From Pedicabs to Peddling Cosmetics, Economy Pushes Some to Seek Extra Work

Shelby Shenkelman enjoys working as a pricing analyst for a company that produces airline meals. At 25, she is making more than $50,000 a year.”It should not be a bad salary,” she said. That is, unless you have $30,000 in student loans, a $300 a month car payment, some credit card debt, grocery bills that seem to be going up and rent that definitely is going up. “I can survive on my one paycheck, but it’s very, very difficult. It’s very, very tight,” the Reston resident said. In December, she decided to take a second job. Two nights during the week and on weekend days, she works as a personal shopper at a clothing store, earning $9 an hour plus commission.

With a grim economic outlook for 2009, more Americans are not just cutting costs but are finding ways to make more money by taking part-time or odd jobs, employers and economists said. Many are doing it because their wages have stalled while the cost of living has gone up. Others are picking up extra work to pay off debt or cushion their savings. For others, it’s a backup plan in case they get laid off from their full-time jobs.

In a survey of 1,400 workers by the staffing firm Express Employment Professionals, 42 percent said they were looking for a second job to make ends meet. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,413 adults, 24 percent said they or someone in their household has taken an extra job because of economic troubles.

Meanwhile, staffing agencies across the country are seeing an uptick in the number of people seeking evening and weekend jobs, even if they are overqualified for them. And traffic is increasing for Web sites such as SnagAJob.com that specialize in hourly work.
“I think a lot more people are open to just doing any kind of job, maybe not specifically in the field they have been trained for,” said Amy Little, branch manager of Manpower Inc., a national staffing agency. “They will just do anything and everything to make ends meet.”

For Nate Chenenko, having two jobs has made traveling on weekends more difficult. “My free time has a much higher opportunity cost now: Taking a weekend trip costs me the price of the trip plus the wages lost from missing work at my part-time job,” he said. On weekdays, Chenenko dons a collared shirt, tie and dress slacks and heads to the Navy Yard where he is a contract specialist for the U.S. Navy.

On Thursday and Friday nights and on weekends, he switches to ski pants and a cap and drives people around the District in a pedicab, or bike taxi. Since he started in October, he’s been making about $19 to $23 an hour pedaling as many as four people at a time to such destinations as Union Station and the White House. It’s a big help, he said, especially considering that he is making about $40,000 a year, and that his grocery and utility bills have gone up.

“Instead of buying or purchasing expensive things, I’m trying to save,” he said. “I took this to build up that safety net.”

Labor experts said you should avoid any conflicts with your primary employers by checking your employee handbook and making sure you are even allowed to take a second job. If a second job is permitted, be honest with your employer about your extracurricular work. And whatever you do, never do work for your second job while at your full-time one. Keeping that primary job should be a priority.

If you’re like me, you’ve invested more than a few idle minutes thinking about being a professional cyclist. What could be better than getting paid to ride all day long? Daydreams are fun, but sober reflection on the shrinking nature of the pro pelotons, both worldwide and domestic, would lead most of us to conclude that cycling for a living is not realistically in our future.

So what if I told you that I could get you a paying cycling job tomorrow? That you would enjoy the consummate cosmopolitan benefits just as other top cycling pros do. And to top it off, even though you’ll be riding 6-8 hours per day, you’ll never have to tackle a hill and headwinds will be as rare as a 12 ounce Ruth’s Chris ribeye. Furthermore, you’ll never have to answer to a surly directeur sportif who doesn’t even speak your language, never have to sacrifice your legs for an ungrateful prima donna team leader and never suffer the ignominy of watching an Italian gregario who has been latched onto your wheel for untold kilometers suddenly bolt by you to win a Grand Tour stage that so rightfully belonged to you.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not talking about a racing gig, but rather the next best thing – raking in the big bucks as a pedicab driver! On a recent trip to New York City I learned all about pedaling tourists around from Kemal, a young Turkish student who has been plying this trade for close to a year. To cut to the chase, in New York, a pedicab driver can make $200 or more per day working a full 8-hour shift. Steady income is not guaranteed, however, as weather, time of year, day of week, event calendars, police forbearance, level of competition and a host of other contingencies make the average day somewhat of a crapshoot. At 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night when our show got out, there were dozens of available pedicabs prowling the theater district, so competition appears to be fierce.

In the very best case, a hard-working, hard-selling, extremely fortunate pedicabber might be able to net $400 per day. There is no legislated or regulated rate structure for these things, but the standard rule of thumb is $1 per city block. The night my wife and I took a pedicab, we got toted 15 blocks, from the theater district to Grand Central Station, for $20 (plus tip). It was an exciting ride, because Manhattan traffic is pretty Darwinian, and Kemal took enough chances with our lives to get our hearts racing. Pedicabs are not required to be licensed in New York City at the moment, but that rule has been on and off a number of times as the city and pedicab owners bicker over the right amount of regulation. Even though licensing is not currently required, city police officers can find plenty of other regulations to use as excuses for citing pedicab drivers whenever the whim strikes them. Kemal complained bitterly about a few $150 tickets he had received lately and one afternoon near Time Square we saw two pedicabs being written up simultaneously by the same officer.

The cab we were in had a 21-speed drive, rear disk and front V-brakes along with taillights and LED turn signals. Despite the 21-gears at his disposal, Kemal never shifted once, preferring to stand on the pedals from a stop and slowly lug his way up to a more comfortable cadence level as he got the big rig moving. He was not a very big guy, so it was impressive that he was able to get his 600 pound payload rolling at a decent speed (I’d guess we traveled at around 5 mph). Just for clarification, my wife and I are not 300 pound behemoths, but the weight of the rider, the cab itself (well over 100 pounds) and passengers definitely adds up.

Kemal is not a racer, and was not even a bicycling aficionado when he started his run as a pedicab driver. He was (and is) a smoker (he’s Turkish so it’s almost a cultural requirement) but he is very proud of the fact that he has lost close to 10 pounds and is in great physical shape by virtue of his daily pedaling. He told us that most of the cab drivers were really not that interested in cycling as a sport, but that a few were pretty serious bicyclists although he was unaware of any who were notable racers.

There are a couple of local connections to this story. Pedicabs have become more and more common on Denver streets, especially around the theater center and the 16th Street Mall. Even more impressive, most of the pedicabs serving New York and Denver are made right here in Broomfield, Colorado by a company called Main Street Pedicabs. Considering their size and weight, they appear to be bargains at pricing well below the cost of a mid-level carbon racing bike.

On balance, it’s possible that being a pedicab driver is not quite as glamorous or lucrative as racing for a Pro Tour team. Still, the chance to spend your days outside doing something you love is worth at least a few minutes of daydreaming the next time your day job makes you want to take up voodoo.

“Environmentally friendly, well-equipped state-of-the-art rickshaw bicycles are a new way of getting around Seven Mile Beach and George Town,” said owner and operator Brian Barnes.

“I have no set route, and go wherever the passenger wants to go. They are well-equipped with signals, break lights, headlights, even seatbelts.”

Mr Barnes thought of the idea two years ago, and made his first application in September 2005 to import the rickshaw bicycles.

“The first two are here, and there are more on the way,” he said.

They can also be used for special events, such as weddings, private parties, parades, etc and they are also available for advertising and branding,” he added.

Mr Barnes also said businesses can advertise on the cabs, by ‘branding’ them with companies’ or products’ logos.

“It’s something new to Cayman and people use them right now in big cities such as Denver, New York, Florida, Las Vegas and Victoria in British Columbia, which is where I first fell in love with them and rode them to earn spare money, when I was going to school there,” said Mr Barnes.

People will be able to locate the cabs in and around the Seven Mile Beach and George Town locations.

For contact information people can phone 947-2222 or visit the company’s website at www.CaymanPediCab.com or email christopher@caymannetnews.com.

Content provided courtesy caymannetnews.com.

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