In the aftermath of losing my sales executive position I applied for jobs. I went through every employment agency in LA … the ones that would deign to look at my résumé. No sales work. No corporate work. ‘You’re crowding the big Six-O,’ one young placement guy told me. ‘There just isn’t a niche I can land you in – outside of stuff just a few dollars above the minimum wage.’ I thought about retraining as an electrician – but was told by friends in the business that I needed at least two or three years to build up a client base … and any of the big ‘electricians on call’ companies were not going to look at someone who hadn’t done any electrical work since his time atop those high-wire poles in Sequoia National Park over thirty-five years ago. Uber was the fastest way for me to start earning again – and to do so with the minimum of interference from bosses.

To become an Uber driver, you don’t deal with a management team or do an interview or have an inspector drop by to check out you and your vehicle. To become an Uber driver you download their app. You fill in the online application. You have to take a photo of your driver’s license and send it to Uber. Ditto the state inspection certificate for your car. You have to take photos of your vehicle and make certain that one of them has the vehicle’s license plate. You have to take photos of yourself – which Uber uses for facial recognition purposes. You have to nominate a phone that will be exclusively your Uber phone – and which will verify your facial recognition and will also monitor the number of hours you are driving on a given day. Only this phone will be allowed by Uber for you to get your rides. You set up a payment method with Uber to get your money at the end of the week. I had my earnings for the week paid directly into my bank account. You could also get paid via an instant Uber cash card – but Uber charged you a fee for doing this. Just as all billed hours ran according to the Uber clock: from Monday at 04h01 in the morning until the following Monday at 0h400. If you had a ride that started at 03h30 Monday but ended at 04h03 you wouldn’t see the money from that fare for another week. You couldn’t really complain about any of this, as there is no Uber office to complain to. Yes, there was a help line for drivers – but it took around thirty minutes to get through to an actual human. Though none of their phone people will tell you this it’s obvious that their call center is far away in some sweaty corner of the Philippines … and everyone is very cheerful and never in any way helpful.