Shownotes:

Uber Pool has made everything easier for passengers because of its amazing features. You can book an uber for your convenience with just a few taps on your phone. It has been really useful to me every time until this one incident happened. Today, I’m going to talk about how my Uber Pool started as a wonderful experience and ended up being annoying. Have you ever experienced something like this as well?

Hello, and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today, I want to talk about [Uber Pool 00:00:09]. It is not available everywhere, but I happen to be taking it, one time I was in San Francisco for a conference. After the conference, I was going to go to a co-working space and do somethings. I ordered Uber Pool. This Uber Pool is Uber Pool Express. What I want to talk about Uber Pool Express today, because I'm still mad about what happened to me earlier. We're going to talk about Uber Pool, and I want to describe this particular trip because it had almost everything wrong with it, that should be wrong.

It started off well enough, I ordered Uber Pool, and my car was two minutes away, it turned up. The driver was like, "Oh hey, do you live at that house?" I'm like, "Yes." He said, "Oh, I live like half a block down, I literally just started work." I'm like, "Oh, that worked out well. That's wonderful." Then the radio's on, it's playing Salt-N-Pepper. We're both like, he's whistling to Salt-N-Pepper Push It Real Good. I'm singing along, and we're having a good time. It's all good. We drive for about five to eight minutes. Then, we pick up a next person. We're at the place where we're supposed to pick up the person. He messages the person, we sit outside for two minutes. That person comes out, it's like, yeah, a person for our Uber Pool. They get in the car, and they have a couple of bags in there to Starbucks. They come in, and he's like, "Okay, so did you order two?"

Because you have the option of ordering one or two seats with Uber Pool. She's like, "Yeah, I ordered two seats, thank you very much." She got settled in, and she put down there was a divider that you could have, that you could put your little cups in. She put that down, I said that was okay. She put her bags out, and she made herself at home. Which is fine, I don't really care. I have my seat, I'm doing my thing. We've stopped whistling to Salt-N-Pepper at this point. Then she gets out food. Starting crunching, snacking, eating away at the food. It's fine, I guess. Then she decides she's going to have a phone call. This isn't one of those quick, I'm in the car, I'm on the way phone calls, or tap, tap, tap, tap, on your phone, phone calls, well text message, let's be honest. It was a, I'm going to have a full on catch up with my friend while I'm in the car video call.

It started off at a reasonable level, volume. Then it got louder and then they started talking about San Francisco. Now, I say it like this, because the person was not speaking English. The person assumed that the rest of the car could not understand what they were talking about. Mistake number one. They started talking trash about San Francisco, and yes you are allowed to you know have your own opinion, but you are in the presence of other people. One of these people happens to work in San Francisco, because they're your Uber driver. She continues, she's eating, and she's chatting, and she's laughing, and now it's getting very loud and very you know annoying. Then, what she does is she takes the head rest that's in front of her for the passenger seat, and she moves it so she can stick her phone in between the space so she doesn't have to hold her phone anymore while she continues to eat and have this loud, gregarious conversation with her friend.

This total ride was another 20 minutes. While this is happening, Uber in its trying to be efficient, messages me and it goes, "Hey, can you be dropped of on this corner instead? It would save your fellow passenger an extra six minutes." I'm like, "Nah." That might have been mean, but I think she wanted the extra six minutes, because she was having a full on conversation in this car. That was it. It was, yes you're allowed to kind of do what you want in your Uber Pool, but at the same time, there are other people there, and there's someone, you know working and giving you a service. A little bit of respect would be nice. Did you have to have that conversation right then? Even if you did, did you have to have it that loudly? Did you have to move stuff in the car to make yourself that much more comfortable? Did you have to eat at that time? What she was eating? I don't know what she was eating, but it was loud. It smelled slightly. You know, everyone's got a different perception of smell.

That was my Uber Pool experience. That has been the worst one. I generally take Uber Pool you know depending on what's going on. There's never really been an issue, but this one stood out in my mind to the point that as soon as I got out of the car, I made a recording, and messaged a friend, so I could remember exactly what happened. That was my Uber Pool story. Are things, please don't do this when you're in an Uber Pool, it's very upsetting to other people. Thank you for listening, this is Janice at the Traveling Introvert. Should you have any questions for me, or travel stories, I would love to hear them, please email me at Janice@TheCareerIntrovert.com. Thank you and see you on the road. Oh, I stole that. Wait, that was from Nomad + Spice, so we're not going to see you on the road. The Career Introvert, here to help you with anything to do with your career, or your business in line with your introversion.