back on the rear of my bike and decided I had made back about as much as I had spent on the licensing. The time and effort I chalked up to a lesson learned and a life experience and all that other "builds character" crap your parents used to talk about when they were making you clean out horse stalls.
