Subj : Shortbread and counselling: Hilary Barry meets Hamilton's 'Uber Nan'
To   : All
From : News Person
Date : Mon Apr 08 2024 01:39 pm

Hilary Barry meets Shelley Winiana, who might be Hamilton's most highly-rated
Uber driver. If you've been lucky enough to get a ride in her car, you'll
know why.

For the past five and a half years, the seventy-year-old "Uber Nan" (as her
regulars affectionately know her) has completed 29,000 rides.

"I love it. I absolutely love my job," said Winiana.

"I love the people I meet. Everything about my job I love."

It was an unexpected work transition for Winiana, who at 64 had called time
on a job she'd had for thirty years - she was an office manager at a local
engineering firm. The job had become stressful, and Winiana opted for
retirement.

But at home full-time, she quickly got bored.

"Six months after retiring, I'd get off my La-Z-Boy after watching junk TV
all day, and I'd think, 'Why did I get out of my La-Z-Boy?' Oh, and I
thought, I'm losing the plot."

With her fabulous people skills, a friend suggested she become an Uber driver.

"That rang a bell in my mind, and I thought, right, I'm going to buy a hybrid
and become an Uber driver, and here I am, five and a half years later."

With a rating of 4.99, Winiana is well-loved by her community, many of whom
call her "Uber Nan" or "Shortbread Shelley".

"People get in my car and say, 'You've got a lovely presence about you.'
Yeah, it's the grandmother vibe. So I either get called Whaea, Aunty, or Nan.

"I feel very privileged about that; I think that's a lovely mark of respect."

Behind the wheel, Winiana is a counsellor, a shoulder to cry on, and a
lifelong friend to some of her regular customers.

She is also famous for her homemade shortbread. Baking shortbread started as
a gimmick to raise her rating, but it was such a hit that she couldn't stop
making it.

"I did it for my first week. I was looking to give a wee handout to my
customers, and my sister suggested making shortbread. So, I got this recipe
out of my old Edmonds cookbook that belonged to my mum, and I started baking
shortbread.

"I saw my rating was getting good marks, so I thought maybe I'd keep this
going for a while. Five and a half years later, I'm still baking shortbread!"

One day off
Winiana has baked hundreds of biscuits and always bakes them on a Sunday -
her one day off.

The shortbread is packaged into little cellophane bags and dished out to
customers at the end of the journey, never the beginning, because she doesn't
want them eating in her car and dropping crumbs.

That's one of the few rules she's had, along with no swearing or alcohol.

I wondered how the young people reacted when she pulled up in the car and
told them to ditch the booze before getting in.

"When I pull up, and they've got their tins of whatever, I just say, 'Skull
it and put it in the recycle bin because there's no alcohol allowed in my
car,' and they're really good."

Winiana said she'd never had serious trouble and always felt safe, even on
Friday and Saturday nights.

"I feel totally safe because it's GPS monitored wherever I go. They [Uber]
know who's in my car, they know exactly the distance I'm meant to go, and if
for some reason I go off a bit further, they'll always check in to make sure
I'm okay."

Although she's earning more as an Uber driver than she did in her office job,
Winiana said it was the chance to connect with people that was the biggest
motivation. It was never a case of just getting passengers from A to B.

"It's really humbled me. I think I did what I set out to do."

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Windows/64)
 * Origin: S.W.A.T.S BBS Telnet swatsbbs.ddns.net:2323 (63:10/102)

.