Though I have never actually checked, I am confident that most of us, all around the country, walk down the street doing sex maths. This is when you pass another person and work out whether you’re more attractive than them, or if they’re better looking than you, and who would be luckier to get eye contact from whom. Until, bang, a nanosecond later, the mental ratings on both sides have clearly matched up, you’ve both checked each other out with an approving eye, and now you are perfectly placed to go away and have immediate sexual intercourse under the nearby pedestrian flyover. Something you will never actually do, because you just keep on walking. Unless you’re both men, in which case, if cultural stereotypes are anything to go by, spontaneous togetherness events can sometimes just happen like that. (So unfair. So unfair.)
In any case, humans have been rating each other in this way since the dawn of pedestrian flyovers, but I have recently noticed that this is now a trend that is creeping into commercial experiences, too. For a long time, we customers have been able to rate the service of things we’ve paid for, especially if we bought them online. An email comes, asking for your feedback on the holiday hire car you recently returned, for example. Or the takeaway delivery app asks you, when you’re enjoying a prolonged visit to the toilet the morning after, if that 2am king prawn bhuna delivery was truly all you had hoped it would be. These events are not really like sex maths, they’re just customer feedback, but what is new is that we are being rated on our compatibility with the services.
You’ll struggle to get anywhere with Airbnb, the accommodation site that rents out people’s own homes, if others don’t leave you good reviews. Even if you’re the one who paid to stay somewhere, they will write down just how charming you were on your profile afterwards, for all to see. The speed with which you reply to emails is often noted, leaving you too nervy to go to bed lest somebody on the west coast of America leaves a query and your time zone cheats you out of responding within the hour. Certain dating websites already give your profile picture more prominence if lots of people have been clicking on you appreciatively – how long will it be before they start giving you public ratings after they went on a date with you, too?
Get in an Uber cab these days – something I do far more often than I should – and it’s not just you who gives the driver a mark out of five at the end. They give you, the customer, a rating too – only, you’ll never be able to see it. Other Uber drivers can see it, though, and the next time you log in to the service to see if anyone in your area can pick you up right now, they’ll check your average score and decide if you’re worth the hassle.
This is a thought that has left me drooling and deranged, so desperate am I now for all Uber drivers to rate me, love me, give me all five of their available stars. “WHAT a nice driver he was,” I say in a vile stage whisper to my bored three-year-old, whom I increasingly use as a prop. “Say thank you to the WONDERFUL man, my darling!” I add, hoping that her plaited pigtails can only add to the Personal Charm Experience we offer as passengers. Soon, I will be dressing her as Orphan Annie and telling drivers I’m not actually her mother, I just brought her in off the streets, in the hope I get higher marks for tragedy.
I got in one car the other day and did my usual “Hi, how ARE you?!” spiel to the driver before I remembered that it wasn’t an Uber, it was just the local minicab guy who couldn’t rate me if he tried, and wouldn’t even have wanted to. So I slunk back into the sullen torpor in which you are supposed to enjoy the luxury of taxi journeys. Neither of us spoke. Such a relief.
It is nice to be nice, yes; so the merits of the new system are clear. And if workers are gaining the right to reply, then that’s all for the good, because the customer is often wrong, and sometimes drunk. It’s just that all this fake cheeriness is stressing me out. I suppose the answer is to force myself to stop using these convenient cabs and apps, and go back to hanging around at bus stops and collecting my own takeaways in person. Then I can continue my noble sex maths in peace.
