To Uber, With Love – The New York Times

This is a happy story about a corporation you probably hate.

Stick with me here. You’ve got to get through some tough stuff.

First, there were the tears — just two. My son Gus, 22, is autistic and preternaturally cheerful; I hadn’t seen him cry since he was a baby. Even when he held his father’s hand as he died, there was deep sadness but also understanding, and no tears.

This was different. Something bad had happened with no explanation. Gus had just been kicked off his beloved car app, Uber. And nobody at the company would say why.

“I always give five stars,” he whispered. “I always tip.”

This is 100 percent true. Also true is that I can’t leave my phone unattended, because if I do, he breaks into my Uber and Lyft accounts and makes sure I’ve given the drivers five stars — then he doubles their tips.

Gus is obsessed with these apps and their drivers. For one thing, the rides provide exactly the right amount of social engagement for someone who loves strangers but finds it hard to sustain long conversations. Hi, how are you? Where are you from? There, done. You’ve connected.

And riding in an Uber is his version of birding. Gus is always on the lookout for unusual cars and “rare” drivers. His perfect ride-service experience would be getting into a Tesla with a driver who is from Nepal — and a woman. That would be pretty much the equivalent of spotting a cerulean warbler in Central Park.

One of Gus’s life goals is to be an Uber driver himself. He can navigate the subway system with his eyes closed, but he has to think twice about spatial abstractions like “right” and “left.” Nevertheless, given his incessant Uber chitchat, and in the full belief that he was never going to be able to pass even the written test, I arranged for him to take driving lessons. A man’s got to have goals. And I was moved by his confidence.

But now this.

“What did I do, Mommy?”

I went on a mission to find out. Gus couldn’t quite do it for himself, since the concept of “real person” vs. “bot” is still a little fuzzy for him. This is how he finds himself in protracted email correspondences with entrepreneurial Nigerian potentates, sexy strangers named Tiffany who want a date and government officials asking for Steam Gift Cards.

For about 12 hours I did everything I could think of to get through to a human being. For my efforts, Uber rewarded me with a form email on how to be a better passenger: “Don’t keep drivers waiting, be polite, make sure they feel safe.”

Gus may mumble, but he is unfailingly polite; he practically runs into the car; and he scares no one, except perhaps by being different.

I appealed to several friends, including a lobbyist who has worked on behalf of ride-share companies and has an autistic nephew; he was apoplectic. “Was Gus [term for self-pleasuring that can’t appear in this publication] in the back seat? No? Then they are wrong!”

But, you see, maybe they weren’t.

I knew Gus wasn’t doing, uh, that, but what was he doing?

I thought of his compulsion to get into a car and immediately ask where the driver was from, then look up that city or country on his phone. This is an innocent social quirk that might seem ominous to a driver who hasn’t been in this country long. Maybe someone thought Gus was an immigration agent.

I discovered that one of my neighbors worked for Uber and got him to call someone at the company. That someone was named Briana Gilmore. Since 2022, she has been Uber’s head of public policy, accessibility and marginalized communities. Briana is also autistic.

“This case feels particularly demoralizing for me,” she wrote in the single most touching corporate email I have ever received. “But all the more reason to come into community with you both and talk about how to prevent this from happening to our peers in the future.”

Later, when we spoke, Briana told me of her late autism diagnosis and described how, just a day earlier, she had gone to a restaurant where there was some sort of gathering of people with dogs and had found herself so overwhelmed that she almost got into a bar fight. I think she was joking. But maybe not.

At any rate, here’s what Gus was doing: Nothing. Or, rather, while a vast majority of the ratings he received from drivers were five stars, it took only five one-star ratings to get him dumped. The comments from the drivers weren’t specific; the worst were along the lines of, “I don’t like his attitude” or “His attitude is weird.” Well, he is weird.

When Briana told me Gus had been reinstated, I was the one crying. But I still wanted to know what I should tell him about changing his behavior. I told her my theory that some drivers might think he was an immigration agent.

“Don’t tell him to do anything,” Briana told me. “OK, maybe a few people don’t like being asked where they’re from, but then they don’t have to answer. Lots of people want to make a little conversation,” she said, adding, “He’s just being himself.”

People can evolve, and so can companies. It probably doesn’t hurt that Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, has twins with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Briana told me she sees her work as more than a job. “I see this as fighting for geographic justice,” she said. “Companies need to help people who are differently-abled navigate the world as independently as they can.”

Geographic justice. Imagine that.

When I mentioned to Gus that he’d been reinstated, he did something he saves for only the most joyous occasions: He hopped across the room.

Two days passed. I had almost forgotten about his appointment to take a test for his learner’s permit. His teacher, Everlina, reminded me and took him to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I had no hope that it would work out, but he seemed happy to be going through the process.

When they got back, Gus told me he had passed the test with a perfect score. This time, there was no hopping. Everlina wasn’t at all surprised, and neither was Gus, who shrugged when I congratulated him and reminded me, “Mommy, you know you’re not a very good driver.”

“Shut up,” I explained.

Never underestimate the power of someone who has a passion, least of all an autistic dude who just wants to know where you’re from when he gets into your car.

Judith Newman, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, is the author of “To Siri With Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines.”