Man versus the Machine

How to rage against the Kafkaesque comedy of errors and still win

Gig Adventures

I’ve low-key been fascinated by the gig economy since I was a kid.

Traveling to India every few summers, I rode around in a lot of auto-rickshaws.

For an American kid that liked skiing and mountain biking, it seemed like a really great way to have the wind run in your hair while zipping through traffic.

Plus you got paid for it.

Ride-sharing is the American version of Auto-Rickshaws

The best way to understand a product is to use it.

This was an American product discovery experience of human and vehicle capital markets.

Strap in for a winding onboarding user story of algorithms, APIs, and apps.

It has a brief prequel and detour into bi-coastal state governments and mainframes.

You may pick up whiffs of the impact of human error and process failures.

‘Tis on-going gig adventure.

Middle-Aged Man versus the Corporate-State Machine

Interstate SNAFUs

To meet homeland security regulations, the California DMV began offering a federally compliant REAL ID driver’s license in early 2018.

When we moved to San Diego in late 2018, I got a California driver’s license and plates for a car transported from New York State.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was supposed to mail back the NYS plates. Life happened. I didn’t.

This becomes important later.

As a sign of bureaucratic foreshadowing, the California DMV re-issued me a copy of my license, as they had inadvertently mailed out a pre-REAL ID version. They even sent a letter with a heads up.

Since my address had changed in the meantime, I made an in-person appointment and renewed in late September 2022, just before my birthday. I was told to expect a new copy in 3-5 weeks.

By mid-November 2022, I was still driving around with an expired license and a piece of paper as evidence of renewal.

This exceeded my personal risk threshold.

So I went back to the DMV.

There was a blocker. The DMV said there was an issue with my license.

It was due to an out-of-state hold.

The National Driver Register is a computerized database which contains information on individuals whose privilege to operate a motor vehicle has been revoked, suspended, canceled, or denied, or who have been convicted of serious traffic-related offenses.

The NDR operates as a sort of interstate clearinghouse.

New York had put a hold on my California license.

Bureaucratic Roadblocks

Have you ever tried to have a phone conversation with someone at an in-state DMV?

Painful.

Have you ever tried to have a phone conversation with someone at an out-of-state DMV?

Torture.

This is the list of NYS DMV phone numbers available to contact.

I wasn’t even sure where to start!

Relevant later: the specific contact number was the Insurance Services Bureau.

The California DMV did not know why the NYS DMV had put a hold on my license.

I spent an sunny afternoon at a bar negotiating a half-dozen Interactive Voice Response systems.

I quaffed IPAs while pressing 0 to speak with a human being or requesting a callback from the DMV of a state which I had not lived in for years.

After nearly two hours, I finally spoke with a person from the appropriate department, who had access to the information, the desire to research, and the ability to articulate the cure. If I remembered what her name was, I would share it here. She was a saint.

The NYS DMV remembered old plates that were supposed to get mailed back.

The car was no longer registered in New York. The insurance coverage in New York had lapsed. New York suspended my license for to failure to pay insurance. In April 2019. That is six months after the car was registered in California.

This was a silent failure of state systems, the federal clearinghouse, and constituent services.

Long story, short: I had to pay a civil penalty of ~$100 for the NYS DMV to remove the hold. Once payment processed, the NYS would communicate to the California DMV who would issue my license.

Done.

During this afternoon exercise, I polished off a couple of beers and I felt I’d achieved a small victory against interstate bureaucracy.

Sometimes, just sometimes, David doesn’t beat one Goliath, he beats two.

I thought the California DMV had everything it needed.

The thing about process automation: silent failure can cause real harms.

Risk Management

In 2023, Car 2 came from out-of-state, paid off, in good condition, and available to generate income using a ride-share service.

In August, I started the process of getting insurance and new license plates.

Car 1 had been covered by GEICO since arriving in California in 2018.

But, GEICO closed all of its physical offices in California in 2022.

GEICO customers now had to use a digital device to purchase insurance over the phone or to manage existing accounts.

I remembered reading about GEICO closing offices, but had not processed its impact as an existing customer. In terms of how automated claims departments go, I really liked GEICO’s responsiveness.

But, as I went through the process of enrolling Car 2, GEICO balked and declined coverage.

Then GEICO not only declined Car 2, but also dropped Car 1.

Meanwhile, I had to scramble to get coverage from another carrier.

Silent failure. Real harms.

Knowledge Blindness

To begin enrollment in a ride-share service, a prospective driver must submit to a background check.

This makes total sense.

If you’ve ever used an app to get a car, you want the person driving to meet minimum criteria before they got on the road.

“information is being reported that could potentially impact”

I started the dispute process to find out what were the discrepancies.

The automated appeal process failed silently.

After an e-mail back-and-forth with a third-party hired to do the check, I submitted a request with the California DMV to get a copy of my record.

New York suspended my license.

I was learning - in real time - that my California license, sitting in my wallet was not actually valid.

The California DMV information systems did not communicate that status when I requested, paid for, and obtained new license plates.

Another silent failure?

But, wait, there’s more

In fact, my California license had been suspended since December of 2022.

I’d been driving around on a suspended license for eight months.

Piecing together the sequence of events:

• After getting clearance from the NYS DMV, the California DMV mailed out my license

• But, then, days or weeks later, the California DMV suspended my license

• Meanwhile, no system informed me of this status change

This was the silent failure.

The harms of being pulled over during that eight month period would have included getting booked for driving on a suspended license.

If not for the effort to onboard onto a ride-share platform, I would never have submitted for a background check.

Trying to enter the gig economy kicked off the process which revealed the status of my driver’s license.

Bureaucratic Hurdles

I contacted the Insurance Services Bureau to begin root cause analysis and an amateur case of digital forensics.

Had my payment in 2022 not processed? Why did NYS DMV not change my status? Where was the inaccurate data stored? In whose system?

Within a day, the NYS DMV confirmed that I had no obligations to the State of New York.

After painfully navigating more IVR systems, I managed a phone conversation with someone at the California DMV.

They confirmed that California had indeed received an updated status from New York, but processing the change was a manual step, and someone had…dropped the ball.

Why had California mailed out my license and then suspended my license?

The answers to some questions will always remain mysteries of the universe.

Background…Wait

Finally, I cleared up the status of my California driver’s license.

Now, I had to resubmit the background check so it could pull data from recently updated and enlightened DMV systems.

Ah, per company policy, the driver of a ride-share vehicle needed to have at least one year of driving experience.

Despite having had a license since 2018, upon the silently failed renewal in 2022, the state deleted all previous driving history.

As far as California was concerned, I did not exist as a driver starting in 2018 when I got my first non-REAL ID.

Four years of driving history was memoryholed to the digital ether.

Now, I had to run down the clock, until October 2023, and resubmit the background check.

Criteria for Success

I’m a stubborn person who made a living by navigating and negotiating institutional brand bureaucracies, so of course my background check passed in October 2023.

It only took two months and steely, resilient grit to manage arbitrary policies, automated processes, silent failures, nameless and faceless corporate support staff, under-resourced government employees, wonky back-end processes, and appropriate human intervention.

Now the ride-share app says I’m ready to go online in my version of an auto-rickshaw, with the digital wind in my hair.

Follow these tips for raging against the corporate-state machine…and winning.

• Listen to Jimmy V’s advice: “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”

• Always press “0” to speak with an agent.

• Try, try, and try again. Discover every way that doesn’t work.

• Don’t blame the human in the institution. They’re doing their job.

• The policies and algorithms are designed to break your will. Persist.

• Share a ride and see where it goes.

• Maybe even talk to the rickshaw driver.