I Love Lyft, But I Have to Tell This Story
Preface:
Several months ago I took a rather memorable Lyft Line, enduring twenty or so minutes with a shamelessly forward young man who was so obvious about his ulterior motives they sort of stopped being ulterior. He openly flirted, asked if I was single, commentated on his suave moves to the driver in real time, suggested I join him for an event in the city that day, and immediately friended me on Facebook after the ride ended.
His bravado deserved documentation, which I provided in a post I don’t expect him to ever see, but might be an enlightening read for him.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Face:
Moving forward to this weekend. I hopped into a shared ride with my sister on a lazy Sunday, making our way over to Union Square to meet a friend for an afternoon frozen snack. The snack in question was Korean shaved ice, or as I cleverly dubbed it in my Venmo caption, bearded ice. It was going to be a great day.
“Fruit roll-up?” our driver offered as we settled in.
“Ha, no thanks,” we declined. Lyft, so quirky.
The setup felt oddly familiar — I had been offered a fruit roll-up by a Lyft driver before. I couldn’t decide if this was a repeat driver or if fruit roll-ups were just making a comeback, but given my generation’s ironic reverence of all things 90s, I decided it was probably the latter.
We continued chatting with the driver and the front seat passenger when our driver posed this question:
“So what’s like, the craziest story you have from a shared Lyft ride?”
Ha! Remember the preface? My time to shine.
“Funny you should ask,” I said.
And so I gave the synopsis of my best Lyft Line story — a determined fellow aggressively asserting his interest from the front seat, despite having clearly just parted ways with a female companion, and despite my obvious lack of engagement responding.
Telling the story again made me a bit uncomfortable, because it was hard to avoid sounding kind of full of myself. The irony. I waited for the reaction of my ride companions.
“What color was his hair?” our driver asked.
“Blonde.”
“And where did you pick him up from?”
“SoMa.”
“Spear St.?”
“Yup.”
“I was your driver.”
“I remember the fruit roll-ups!” I gasped.
The fruit roll-ups. Everything unfolded from there. I had rejected the snack offer then, too, unable to stomach the unapologetic intensity of something that probably had no redeeming qualities. A sign of things to come.
We verified some additional details I won’t include — but there was no doubt we were recounting the same trip.
“Yeah, we talked about it after I dropped you off,” he continued. “I was like, “Man, I was sure you were going to get her number!””
This was highly illuminating. I really thought I had made my disinterest clear, but here was a third party observer, convinced he was witnessing a mutual courtship. Apparently begrudgingly answering an extremely talkative stranger’s questions while trapped in an enclosed space is the same thing as wanting to spend time with them on purpose.
“Right, because you dropped me off first,” I remembered. Of course they had kept talking about it. “Wow.”
“Well, you only know half of it,” he said slyly.
Did I want to know? I had to know.
“Go on.”
“So, that guy literally uses this as a dating app,” our driver explained. He clearly could not wait to spill the beans. “That girl you saw before he got in your ride — she was from another Lyft ride. He said he’s gotten with 25 girls through Lyft Line so far.”
“That can’t be true!” the girl in the front seat blurted.
“Yeah, so he told me all about it, he’ll specifically order rides that are really far — ”
“So he has more time to talk to her,” I realized. “Yeah, our ride was like twenty minutes.”
SoMa to NoPa. My god, it all made sense.
“Yeah exactly. Anyway, so if it’s a dude, he cancels. If it’s an unattractive female, he cancels.”
Brutal.
“What about UberPool?”
“He doesn’t use it.”
“Why not?”
“No pictures.”
“Well my friend has his system beat,” I smugly replied. “Her profile picture is a pineapple.”
“Yeah, mine’s a turtle!” the girl in the front seat chimed in.
These were good defense mechanisms, just like you would see in the wild. A hard shell is tough to crack.
“He just takes the risk,” said our driver.
“So he would rather take his chances with a turtle than an ugly girl.”
I had to admit the whole scheme was pretty clever, and from what it sounded like, effective.
But now, for a call to action.
It would make me really, really happy, if everyone reading this changed their Lyft profile picture to a turtle. It can be any kind of turtle you want. A sea turtle, a snapping turtle, a box turtle, whatever. You can edit your picture in the sidebar of the app — there’s three little dots you can click in the upper left corner of the app to edit your profile. Here’s mine:
You don’t have to hide beneath your shell, but it’s always a good idea to use protection.
Please share this post with your friends.
#takeitslow
