Column Chronicles: An address to Uber drivers

An address to Uber drivers

Frank Cotolo
March 22, 2018

I am still in great demand by organizations that call upon me to give inspiring talks to their members, who seem to excel in their fields of study after one of my speeches. Recently, I was invited to speak to a nationwide audience of Uber drivers. Here is the text of that speech.

Good evening and welcome. I don't imagine that any of you Uber drivers remember Yellow Cabs. Long before the Uber revolution, a company hired men to drive people places in cars owned by the company. Stupid, right? Well, the Yellow Cab Company made a lot of money owning their own vehicles and you should identify with that because you drive people places in a vehicle you own.

I think you catch my drift. An Uber driver is a company much like the Yellow Cab Company and more like the Yellow Cab Company if your vehicle is yellow.

No matter how you cut it though, you are a cab driver because once you take money for a ride you are driving a cab. Consider it true because millions of people give millions of people rides and do not charge for it. That's why cars were made to seat more than the driver.

The people being driven are passengers whether they pay for the ride or not and no matter the color of the cab, the car. Yes, there is only a one-letter difference between cab and car. Most Uber drivers don't know which letter but that changes nothing.

Uber drivers represent all the great characteristics of the ancient Yellow Cab Company drivers, with the exception of personalities, which Yellow Cab Company drivers had in massive quantities. You see, not everyone qualified for being a Yellow Cab driver. You had to be emotionally equipped and not stupid like a lot of you folks. Now don’t take that poorly; take it like a man, like a Yellow Cab man.

You and your duties as an Uber driver should model yourself after the good-old men who drove cabs, especially the yellow ones, because if you just act like a spoiled kid, like a child of the two thousands, like a baby, a juvenile, then you won’t be rewarded and I don’t mean tips because no one tips like they used to when they hired real men to drive them places.

That leads us to the point that nothing is like it used to be and if you become an Uber driver you must be able to bring the traditions of cab drivers to a new level, one that makes you service the customer like you are in a Yellow Cab of old and you hold true the values of men like that who, above all, will drive with pride, be pride driven and steadfast but not drive fast, honest and red blooded but not through red lights and have the sense to know you are an Uber, the one who steers, guides and traverses through a street named desire.

Thank you all and good night.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.