My unhealthy obsession with my Uber rating
Ihave become somewhat obsessed with my Uber rating recently. My drivers have, so far, scored me an average of 4.64 out of a possible five stars, which I am absolutely not OK with.
I have friends who complain about the traffic and never tip and they’re smugly cruising along with 4.8s and 4.9s.
I, on the other hand, am cravenly polite every time I get into an Uber. I smile and nod with great deference. I say please and thank you. I am careful not to slam the door. I always – always – give the driver five stars, even if their car stinks of marijuana and they’ve played insisted on playing aggressive electro-house all the way home.
Until recently, I routinely added a tip until I realised that my rating was actually going down. Since I’ve stopped, it has, counter-intuitively, shifted up a couple of decimal places.
I can’t work out why my rating is so low, although I think it might have to do with the fact that I don’t like to talk. I spend so much of my life interviewing celebrities and having to make pained conversation with someone I’ve only just met in the hope of getting them to spill their life secrets, that it’s the last thing I want to do in a taxi.
But it’s horrible being judged according to some unspoken metric every single time you get into a car.
And it’s about to get even worse with the news that Uber has applied for a patent for a new technology that identifies when passengers are exhibiting any unusual behaviour, including making typos or holding their phone cackhandedly. In brief, Uber will now be able to tell if you’re drunk.
It’s all very worrying. In the future, what else will Uber want to know before you’re able to be deemed an acceptable passenger? What your credit score is, in case you’re likely to do a runner? What height you are, in case you take up too much room in the back?
It all reminds me of an episode off the dystopian Netflix series Black Mirror, in which a future is imagined where everyone rates everyone else all the time on just about everything – whether it’s on how gracious they are when they order their morning coffee to how happy they seem when they’re at work. These ratings then determine whether you’re able to apply for mortgages or get health insurance.
In today’s consumer-focused society, we are constantly being assessed and found wanting. It’s exhausting having to care so much about how we are interpreted by random strangers when we might just be having a bad day. I should make a stand and rise above this unnecessary rush to judgment. Still… I wish I were at least a 4.8.