Gett Smart!
I like ordering cabs on the Gett app. The cars are often late-model and mostly spotless: Kias, Skodas, Toyotas. Once I rode in a Mercedes E220. The cabs come soon and take us where we need to go.
While you wait for a driver to accept your ride, you stare at a map featuring bobbing heads.
If you tap one, a question pops up, like, “How many passengers can you fit in this cab icon?” This is a game. You can win points.
I ignore this. As a retiree, I am too busy to collect points. Maybe I was disappointed by El Al Matmid points, which seem to be redeemable only for flights in Next World.
When a Gett driver accepts, the app emits a cheery TA-DA! This is followed by the name of the driver, the model of car he drives and its license plate. And his hobby. For those who want to really get to know their cabbie.
One popular hobby is Sport. Another is kaduregel, Football. (Soccer to Yanks.) One cabbie said his hobby, touchingly, was Family. My favorite was the cabbie who said that his hobby is Driving. Good for all of us!
Some cabbies told us they had done other work. Corona forced one to find a different career, another said that a back injury from doing construction demanded something sedentary.
A couple of cabbies were excited to take us to our neighborhood because they grew up there. One pointed and said, “When I was a boy, that street was just a pile of stones. We had medurot, bonfires, there on Lag B’Omer.” Another said he is an 8th generation Yerushalmi. In proportion, that would make me an 8-minute Jerusalemite.
And then there was Ahmed. When he mentioned what I thought was dirah, dwelling, he turned out to mean Deraa, a city he said was in Jordan but is only near Jordan, in southwestern Syria.
“See these flats?” he said, gesturing toward newly-built high-rises. “You can get nice ones in Deraa, like these, for 300,000 shekels. And here? Ten times as much. Why is that?”
Neither my Hebrew nor my Arabic were up to saying, “Location, location, location.”
Waiting for the icon
While you wait, you get to watch the little car icon slide along the streets to get to you and then to take you on your way.
Sometimes the icon departs from the black line, when the cabbie takes a shortcut. Sometimes the cabbie changes his mind and cancels. That is annoying, but then you get to watch a new icon when someone else agrees to pick you up. No points, though.
Where are you???
For all the wonders of GPS, cabbies may have trouble finding you, especially in complicated areas, like a busy downtown street, or a shopping mall. The app lets the driver call you. (“WHERE ARE YOU??!!”) or you to call the driver (WHERE ARE YOU I’M RIGHT HERE!!??) Eventually, it gets straightened out. Most of the time.
Complain to the robot!
Not long ago, if you had a complaint, you could contact an agent for an answer. In Gett as elsewhere, human contact is now passe—too expensive. For questions, you get a robot, who offers you options.
One day a driver accepted our ride from 2 minutes away—great. But minutes went by, and his icon never moved. I called the driver, who didn’t answer.
Finally, ten minutes later, I canceled. This brought up a warning: “Your driver is 2 minutes away. Cancellation means a fine.” I canceled anyway.
A new driver accepted and showed up. Sure enough, my email brought a 12 shekel fine.
I contacted the robot. I tried in Hebrew. I tried in English. Each click generated a tree of options, one of which was “Back to Main Menu.”
I finally found “Complaint.” Below that was “12 shekel fine.” One click on that generated a reply, “We will refund your 12 shekels in 3 business days.” Why bother hearing your complaint? For those few who persevere this far, it’s simpler and cheaper to just refund the 12 shekels.
Tipping simplified
When you enter your credit card information, you have the option to tip, from a range of percentages. Your choice gets automatically added to the fare. That way you don’t have to stare at the moneh, the fare counter, trying feverishly to figure what the tip will be and whether you have the cash to pay it.
Gett simplifies that. As you exit the cab, the app gives out another cheery fanfare, followed by simulated applause. Some drivers thank you, though by then you’re out of the cab.
5 stars!
I am old enough to remember when rating the service you got actually had personal meaning. Now universities have grade inflation. The rest of the world has rating inflation. If “5 stars” is the best a rater can give, anything less than 5 is a critique. This may penalize the ratee, which is rarely what you have in mind.
Some drivers ask for 5 stars, but I’m too quick for them, having clicked that rating as soon as I sat down and fastened my seat belt. If the driver is especially nice, I may say, “I wanted to give you 7 stars, but it wouldn’t let me.” That usually elicits a smile. Smiles are nice, even unquantified.
While I’m on the subject, I thought of offering you, gentle reader, the option of rating this blog. But since it doesn’t matter, never mind.
Many years ago I wrote a blog for Psychology Today. Of the few reader responses, some were insulting, many others so totally off the wall that they seemed unconnected to the blog, or anything else.
I pointed this out in an email to my editor, a woman I never met in person.
“Oh, Alan,” she said. “Don’t you know that the trolls have won?”
