(Sponsored Content -- ) Lance Hutchinson of Tallahassee is a friendly face for people trying consistently – and frequently – to get from point A to point B.
In return for earning extra money and stemming boredom during his retirement, Hutchinson offers himself as a reliable resource for riders he takes on early morning commutes.
“I get up in the morning and … I’ve got something to look forward to,” said Hutchinson, a retired entrepreneur who drives for Uber. “That hour of the morning, the hours I drive, I see a lot of the same people over and over and over again. So it's almost like I'm going to pick up a friend to take them to work, and we catch up on how the kids are doing and that kind of thing.”
Uber is a tech company that links physical and digital modalities to help people travel. In Hutchinson’s case, working for Uber connects him with nice, engaging people, many of them medical staff.
“It’s a very pleasant experience," he said. "Every once in a great while, you're glad somebody got out of the car. But it’s rare. I had a kind of psychotic woman in the car one day that screamed at her boyfriend over the phone. You know, she was going to blow his head off with a shotgun and all that kind of business. I was glad when she got out of the car.”
Safety is essential for Uber, which works with safety advocates and creates “new technologies and systems to help improve safety,” it's website states.
"I have almost 10,000 rides between Lyft and Uber … it’s pretty rare that you have a rude customer, and that's probably the most frequent, unpleasant experience, as somebody just rude and disrespectful,” Hutchinson said.
The flexibility of being an Uber driver, including not having a boss or co-workers, worked out with Hutchinson’s schedule, he said.
“I drive 5 hours, usually, a day, sometimes 6 hours, six days a week, and I drive the mornings,” Hutchinson said. “I'm a very early morning person, and so I usually start at 6 or 6:30 and I'll drive till 11 or 12. And by that time, my wife's up and moving and gone through her morning routine.”
While driving for Uber gets Hutchinson “out of the house,” he doesn’t have to work.
“That’s the fun part about it. If I get tired or I’m not in the mood … I don’t have to go if I don’t want to,” Hutchinson said.