20:54 Uber 来自英文巴士 
NB: This may not be a word-for-word transcript.
Uber: Disruption in the Taxi Industry
Skip: Welcome back, everyone. My name is Skip Montreux in Tokyo, Japan.
Samantha: And I’m Samantha Vega in Auckland, New Zealand.
Skip: And you are listening to another episode of Down to Business English.
Samantha: Well, I’ve had a great week, yes. Things getting, uh, the sunshine’s out a little bit more and it’s nice out here. How’s your week been, Skip?
Skip: Oh, I’m happy to hear you’re doing well. I think I’m losing my mind, actually.
Samantha: Uh-oh.
Skip: Uh-oh is right. Yesterday I started a new class, uh, in the morning, a new business class. Actually it started the week before and so this was the second time I was traveling to the class and I just lost my mind halfway through the commute. I transferred at a certain station and suddenly I didn’t know where I was. I ... I wasn’t sure which train to take and which direction to go and I actually had to stop and re-trace my mental thoughts as to what I was doing, so I’m a little concerned about where my, my mental, uh, thinking is at the moment.
Samantha: Wow, it sounds like you need some time off at an onsen.
Skip: Oh, that might be the ticket.
Samantha: Or maybe you should start taking taxis a little bit more often.
Skip: You know, taxis, I do take them a little bit too often, and they’re just too expensive, I, I wish I could take them more.
Samantha: Why not use the cheaper alternative, Uber?
Skip: Uber? That’s too dangerous. Didn’t you hear what happened in France the other day? I don’t want rioting in the streets here.
Samantha: Yes, I know, and the, uh, French government has ordered Uber illegal, not the first time that it’s done that, but it’s not the first time the protests for this has happened, in France even, and they have happened quite often around the world.
Skip: Well, Uber certainly is a controversial company internationally and that is our topic today.
Samantha: Well, why don’t we do that, get right into it. Let’s get D2B with Uber, disruption in the taxi industry.
Samantha: So, Skip, uh, what do you know about Uber? I know a little bit about the company. It’s a different type of company.
Skip: Yes, it’s not a traditional, uh, limousine or taxi company. It was founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick who is an American entrepreneur, tech entrepreneur, and he was in a, he was at a conference in Paris and he was, after the conference, he was having a difficult time getting a taxi and he came up with this idea of designing an application that could be installed on your smartphone where you could order a taxi and the taxis, the taxi and the passenger can find each other very smoothly and efficiently, and that was the, uh, the beginning of Uber. So he opened the company, he went back to San Francisco, opened the company and in 2010 started raising capital and over the years, uh, I think it was announced late last year that so far Uber has raised over $1.5 billion dollars, which is a record for a startup company. In fact, they...
Samantha: Wow.
Skip: ...yeah, it’s huge, and if, they estimate that if the company went public today so that the public could buy shares, they value Uber at anywhere between $40 and $50 billon dollars.
Samantha: Wow, that’s incredible. So, do they technically call themselves a tech company or, they’re not a transportation company, as I understand it, that’s how they kind of shirk the rules a little bit.
Skip: They consider themselves a logistics company, actually, and right now they’re focused on moving people, uh, and replacing limousine and taxi services.
Samantha: Oh.
Skip: Do you know much about how they operate?
Samantha: Well, I know they’re different from a traditional taxi in the way that they use the app to order the taxi and that you pay through the app. You don’t pay direct to the driver. But the other thing that’s caused a lot of controversy is the driver’s aren’t licensed. They, they don’t work for Uber. They’re independent contractors, so they’re on their own. Uh, but users of the app can rate drivers and in turn drivers can rate users as well, so that’s kind of a system that they’ve, uh, developed similar to eBay that, uh, you can kind of look at the drivers and say, “Mm, gee, okay, that guy’s got a good rating, I’ll go with him.” And vice versa, drivers, if you have a bad rating as a, as a customer, drivers are probably less likely to come pick you up if you’ve been rated poorly. Another big thing for them is using surge pricing, which this has annoyed a lot of people. They’ve written their own algorithm to determine pricing, uh fares are a lot more at peak times or if it’s raining hard or if it’s, uh, if there’s a concert in town that they know everybody’s trying to get to, or there’s a big game on that they know everybody’s going to, you know, not want to drink and drive, so they want to take a taxi, so they’ve been hiking the fares. They say that they’re following, you know, the supply and demand, but it is, uh, starting to annoy quite a few people.
Skip: Yeah, I’ve heard, I’ve heard a bit about that surge pricing where the same ride, uh, from point A to point B on a nice day, uh, would be $10 or $15 dollars and the same ride on a rainy day at, would be $100 dollars, so that really is a good example of supply and demand.
Samantha: Mm, yes, exactly. They’ve also started, uh, started Uber Pop which is basically different because it’s a ride share and in certain countries, I would imagine in, in Tokyo, ride share is not something that would be very popular there, but in certain companies if somebody happens to be going the same distance as you, you can ride share. They can also jump through some legal loopholes by using that as, uh, one of their company mandates.
Skip: So if I was driving to work and I was going from, from where I live, my neighborhood to downtown Tokyo, if 4 people in my same neighborhood who I don’t know work in the same area, they can contact me and we can share the ride and share expenses and Uber would take a cut of that.
Samantha: Yes. Exactly.
Skip: And that, I think, is what the French taxi drivers are so incensed about.
Samantha: Yes, and, uh, they’ve been jumping through different legal loopholes there for a while and, using different names and such on, but yes, a lot of people are getting very, yeah, very up in arms and very, um, angry with what, uh, how Uber is operating. They’ve also seem to have exploded company-wise. Um, do you happen to know where they operate? They operate everywhere, don’t they?
Skip: Le... legally, they operate in 22 US cities and 17 cities outside of the US. Now, I say, legally. They are entering other cities and they are working outside the regulations, uh, so they’re, at the moment they’re working in cities that have actually banned Uber, but they are hoping or their strategy is to introduce Uber into a marketplace, have everybody who lives there really love using Uber and, and want to use it and get that public pressure to push the politicians in the city to change the laws to accept Uber, and what I find very interesting about this is Uber has hired David Plouffe to help them in this area. Do you know who David Plouffe is?
Samantha: I know that he, uh, he did a lot to do with President Obama’s campaign when he was running for office.
Skip: That’s right. He was the chief campaign or political strategist, uh, and he was instrumental in introducing Obama’s tech side, if you remember, back in 2008, Obama really took advantage of Twitter and social media and Plouffe was very involved in that, and once Obama became President, he was a senior political advisor for President Obama. So, it’s very interesting that they’re hiring a po...political strategist and not a business person to help them enter these markets.
Samantha: Yes, hiring a political strategist, they should, seems sometimes they should hire somebody to do a little bit, uh, more positive PR for them though because they do seem to get some negative PR for some very unscrupulous business practices. Things like getting their members, Uber members, to call up the competition to order taxis, a large amount of taxis, and then canceling them last minute which obviously annoys the real customers that they have because they’re having to wait longer and then they’re doing things like trying to poach their drivers behind their back. Uh, a lot of the driver’s backgrounds are not checked, there’s been some terrible circumstances of that, not having the correct insurance when an accident happens.
Skip: Mmm.
Samantha: Uh, just this year, there’s a woman in Delhi who claims to have been raped by an Uber driver, uh, in her city. She’s suing the company for negligence in US courts.
Skip: In the US?
Samantha: In the US. She’s doing it in the US courts and they’re doing things like there’s been a few cases of dropping off passengers and, um, and checking on passengers, where they go, what they’re going to do, and even to the point of going back to their house and robbing their homes.
Skip: That’s incredible. Well, it’s all of these, uh, stories are from the driver base, you know, cutting these corners. They’re getting lower quality, less qualified drivers, but even the executives are responsible for a lot of their bad image in the press. Very famously last year, one of their VP’s, by the name of Emil Michael, he hosted a dinner and he invited journalists and the purpose of it was to try to create a good atmosphere between the company and journalists, and stupidly he made the comment that he sometimes felt like hiring private detectives to dig up bad information about journalists and their family members, uh, to discredit them so that people wouldn’t take their stories so seriously, and then it came out that Uber executives can follow people using what they call a ‘God view’. Of course, all the passengers have put their information into an application, so in Uber central headquarters in San Francisco they can put maps up and they can see who is in what taxi, where they’re going, what time they’ve left, what time they’ve, uh, they’ve arrived, and collect all this very, very personal and private data. And, you know, honestly, when I heard that story last year, I deleted my Uber app from my application and I just don’t trust the company.
Samantha: Yes, and on top of that, they’ve got you credit card information as well. But I’ll tell you one thing, they are getting money, continuously getting money. Billions of it, and, uh, venture capitalists, because they don’t invest in things that they don’t think are going to be successful, so venture capitalists keep giving them the money, so they must be doing something right.
Skip: I agree, they must be doing something right. Investors do love putting their money into this company, so it will be interesting to see where this company is a year from now and how they handle all of these political and legal issues that they’re facing.
Samantha: And also, I think for them to start up the new type of business model, that it’ll be interesting to see what types of companies copy that same sort of model.
Skip: Hmm.
Samantha: Think of all the different type of public companies that we have out there that, uh, now can have different business models and all the different competition that’s going to, uh, come in to try and get their little new piece of the pie.
Skip: We are certainly living in interesting times, but you know what, Sam? I think it is now time for you and I to get D2V, Down to Vocabulary.
Sam: In D2V today, we are going to talk about and give examples of six different words or phrases that we used in our discussion of Uber. However, there are many other excellent words and expressions in our conversation, so be sure you take some time to study the audio script.
Skip: And don’t just read it silently to yourself. Practice saying the words and phrases out loud, in a big, confident voice. Use the mp3 and audio script together and shadow Sam and I. This kind of activity will help you internalize the vocabulary and the end result will be you sounding more professional when you communicate in English.
Sam: Great advice. So here we go with our first word – the verb ‘to shirk’.
Skip: Twerk? Did you say twerk?
Sam: No, I did not say twerk. I said shirk. But they do sound similar and they are both verbs describing a particular body motion, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt that your mind isn’t in the gutter.
Skip: Well, thank you.
Sam: Now, whereas twerking is a movement of the hips in... how should I say this... in a slightly sexual manner made famous by Miley Cyrus, shirking, on the other hand, is a movement of the shoulders in a fast upward direction.
Skip: A fast upward direction? As if you are trying to get something off your shoulders without using your hands?
Sam: That’s right. In English, concepts like responsibility, burdens, laws, and rules are often idiomatically connected to a person’s shoulders. So when a person doesn’t follow a rule, we can say they are shirking the rules. In the story, I commented that Uber sometimes shirked the rules by claiming that they were a tech company and therefore didn’t have to follow the same rules and regulations as a transportation company. Can you provide a business example, Skip?
Skip: Certainly. You mentioned that shirk is often paired with responsibility. I recently had to dismiss a teacher from my company because he was shirking his responsibilities.
Sam: How was he doing that?
Skip: Well, he never submitted reports on time, didn’t maintain his attendance records, and was very inconsistent with a variety of other administrative tasks. It was really unfortunate actually because his teaching ability in the classroom was pretty good.
Sam: Shirking your work responsibilities is a sure way to get fired.
Skip: Yes, it is. Our next word today is also connected to rules and laws. And it is the noun ‘loophole’. A loophole is a mistake in the way a law or rule is written that makes it possible to disobey, or not follow it. In our discussion, Sam mentioned that one loophole Uber used was changing their company name so they could continue doing business.
Sam: The business world is full of loopholes, wouldn’t you say, Skip?
Skip: To a degree, yes. Lawyers and tax accountants are always looking for loopholes to help their clients stay out of jail or avoid paying taxes. Can you give us an example in a professional context, Sam?
Sam: I was reading just the other morning how Hillary Clinton is saying she would close many corporate tax loopholes if she is elected President of the US next year.
Skip: I am so not looking forward to the upcoming presidential race.
Sam: I know. It is over a year away and it’s dominating all the headlines.
Skip: What’s our next word, Sam?
Sam: Next up is the verb ‘incense’. This verb is often used in the passive voice, to be incensed by something and it means to be very angry. In the story Skip commented that one reason French taxi drivers were incensed was due to Uber’s introduction of their ride sharing program. In other words, the ride sharing program was making the taxi drivers extremely angry. Skip, are you incensed over anything at moment.
Skip: Funny, you ask, Sam. Actually I’m completely incensed with the Canadian government right now. They have just introduced a rule that makes it impossible for any citizen who has been living outside of the country for more than 5 years vote in a national election.
Sam: So expats like you and me can’t vote?
Skip: That’s right! Doesn’t that incense you?
Sam: A little, but I’m pretty sure that law will be overruled by the Supreme Court in the not too distant future. Besides, Skip, honestly, in the entire time you have lived outside of Canada, how many times have you voted in a Canadian election?
Skip: That’s not the point.
Sam: That’s what I thought. You’ve never voted from overseas have you?!
Skip: Well, no, not exactly.
Sam: So, there isn’t anything for you to be up in arms about.
Skip: I suppose you are right. And that happens to be our next phrase, ‘to be up in arms’. ‘To be up in arms over something’ is an expression that communicates a person has a major complaint or serious issue with something. In our report, Sam mentioned that many people were up in arms with how Uber conducted business. What she meant was many people had serious issues with Uber’s business practices.
Sam: So to be up in arms with something is very similar to being incensed about something.
Skip: Yes, they are synonymous. Can you give us a business example?
Sam: Sure. If you get a complaint from a customer about the price of your company’s product, you might report the situation to your manager by saying “My client is up in arms about the increase in our prices. Is it possible for us to offer them a discount?”
Skip: Nice example. What’s our next word?
Sam: I’d like to talk about the verb ‘to dig up’.
Skip: Oh, yes. I use this verb very often. I think many listeners will be familiar with the literal meaning of ‘dig up’ which describes uncovering something buried under the ground.
Sam: Yes, but when used idiomatically, it means to find or discover information that is somewhat secretive, or not commonly known. In our discussion, Skip told the story of how the Vice President of Uber wanted to hire private detectives to dig up information on journalists who had written negative stories about Uber. In other words, the VP wanted the detectives to find information about the reporter’s personal life to make them look bad in the eyes of the public. Skip, you like to use this word. Can you give us a business example?
Skip: Absolutely. I was assigned a very special task recently at work.
Sam: Oh, and what was that?
Skip: I was asked to go into our company files and dig up the records on every teacher that has worked for the company over the past 25 years. Then I had to go online and try to dig up which ones have left Japan and then dig up where they may be living now.
Sam: Why on Earth do you have to do all that digging?
Skip: I think the company is planning to have a reunion party and wants to send out invitations to all the current and former staff.
Sam: A reunion? That sounds fun. But let’s move on to our final word.
Skip: Good idea. Finally today, I’d like to talk about the phrase ‘on top of that’, which can be used when you want to add more information to what you, or someone else has said. At the end of today’s discussion, I mentioned to Samantha that I had deleted the Uber app from my iPhone because I didn’t trust the company. She said that on top of that, Uber had my credit card number. In other words, deleting the app was good because I didn’t trust them and they had my credit card number on file. Sam, can you give us a quick example of ‘on top of that’?
Sam: Sure. I think we should wrap D2V up for today. I need to make a trip to the supermarket and on top of that, I have an appointment with some friends in a couple of hours from now.
Skip: Wow, that is a quick example.
Skip: Thank you, Samantha. It was good chatting with you today.
Sam: You too, Skip. It’s always nice to talk with you.
Skip: I hope I haven’t put you too far behind schedule with meeting your friends later.
Sam: Oh, no, not at all. I’ve already made my Uber reservation so soon as I get back from the supermarket I’ll quickly freshen up, by the time I’m ready my Uber will be waiting for me.
Skip: Sounds Uber convenient. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time.
Sam: Bye bye.
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