Charging the Birds
February 16, 2023 – Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Troy and Hayden both looked at their phones as Troy navigated his mini truck through the empty business district.
“There it is,” Troy said, pointing to a rental scooter. “Sometimes the GPS coordinates are a little off and you need to do some hunting. Go grab it.”
Hayden jumped from the truck and crossed into the decorative gravel bed surrounding a parking lot. He lifted the BIRD scooter with both arms and carried it to the pickup’s bed. Two other rental scooters were already lying inside. Hayden dropped in the new scooter and returned to the cab. Troy emerged from the driver’s seat and scanned the scooter’s QR code with his phone.
“That’s about all there is to it,” Troy said to Hayden. “Just follow the instructions on their app. I don’t know what else I can teach you.”
“I just wanted to see someone in action. Sometimes things can be different in real life.”
“They’ve cleared your application already?”
“Yep.”
“Sent you the charger?”
“Yeah. It’s in my apartment.”
“Then you should be all set.”
Troy and Hayden were second cousins, but only knew each other casually through family connections. When Hayden grew interested in the side-hustle of charging rental scooters, his dad told him about Troy. After a few text messages, Hayden drove up to Scottsdale for a ride-along in Troy’s truck.
With the third scooter secured, Hayden and Troy went back to staring at the maps on their phones. “Like I said,” Troy continued, “the BIRD’s with the green dots are the easiest to find. Most of the time they’re on a sidewalk. But you gotta be fast. Other Chargers are out there ready to snag them.”
“So how much do you make a night?”
“On a good night, almost $200.”
“That’s pretty good. I’d be happy with that.”
“To make that much, it’s all about beating the algorithm. It’s like you against a computer.”
“I think I’d rather be working for an algorithm than some human boss. An algorithm can’t tell you what to wear or when to show up.”
Troy gave Hayden a skeptical look. “When it’s just you and the algorithm, you’ve gotta motivate yourself. Even when you have a bad day. It’s not for everybody. I’ve seen lots of people start and then quit a few days later. Same thing with working for Grubhub.”
“You do that too? Maybe I should apply.”
“You should concentrate on charging BIRDs for a while. Figure out if you can work for an algorithm.”
Troy pulled his truck over next to another scooter and motioned for Hayden to fetch it. When it was safely stacked next to the others and scanned on Troy’s phone, Hayden seemed to realize where they were parked.
“Hey, this is pretty close to your house. How about dropping me off and I’ll drive home. I think I understand the system. No reason for me to keep bugging you all night.”
Troy made a detour and Hayden hopped out of his truck and waved goodbye.
“Good luck with everything!” Troy called. “Remember, you versus the algorithm.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“And stay out of Scottsdale. You’re charging down in Tempe, right?”
Hayden laughed like Troy was joking.
“I’m serious,” Troy added. “I better not see you around here.”
The very next night, farther down south in Tempe, Hayden cruised in his own small truck down Mill Street on the edge of the Arizona State campus. He figured he should be in the busiest part of town when 9 pm rolled around and BIRDs became eligible for charging. He watched his phone and the road with one eye and kept his other eye on the girls strutting between bars and dance clubs. He turned up the music in his truck to attract attention and missed the moment when the green BIRD dots appeared on his map.
When Hayden finally returned to his senses, he saw that a green dot was close. A right turn at the next traffic light and he would be on top of it. But the cars surrounding him crawled along with no particular place to go. The light turned green and then red three times before he made the turn. By the time he got to the spot, the green dot had vanished.
Hayden swore and pounded his steering wheel. Some other Charger must have beaten him to it. How could they move so fast? Tempe was not big enough to have a bunch of people competing for BIRDs. Hayden kept driving and spotted his first eligible scooter outside City Hall. He ran, scanned it with his phone, and dropped it in his truck before anyone else could find it.
After pausing to admire his first captured BIRD, Hayden returned to studying his phone map. He decided to go after the dots farther from campus where the traffic was lighter. He drove half a mile and picked up his second scooter. “Not bad,” he said to himself and hurried to the next closest target.
The third BIRD was supposed to be in the dark spot between two streetlights. Hayden drove back and forth but could not see it. He parked and searched on foot, mistaking fallen tree branches for the scooter’s handlebars. According to his phone, he should have been standing right on top of it, but the spot was empty. He remembered Troy talking about ghost scooters with bad GPS units.
Hayden returned to scanning his map and noticed some yellow and red dots not very far from his location. Next to the dots were bigger numbers than the numbers next to the green dots. Greens might be labeled with a 3, 4, or 5. Yellows went up to 10. Reds were 25. Troy had not said anything about yellow and red dots, but Hayden figured they were BIRDs that paid more money for a charge. The yellows and reds were near the Salt River. Hayden got back into his truck and hurried toward the dots.
Hayden found a parking lot near the river’s edge and trudged over the gravel surface on foot toward a collection of dots. He scanned for scooters using his phone’s flashlight. They should have been right in front of him, but all he saw was dirt, cement, and muddy water. After hiking a quarter of a mile, he spotted the top of a scooter sticking above the surface of the river.
He contemplated wading out to get it, but decided any charging reward he might earn was not worth the risk to his life. The submerged scooter was probably broken and unchargeable anyway. Hayden screamed into the darkness about the river’s ghost BIRDs and cursed everyone who thought it was funny to throw them in the water and leave him with nothing but a useless dot showing a scooter’s last dry location.
Back in his truck, Hayden drove out of his way for two more green-dot scooters. It was almost 11 pm by the time he got them loaded and scanned. He figured that was enough for his first night, so he returned to his apartment. One by one, he pushed his captured BIRDs up a staircase, across his carpet, and out to his balcony. He left all four of them charging and went to bed thinking of the money he was earning as he slept.
At 6:30 am the next morning, Hayden’s alarm whined until he could not ignore it. Usually, he was up at 6:30 only if he stayed awake all night, but he had BIRDs to deliver. He pulled on some clothes, pushed the scooters back down the stairs, and hefted them into his truck. He barely beat the 7 am deadline to get them close to a designated Nest area where they could be registered as fully charged and available for rental. He received a message on his phone indicating the credit he earned for his work: $15.
“Fifteen dollars! That’s it?” Hayden grumbled to himself. “I drove around all night. That’s not even minimum wage and I still have to pay for gas.” He returned home and went back to bed.
After waking up a second time, Hayden was willing to blame his first night’s poor payoff on bad luck and inexperience. He would get better. He had to get better. Fifteen dollars per night was not going to pay his rent.
Hayden was downtown again at 9 pm when scooters became eligible for charging. He raced toward the green dots on his phone map, grabbing a few scooters but missing many others. He seemed to always be a few minutes behind the other Chargers who were on the same hunt.
The pattern continued for two more nights, with Hayden grabbing an average of five scooters and earning less than $20 for each excursion. He thought a lot about Troy earning $200 per night and the advice on beating the algorithm. How could he possibly be doing it at $3 or $4 per scooter? Either he had some secret way of collecting much faster than Hayden or he was making way more for every captured BIRD.
Hayden’s thoughts inevitably landed on the yellow and red dot scooters that were worth more than the greens. So far, they had been impossible to find, but maybe Troy had figured a way to do it. Maybe he knew how to solve the GPS glitches. Hayden searched the internet hoping to discover Troy’s secret formula. He read about what caused a scooter to be tagged as yellow or red. They were scooters that had not been used or charged in a while. They were in hard-to-find locations, often on private property. The longer they were untouched, the higher the reward for retrieving them.
Hayden chuckled to himself. Now he knew exactly what Troy meant about beating the algorithm. To make money as a Charger, you had to turn low value BIRDs into high value BIRDs. An ingenious plan began crystallizing.
That night, Hayden rushed to collect as many green-dot scooters as possible. He plopped them into his truck, but he did not scan them with his phone. When he had five BIRDs, he drove to the house of a friend named Robbie. A chain link fence surrounded the front and back yards. Hayden texted Robbie and asked if he would meet him outside. Robbie traipsed out his door wearing nothing but shorts. A dog the size of a small horse leaped from the yard’s dark shadows to join Robbie.
“What’s up?” Robbie asked Hayden from the other side of the fence.
“Can I keep some things in your backyard?”
“Like what?”
“Just some scooters. I’ll put them where no one can see them.”
“Are they stolen?”
“No. I’m just hiding them. The longer I hide them, the more money I can make.”
Robbie looked over at Hayden’s truck. “Fine with me.”
Hayden gestured toward the dog. “Fang won’t bite me, will he?”
“Nah. He’s friendly if he knows you.” Robbie leaned down to Fang and pointed at Hayden. “Friend. No biting.”
Robbie opened a gate in the fence and helped Hayden find an empty spot in the dark backyard where he could dump the BIRDs. “I’ll be coming around every night,” Hayden said before leaving. “I sure hope Fang remembers me.”
For the next week, Hayden continued to find scooters and stopped at Robbie’s during the night to add to his collection. Luckily, Fang remembered who he was and curiously followed him around the yard. The first BIRDs in his pile turned from green to yellow dots and Hayden quietly congratulated himself for beating the algorithm. By the time he had twenty-five BIRDs in Robbie’s yard, the first yellows turned to reds. Now they were each worth $25. He waited until he had eight red dots, then scanned them and drove them to his apartment for charging. He moved them to a street-corner Nest the next morning and the algorithm moved $200 into his account.
Hayden danced victoriously. He was too excited to fall asleep when he returned to his apartment. He beat the algorithm. He had a system. He could make $200 per day by feeding his collection eight green scooters and delivering eight mature, red scooters to a Nest in the morning. He was eager to share the cleverness of it all with someone who could appreciate it. He called up Troy and offered to buy him lunch.
The second cousins met at a hamburger place in Scottsdale. Hayden was almost bursting to share his news, but he restrained himself until they sat down with their food.
“I did it! I made $200 in a night! I beat the algorithm!”
“That’s great. Especially for a beginner. Most newbies give up before they get anywhere close to that number.”
“I guess most of them don’t think about it hard enough. Figure out the secret.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, how you move green dots to red dots. Took me a while, but now I’m using my friend’s house to let my BIRDs ripen. He’s got a dog that’ll scare everyone else off.”
“You’re hoarding?”
“Is that what you call it?”
“That’s what everybody calls it. I hate hoarders!”
Hayden gave Troy a hurt look. “Well how else are you supposed to beat the algorithm?”
“By hustling. I’m out there four or five hours a night. I anticipate where the BIRDs will be. I keep working my routes.”
“My way’s a lot easier.”
“It’s cheating.”
“It’s not cheating. It’s beating the algorithm. It’s a game between me and the system. Who am I hurting?”
“How about the other Chargers who can’t find scooters because you’ve got them hidden. What about customers who want a ride and there aren’t enough scooters to go around.”
Hayden scoffed. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“I hate hoarders,” Troy repeated. “You’re gonna get caught.”
“Who’s gonna catch me? And what can they do?”
Troy shook his head. “You better not try it here in Scottsdale. Keep it down in Tempe.”
“I will. Don’t worry about me.”
Later that night, as Hayden was preparing for his green-dot scooter hunt, he got a message from the BIRD company. They were terminating their relationship. He could no longer work as a Charger. No explanation was provided.
“No! They can’t do that!” Hayden shouted at his phone, after reading the message. “If this is about hoarding, you never said it wasn’t allowed. And how else was I supposed to make a living?” Hayden’s phone could not reply with any answers.
Hayden was too embarrassed to confront Troy about whether he had turned him in. Maybe it was his second cousin and maybe the algorithm was smart enough to kick out people who were not content to obediently collect only green-dot scooters. He would have to move on to the next thing. He had seen LIME rental scooters around. Maybe their algorithm was more forgiving. And maybe he could be a little smarter. One hoard was too obvious. He had lots of friends with backyards and dogs.
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