What Uber’s “engaged time per hour” really means
That’s funny.
Uber is just as adept with language sleaze as the Trudeau Liberals.
Let me demonstrate what “Engaged time per hour” really means.
Back around 2008, before City of Hamilton’s politicians pulled the rug out from under the local taxi industry by pretending to believe that a taxi dispatched by an app was not a taxi, I spent a lot of time fishing for walk-ins at Hamilton’s GO terminal.
Sometimes, the wait between fares could be as long as an hour, or more. It was, therefore, not unusual for the call of nature to arise in between engagements. Sometimes, while the driver was in the washroom, the first car in the government-engineered lineup of idle capital (10 to 15 taxis) would become engaged. Once that car left the line, the other cabs would all move up one spot.
I didn’t like disrupting the smooth operation of the queue by being away from my cab at those times. A part time-driver named “Mikey” frequently visited the queue to socialize with the drivers who were “working.” While he was there, I devised a solution to the problem of line disruption. I would pay Mikey a nickel for moving my cab up to the newly vacant spot in front of it whenever I had to use the can.
After a period of gainful employment, Mikey started to agitate for higher wages. He claimed the nickel I was paying him amounted to a slave’s wage. That was when I beat Uber to the punch with the concept of “Engaged Time per Hour.”
I argued thus: It only takes you ten seconds to get in the cab, turn the key, and move up one spot. You get a nickel for that. That nickel is equivalent to 6 times $0.05 = $0.30 per minute. And $0.30 per minute is equivalent to 60 times $0.30 = $18.00 “Per engaged hour.” Once I had Uberized the pay calculation, I could not believe my own generosity. The other drivers were satisfied with the smoother operation of the line. The customers were satisfied too. Mikey remained skeptical.
At the time, that was approximately DOUBLE the minimum wage in Ontario. No one could slander me with the epithet, “Sweatshop operator.”
Thereafter, Mikey became my most loyal employee.
We never got around to negotiating the fee involved had two cabs left the line, but I would have probably made a generous offer of $0.08 per move,($28.80 per engaged hour, – $40.87 in 2024 dollars!) given that the maneuver would still only require the same number of engine starts required to move up one spot.
*****
Hans Wienhold is the author of “Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver,” available on Amazon in hardcover or paperback.
Wienhold identifies as a Welfare Recipient at Senior’s Welfare; Self-Employed; and also, a Climate Scientist at BS Detective Services.
