Human beings are always creative when they need to find an excuse to justify their actions. Many acquire this skill set during their time in the National Service where they come up with ingenious excuses to ‘siam’ and ‘geng’ their way through tough situations.
Siam = Get out of the way; Geng = Act to get out of the way
Many private-hire drivers in Singapore we met always have an ‘excuse’ for not driving and thus not making money. We list down the most common excuses we hear everyday!
Driving Hours Excuses
- Why don’t drive peak hours – Peak hour will jam
- Why don’t drive off-peak hour – Fare low, Demand low, Motivation Low
- Why don’t drive after work – Tiring after work
- Why don’t drive late night – Later people merlion in the car. Later see Hantu (ghost)
- Why don’t drive weekend – hello! I got family ok!
- Why don’t drive public holiday – Will jam and I told you I got family ok!
- Why don’t drive heavy rain, high surge high fare – Dangerous! later accident I die my family how, no money pay insurance excess!
Why Drive so little Excuses
- Why drive so few trips – Incentives lousy, waste my time to drive.
- Why incentive lousy – I drive too much, they reduce my incentive
- Why don’t drive Uber – Cannot see destination and fare lousy
- Why don’t drive Grab – Fare too low, pick-up far, need to maintain AR/CR/DR for incentives and incentives lousy
- Why don’t do UberPool/GrabShare – Fare lousy, waste time
Why High Fare / Surge trips don't accept
- Why 1.6X surge trip don’t take – Need to pay ERP, not worth it
- Why 2.5X surge trip don’t take – Pick-up distance too far, waste petrol
- Why 3.0X surge trip don’ take – Traffic jam, waste time. Rider sure cancel one lah
- Why only 1 trip per hour – Fare too low, wait for high price or high surge
- Why 1.8X surge still don’t take – Now ‘market’ hot, will surge higher one.
- Why are you banned – Grab and Uber fault. Fare too low, how to do. Acceptance Rating too low.
Excuses for driving an expensive car
- Why drive such an expensive car for Uber/Grab – I want comfort for myself and my riders
- Why you cancel on your rider – Fare so low, not worth to pick them up in my Mercedes.
- Why don’t drive a cheaper car – Cheap car get cheap riders.
It is Ok to have used one of the many excuses! At the end of the day, it is challenging to be driving for a living on Singapore roads.
There will generally be 2 types of reaction when people read this. The first type of people would be to laugh at the lame excuses driver make and share it as an entertainment with their friends.
The second type would curse at the content and say that all the excuses are true and continue their outburst against driving for Uber/Grab.
Regardless of which type you are, the choice is always yours. If you like it, feel free to continue driving. If you hate it and have better alternatives, feel free to throw key and quit. Many have ‘thrown key’ and many more will follow suit.
