Hello Everyone!
What if I told you I had never booked a ride before in my life? Sounds laughable, right? Lol.
But that’s the truth, and the reason is that I haven't lived in cities where online ride bookings are common. Over here, especially in my current city of residence, we rely on the traditional "stop and enter" method or go to a terminal, pay for the service, and enjoy the trip. The only thing remotely similar to online booking is when we contact a vehicle owner, schedule a day for the trip, and when the day arrives, the vehicle comes to pick us up. These are the manual methods—or let’s just call them the local way of doing things.
But even though I have never booked a ride online, I have experienced it once.
You may be wondering, "How???"
Well, it happened last year when I traveled to Asaba, a major city in my state, for a wedding event. I arrived on Friday, and the wedding was scheduled for the next day. When the day finally came, my friend—whom I spent the night with—got dressed, and I expected him to lock his door so we could stroll down to the road and get a motorbike to the venue. But instead, he sat in the corridor and told me to relax because he had ordered a car.
"Uber?" I exclaimed, because, hey, the mere sound of it signaled just one thing to me, 'expensive!'
"Isn't it too expensive? Is the place that far? Is this not the venue you described earlier?" I fired off my questions.
He looked at me and smiled, maybe he imagined the word poverty boldly written on my forehead. But I wasn’t poor; I could afford the Uber. That just wasn’t what I had planned for.
After his mocking smile, he stretched the folded sleeves of his heavily starched shirt and said, "I didn't want a public ride, that’s why I ordered a car."
Okay, I concurred. I sat back on the chair and joined him in waiting for the ride to arrive. Honestly, I didn’t bother to ask which ride service he had booked. My only concern was for the car to arrive so we could enter and head to the party.
We waited for about 30 minutes, and I couldn’t hide my impatience anymore. I urged him to call the driver. That was when I found out he had been chatting with the cabman all along—the vehicle was at the mechanic’s workshop, getting fixed. He hadn’t told me earlier because he knew I would have laughed at him.
After waiting for almost an hour, he finally opened up.
"Since it's a company, why can’t they send another car? If we had taken a bike, we would have been there by now," I lamented.
Just as I was complaining, we heard a car honk, it was the cab. I expected it to be swallowed by the company’s logo, but it was just an ordinary car. I had a lot of questions in my mind, but I chose not to ask at that moment. We just entered and left.
Even at the party, I got carried away by the fun and completely forgot to tease my guy with questions or laugh at how his ride order almost ruined our day.
But come to think of it, I feel like the "stop and enter" cars save more time than online ride bookings—at least, in my city. That one experience showed me that these online orders can delay. And honestly, I am very impatient when it comes to delays, especially when I have an appointment with someone. Don’t keep me waiting, not even for a minute!
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to Digi-prompts