San Francisco
May 11, 2021
My default setting is take an Uber when I need a ride. I like the ability to enter in the app exactly where I am going and know how much the ride is going to cost me.
After I collected my bags yesterday at baggage claim at SFO yesterday, I set out to find the Uber pickup location. Hint - they don’t make it easy. You have to walk across the street to the parking garage and take the elevator to the top floor. After a short walk, you see a gathering of people and you’ve found it.
It is 15 miles from SFO to Downtown. When I first entered my destination in the Uber the price came back as $56 with an explanation that prices were higher than normal. So I decided to wait. Over the next 15 minutes the prices grew to $65 then $76 and finally $86. Minutes after the $86 rate, I got a rate if $51 and locked it in not even thinking that the rate might go lower. I’d been “ anchored” — influenced by the most recent numbers I had seen.
My driver was from Nepal. He had won a lottery to come to the United States. It had cost him $40,000. He said he was overwhelmed with the prosperity of America but that sharing in that prosperity was more difficult than he had been led to believe in Nepal. He said he missed his family and friends back in Nepal. He looked sad.
I gave him a generous tip and wished him good luck in my note to him. The American Dream.