My oldest child just turned 14. She is old enough to go out alone for shopping, movies and for events, like the many bar and bat mitzvahs she attended last year. She walks, bikes and takes the train to get around, but, more often than not, she needs a ride. In the past year we have started to use Uber occasionally to get her around. She probably has used Uber five times, with friends as company, mainly for trips to and from the mall and the movies. It has been a somewhat stressful experience. On the positive side, she is learning how to be independent, how to navigate a business transaction and how expensive life can be. On the negative side, she has had a couple drivers who were not thrilled to have a teenage passenger, she has annoyed drivers by being late, confused about her location or generally spacey, and she has run up some big bills.
As anyone who has been a frequent taxi passenger knows, learning how to navigate a taxi transaction takes practice. Confidence is the key to success. You must at least feign knowledge of the city you are in, the best route to your destination and the rules of the transaction. I personally have had many, many great taxi experiences. After 11 years in New York City, I can say that in my experience most taxi drivers are decent, hard working people with very interesting life stories. There are, however, some drivers who are less nice. These are the drivers we all need to know how to transact with, and in allowing my daughter to use Uber, I knew she would, inevitably, be faced with that challenge. So far she has only had a couple cranky drivers (most likely reasonably cranky because of her spaciness) and she seemed to get through the situation without much fuss. In terms of gaining some maturity about being independent and having confidence even in a potentially intimidating situation, she has done well.
In our paperless, cashless world, the money part of the Uber lesson has been harder for my daughter. Back in the day, ie just a few years ago, she would have taken a conventional taxi and would have had to learn about making sure the driver does not run up the meter by driving in circles or taking the longest route. With GPS this is much less of a problem. And with Uber, the fare is more transparent. BUT there are the costs we did not even know to warn her of. Like, for example, when she ordered herself an Uber black car. That was an expensive trip. Because it was just swiping around on her phone, she did not appreciate what she had done, and, because she did not then have to pay in cash for the ride, she did not realize the cost until we told her. And even then, it feels like a hypothetical cost. It is an interesting conundrum that the solution for one thing, Uber’s cash-free set fares, create a new problem for parents trying to teach their children how to take on some new responsibilities. Of course this is not just an Uber issue, there are many, many transactions that children participate in that involve real money, but seem not to. For example buying anything on the app store or Amazon. In addition my credit card is linked to a school lunch account so my kids never have to remember lunch money or hand over real cash and bring home change. These are conveniences that make life easy, but also have the consequence that my kids know less and less about how much things cost or how to pay for them.
My daughter is supposed to earn money to pay us back for the fancy Uber ride. Hopefully that will teach her to be a little more cautious before she swipes her phone for a ride. I think I also need to bring her in to the city for a few yellow taxi rides so she appreciates that it is still important to look up, pay attention and to have cash on hand to pay a fare, just like in the old days.
