But God forbid that you should get a complaint against you – or if a passenger reported that you had a damaged vehicle (and a bent fender qualified) – then you could lose your right to drive with Uber. You would be blacklisted. You would be out. And you could find yourself stacking shelves at Walmart and living even closer to the edge of all-American poverty. Which so many of us danced around every day.

So what could I do in the face of this young woman thinking that a rearview mirror glance was a come-on and the fast-food bag left behind by a previous client was an excuse to get me into considerable trouble?

‘I am so sorry about the bag,’ I said. ‘If you give it to me –’

‘You’re still trying to get on the good side of me. I don’t like your attitude. So maybe I will report you.’

‘Then you will be taking away the only source of income I have.’

Silence. I avoided monitoring her reaction to my statement in the rearview. When I checked the mirror before changing lanes I saw that she was stretched out across the seat with big Bose headphones on her ears, a sulky look on her face. The traffic started to move. The GPS told me I would reach the edge of the UCLA campus at 5.27 p.m. Luck came my way. We made it there by 5.26 p.m. My passenger pulled the headphones off her ears and glanced at her iPhone.

‘You actually got me here four minutes before my five-thirty.’

Then she was out the door and gone. As she walked away I saw that she had the Chick-fil-A bag in her hand and dumped it into a campus trash basket.