There he was, a man with a mission. A man with a singular focus. A man obsessed with one thing and one thing only: his ratings. You could see it in his eyes, the way they darted back and forth across his phone screen, the way he clicked frantically on the rating tab, hoping against hope that his ratings had gone up. But they never did. Not really.

You see, this man is me, a rideshare driver. A modern-day road warrior, fighting against the tide of one-star ratings and bitter complaints from the hipsters of Echo Park. I lived and breathed my ratings, thinking about them every minute of every day. I counted them up, tallied them, and analyzed them, trying to decipher what I could have done differently to earn just one more star.

And yet, despite my obsession, my ratings never seemed to go up as quickly as they’ve been going down. Every day is a struggle, a battle against the man, Travis Kalinik, and his system. I would do everything I could to make my passengers happy, going above and beyond the call of duty, but it never seemed enough. The complaints kept rolling in, the one-star ratings piling up like a mountain of disappointment on a boulevard of broken driving dreams.

But I never gave up. No, sir. I am a fighter, a survivor. I would do whatever it took to get those five-star ratings. I was like a man possessed, a man on a mission. I would work all day and drive all night, eyes fixed firmly on the prize.

And yet, for all my efforts, I could never quite shake the feeling of despair. The feeling that it would never be enough no matter what I did. That I was doomed to forever be trapped in this cycle of low ratings and bitter complaints fueled by caffeine. It was a vicious cycle, one that threatened to consume me.

But I refused to let it. I refused to give up. I would keep fighting, keep striving and keep pushing forward. Because I just knew that one day, maybe, just maybe, I would finally get that elusive five-star rating. And when I did, oh, it would ever be glorious. I would shout it from the rooftops, and proclaim it to the world. I would have finally achieved my goal, fulfilling my destiny.

And so, I continued on this quest, driving through the dimly lit city streets of L.A. County, my eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. I was a man with a purpose and a singular focus. I was a rideshare driver and would do whatever it took to get those five-star ratings. Well, almost anything.