“Dear Austin, I am not a rapist.”
— Every Lyft Driver
Tomorrow, Austinites will vote on Proposition 1, the largest battle yet in this ever-escalating war of egos. With City Government on one side and Lyft & Uber on the other, several thousand drivers, myself included, are caught in the crossfire. Thousands are prepared to go to the polls to vote “against corporate greed”. Here’s what they’re really voting against.
Should Prop 1 fail, the changes the city approved in December will take effect, and Lyft & Uber will play the only card left in their hand — deactivating the platforms. On Monday morning, Austin’s Lyft Community will be half-stranded and half-unemployed without the ability to collect unemployment. (Just one of the luxuries of self-employment.)
Unlike most Lyft drivers who spend less than 15 hours a week behind the wheel, Lyft is my only source of income. I’m a native Texan, a Purdue grad, and a Dell layoff survivor. Lyft saved me from depression and saved me from moving into my parents’ spare bedroom. I wouldn’t be able to afford a life in Austin anymore without Lyft. I’ve provided over 2,300 rides with Lyft and 2 with Uber, but I like to joke that everyone makes mistakes. ;-) Like many Austinites, I don’t share the same values as Uber.
During college, I spent two summers as an intern at Dell here in the Austin area. That’s when I really fell in love with this city and the welcoming, friendly people who live here. The internships challenging assignments in my field that used my skills and let me work in a tight-knit team-environment. Perfecto!
When I graduated from Purdue in 2011, I left with an Operations Management degree from the #3 program in the country, over $120,000 of student debt (mostly private), and a $65,000 salary waiting back home in Texas. Unfortunately, when I accepted the offer I mistakenly assumed I would be doing something similar to the internships. I was so wrong.
In 2011, Dell had ballooned to a size that was unsustainable. They put a freeze on hiring for new positions. The only vacant role on my VP’s team was a terrible fit for me.
I spent all day emailing people in Taipei and when I was asleep, they would reply. I did that for 2.5 years. The youngest person on my team other than me was 12 years older than me, which is fine, but they all had kids and families and wanted to work from home all the time. I’m a single 20-something that lives alone and thrives off of interacting with others. If I work from home for a week, the only person I get to interact with is the cashier at H-E-B. And when I would go into the office, I would sit alone at a desk in an empty row of cubicles. I suffer from chronic extroversion, and naturally this job suffocated the life out of me.
Twice or three times a week, I would spend my lunch breaks sitting in my car in a parking lot around the corner from Dell’s Round Rock office with the driver’s seat fully reclined and tears streaming down my face.
In 2012, I was diagnosed with clinical depression. I have had three unrelated uncles commit suicide, so I knew what to look for and when to ask help. Society tells guys to "suck it up" and "be a man". Maybe I was okay asking for help because of the heartbreak that my family experienced when my uncles took their own lives. Or maybe I was okay being perceived as "less than masculine" because I’m gay and have already become accustomed to society’s stereotyping. I also started taking Zoloft, which made the sadness less intense, but also made everything feel muted like I was underwater. It wasn’t a solution for the unfulfilling job and loneliness.
I tried moving internally while at Dell, but it was nearly impossible with the hiring freezes going on at the time. At one point, I even wrote my manager a job description for an Operations Analyst on his team, so I could use my skills and pursue my passions while making an impact. I'm lucky I didn't get fired on the spot.
When Dell went private in late 2013/early 2014, they had the amazing kind of layoffs where they ask you if you want to walk out the door for several months' salary. I eagerly accepted my tin parachute and ran for the door. Dell is a fine company, but that job and I were about as compatible as Lyft and Uber.
I watched Netflix for a month, and then tried my hand at tech consulting. It was fun, but finding clients is ridiculously difficult when you just work for you. I signed up for Lyft to fill the gaps between contracts.
I met with Lauren, my Mentor, for the interview, car inspection, and training that every Lyft Driver goes through. She was a student, and so friendly! It was a great first impression. After my criminal background check and driving history checks cleared, Lyft sent me an email approving me to drive and my first day on the road was the second weekend of ACL 2014.
At first, I was focused on my tech consulting business, and Lyft was just a side-job. It took me a month or two before I fell in love with Lyft. I know exactly when it happened.
In October, I was searching on Facebook for Lyft related groups, and I found Lyft Austin Weird. It was really small (about 70 people), but the description said it was an unofficial group for Austin’s Lyft drivers. Fast forward to today and that community has grown to over 3,200 people.
When I say community, I don’t mean “user group”. Lyft Austin Weird is a group of people who know each other, who meet in person for pancakes at 3:30 in the morning after the bar rush, who can always count on each other for a jump if the battery dies or help changing a flat.
We’re college students who pick up passengers between classes, we’re single parents who need a flexible job when the kids are at school or soccer practice, we’re people who were recently laid-off and looking for a way to keep the lights on between jobs.
Or, we’re people like me who found the personal interaction, welcoming community, and sense of purpose that helped them recover from depression. I haven’t taken Zoloft since 2014, and the only time I cry in my car is when I’m crying too hard.
But you know what we aren’t? Rapists.
Every Lyft applicant goes through a criminal background check that cross-checks national, state, and county records against their Social Security Number, name, past addresses, and phone numbers. Do you know what your criminal record is tied to? Your Social Security Number, not your fingerprints.
However, every city-approved chauffeur has their fingerprints checked with only national (FBI) and state (Texas DPS) records. Those databases are missing the dispositions of over 50% and over 30% of the cases they contain. Because the FBI/DPS doesn’t include county data unless the county follows up with the state, those background checks are much less complete than those Lyft and Uber do.
There have been zero convictions and zero arrests of a Lyft or Uber Driver for a sexual assault related crime in Austin. Ever. Perhaps that’s why Austin’s Transportation Department recommended at the March 2015 Mobility Committee meeting that the background checks for all for-hire services mirror those of Lyft and Uber.
So, sure, go vote “against corporate greed”, against the regulations written by a committee of Austin volunteers in 2014, against the Transportation Department’s recommendations, against the 65,103 people who signed the petition to put Proposition 1 on the ballot, against Austin’s Lyft Community — your neighbors who make Austin more affordable by rely on each other to get around safely and to help pay the bills, and against the first job I’ve ever had that brings me any iota of happiness.
As for me, I’m all FOR Prop1. See you at the polls.
You can find your nearest polling location at http://www.voteprop1.com/lookup. Know how you want to vote before you get to the ballot box. The ballot language will make you forget your name, why you’re there, and your anniversary. It’s that bad.
No, I wasn’t paid by anyone to write this or my other pro-Lyft story, How Austin Killed Ridesharing. I just happen to be a passionate supporter of ridesharing and sick of the City’s attempts to protect CapMetro and the Taxi cartel from competition.
