Baby Girl?
“I pick up this 20ish year old who works the deli counter at my grocery store. As I’m driving him, he asks if we can stop at his mom’s real quick. He runs in and comes back out with what looks like a bundle of cloths swaddling a baby.
Now I know it’s not a baby because there’s no car seat but he’s talking to it sweetly and rubbing it in the backseat. ‘Hey little girl, are you okay? Easy, easy, we’ll be home soon.’ So I’m thinking, it’s his puppy or kitten his mom was watching, and so I turn to look at the cute little critter.
It’s a sandwich, a freaking turkey, lettuce, and cheese sub swaddled up like a baby and he’s rubbing the sandwich’s ‘face’ and talking to it. I turned back around without a word and drove particularly fast on that trip. I don’t go to that grocery store anymore.”
An “Innocent” Pickup
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“I picked up two guys one Saturday evening, and they said that they were headed to a bar to hang out. I didn’t think much of it until they got into the car. Something smelled horrible. I couldn’t pinpoint what the smell was though. It almost smelled like spoiled meat or fish.
We didn’t talk much through the ride, other the usual get-to-know-you conversation. They were pretty short with their answers, so I just let it go and kept the silence.
It got to the point where the smell coming from them was so unbearable that I had to crack a few windows just to air out. As we were nearing their destination, one of the guys said, ‘You can just drop us off here.’ It was a few blocks from where they said their destination was.
They opened the doors and as they were stepping out of the car, they ran. I was really confused. Within a few seconds, I couldn’t see them anymore. I looked in the back seats of my car only to find bloodstains on the seat. I thought it looked really suspicious, so I called the police. They looked at my car and asked me for more details. The police told me that there was a woman who was killed earlier today, and the suspects were two middle-aged men. I described them and they matched the descriptions perfectly.
The police called for backup and started searching the whole area, and it turns out that the guys were caught a few hours later.”
An Unexpected Blind Date
“It was an Uber Pool, and the two passengers were in the same general neighborhood. The first one was this clean-cut, kinda preppy guy who just sort of exuded an air of wholesomeness. Imagine a 22-year-old Mister Rogers and give him a pastel pink shirt and meticulously pressed slacks. He’s got a bouquet of flowers and has ‘The Smile.’ Guys know ‘The Smile,’ that expression worn by a guy who has had some sort of positive development in the fields of romance and relationships. Not the Bone Town Grin, but like a First Date Smile.
We get to the other pickup, and it’s this punk girl. Absolutely metal. Blood-red and black mohawk like a foot tall, black combat pants, combat boots with neon pink laces, slayer shirt, tattoos, the whole nine yards. Like most punks and metalheads, it turns out she’s nice, and she and the guy start talking. Turns out they’re both going to the same place downtown.
Then it turns out that they’re both on their way to a blind date set up by their respective friends.
Then it turns out that their date-setting-up friends have the same name.
Then it turns out their respective friends are in fact the same person.
Then it turns out they are each other’s blind date.
They hit it off immediately. If they had been any sweeter together, I would have spontaneously entered a diabetic coma.”
Unresponsive And Alone
“I pulled up to a popular bar to pick a single girl up around 1:00 am. She was clamoring for this guy to get in the car to come with her. He clearly was uncomfortable and said no. She got in and seemed defeated but jovial with me.
It was clear within maybe minute 2 of the drive that she was pretty wasted and declining in her presence quickly. She was in my front seat next to me. She stopped talking and started slouching, looking out her window. Next thing I know, she’s completely bent over face basically at her feet passed out. That’s when I say her name and try to ask if she’s okay. I get no response. After a few minutes passed with her flat out unresponsive, I felt I had to do something.
Fearful it was inappropriate, I felt I had to touch her back to try and register some response. I slowly prod her back calling her name trying to get her attention all while I’m driving busy state street. Nothing.
I finally pull up to her house in a quiet dark neighborhood and she’s still knocked out cold. I park on the street and get out of the car to walk around to her door and open it hoping she’d wake up or something. Thankfully, when I did that she regained some kind of consciousness. She first claimed it wasn’t her house but then realized it was. I literally had to pull her out of the car and start carrying her to her house. She started making gargling sounds while walking on her grass and that’s when I set her down to let her puke her brains out in her front yard.
So here I am, stuck at 1:15 am watching this stranger puke and I just have to sit back and watch. What do I do, just leave her there? Obviously, I can’t do that. So I let her finish and then bend down to see if she’s okay. I tried to comfort her. She asked if I was in law enforcement because of how I was talking to her in a formal but caring way. I told her no.
Then I helped her up and helped walk her to her front door. I didn’t feel comfortable walking in the house so I asked if she could walk in and she said yes. I watched her walk to her couch and that’s when I left back to my car. I’m not a drinker so more than anything it just showed me how bad it can ruin your night. And that some people really are alone and it’s really sad.”
Capri Fun In The Sun
“I picked up an elderly lady in my 3-series BMW in a rather sketchy part of Memphis at about 8:00 am on a weekday morning. It shouldn’t be anything other than an ordinary ride. She gets in and says, ‘Alright, I need you to take me to work, but first we got to go to the corner store.’ I say okay and start toward the nearest corner store, thinking she is just picking something up for after work. On the way there, she mentions she works for a repossession company and that they’re employed by a car dealership that intentionally sells cars to people that can’t pay for them. She says she wants to swing by an address on the way to work to see if there is a car she needs to repossess is located there. She says the cars usually have GPS, but she thinks the owner of the car has disabled it.
We arrive at the corner store and the lady goes in and comes out. She gets in the car and before I can ask her not to drink in the car she has downed an entire pint of Smirnoff. At this point, I can’t even be mad; I’m flabbergasted. Laughing, I ask the old lady if she even had a chaser. She pulls out a Capri Sun, stabs it with the straw, and starts drinking it. She says, ‘You probably think I’m completely insane or something.’ I reply, ‘I don’t know if you are or not, but at least you’re up and at em’ this morning headed to work.’
Then she starts directing me back into the sketchy neighborhood to search for a black Chrysler 300. I make it clear to her that I am only a driver and that if we find this car I am not getting out of my car. She agrees and says she’ll just call a tow truck if we see the car. As we’re cruising this really sketchy area looking for the car, she is getting more and more wasted as the Smirnoff seeps into her. She keeps asking if every black 4-door car is a Chrysler 300. I’m wondering if she even knows what a 300 is. I notice we are getting strange looks from the people we drive by as we head down a long dead-end street with a shady looking, gated apartment complex at the end that kinda looks like the street from the movie Training Day. We reach the end and go to turn around and I realize again how strange we look cruising around here. If the cops saw us, they would assume we were looking for something illegal. I notice again that everyone sitting outside the apartment complex is staring at us like we’re the elephant in the room.
I guess she senses my discomfort, or maybe she had to be at work at 9:00 am, because she says, ‘Okay, now I feel like I’m ready to deal with these people, let’s head to (such and such sketchy car dealership).’ So we get close to the dealership and she tells me to park and produces another pint of Smirnoff and Capri Sun from her bag. She downs half the pint, mentions something about saving some for later, punches a straw in her Capri Sun, and says, ‘time to go to work, have a nice day,’ and exits the vehicle. I just sit there, flabbergasted.
This was a seriously hardcore old lady of probably 65 or 70 years. Or maybe she just looked old because she drank so much, I’m not sure. It was a pretty nice fare though, with all the driving around we did for an hour.”
Bachelorettes Gone Wild
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“I pick up some women who immediately inform me that they’re going to a bachelorette party, and then they all crammed into the back seat. The bride-to-be is sitting in the middle, wearing a hat made of gigantic, floppy, rubber dongs. They were, at this point, sober. I feel like it’s important to point that out. I think, ‘I should probably not comment on her choice of headwear,’ in my own head until I realized that I needed to back down their long, narrow driveway, and she was blocking the mirror.
I had to ask her to remove her dong-hat so I could back up. This was, apparently, hilarious, and they spent the rest of the trip laughing about the phrase ‘dong-hat.'”
A Long Winding Road
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“It’s about 10:30 pm. I get a request and accept it. It’s a 20something-year-old girl just getting off work at a retail clothing store. She needs a ride to her home, about 35 minutes outside the city limits. That’s cool, as a long ride equals more money. I get to her house and she gets out and I drive away. Now, I’m about 25 miles away from the city so I don’t really expect to get any hits out there. I’m about to head back in when I get another request. This one is another 30 minutes further outside the city limits. Hmm…maybe this person wants to go downtown. That’s an hour long ride, which means a lot of money. I’m down. I start heading their way. It’s a beautiful night so I cruise the whole way with my windows down.
Long, winding, narrow roads. No street lights for miles. Finally, I come across the property. It’s a ranch-style place. I turn in. Still no lights. Pitch black. I drive in for about two miles with no signs of a house. I’m doubting my GPS at this point. Oh well, I’m already this far. Keep going.
Oh cool, a house! No lights on. Something doesn’t seem right. I swing my car around to face the exit, leave my car in drive and rest my foot on the brake, just in case and waited for a while. Nothing. Let me give the guy a call.
He answers. Sounds confused.
‘Hey, I’m your Uber driver, I’m outside. Take your time, I’m here whenever you’re ready.’
‘Uber? I didn’t request a ride.’
‘Hmm? I’m at ###XXXXX, Texas. Your address and information come up on my app.’
‘Texas? I’m in Indiana. I’ve never been to Texas. Please don’t charge me.’ He hangs up.
At that moment, I felt the already pitch black night get darker. I turn down the radio. My window was still open and so I started listening.
You know that sound of a dirt road when somebody is walking on it? How it crunches and you can hear every step? Imagine that sound, but there are two sets of feet. And they’re running. Getting louder. I look out my rear view mirror and the only light is from the red parking lights of my car.
Two men. All black clothes painted red by my brake lights. Sprinting. Getting closer. Getting louder.
I always carry my grandpa’s old Native American Axe with me under the seat of my car. It wasn’t until that night that I truly felt how inferior of a weapon that actually is. But something is better than nothing I suppose.
I slammed on the gas, my car threw pebbles and rocks at them as I semi-burned out and I drove as fast as I could out of that property. Got back on that winding road, followed it all the way to a well-lit gas station, shifted to park, and sat there, stunned. What just happened?
I tried following up with Uber. Nothing really came of it. To this day I’ll always have to wonder what happened that night.”
Punk Rock Fan Or Something More?
“A few weeks ago, around 2:00 in the morning I pick up two women in their 40s from a punk rock show at The Earl in East Atlanta, and they’re only going about a mile.
On the way, they ask me if I can continue on to take one of them home, and that they’ll request a second ride for it. Get to stop 1 and end the ride. The lady requests the second ride as a Line. Normally, I don’t take Lyft Line rides, but I had already told her I’d take the ride. She says she’s just got to run in and get her stuff.
She takes about five minutes, which is longer than the one and a half I’m supposed to wait, but now I’m kind of already held hostage. I had another rider added and dropped in the time I waited. She comes back with her things and gets in. About a minute into the ride we get another group of two passengers added.
While heading their way, she makes a comment along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry if they’re dangerous. I’ve got my machete.’ I fully thought she was kidding. I pick up the next two people and we’re off to Buckhead. They all hit it off, so I just kind of listen to them talk and interject now and then. A few minutes from her stop, she makes another comment about her machete. I’m starting to wonder if she’s serious, or just busting balls. The other passengers take it in stride, probably assuming it’s some kind of joke. Arrive at her stop, she gets out, grabs her duffel bag and her machete and leaves. On her way up the driveway, she holds the machete over her head and pumps it in the air a few times. The other passengers got a little nervous after that, and couldn’t believe she actually had a machete. To help paint the picture, the lady looked a bit like Aileen Wuornos with very frizzy hair.”
Riding To Church
“A few months ago, this lady came into my car whilst busily talking on her phone: “Yeah you can’t tell anyone on the team yet. No no, I haven’t told anyone at all.”
I was secretly eavesdropping, as I usually do, trying to figure out what kind of job she had. Then I hear:
‘The details are kind of gruesome. The poor thing was lying there for a while after it happened because there was no one around. These pricks took everything from her and tried to steal her car but they apparently ran over her and they just booked it. Her body was practically split in two under one of the wheels. It was only a couple hours later someone saw it and called us. She was still alive when we got there. Hey, listen I gotta go. We’ll talk more soon.’
We had reached her destination: church. She got out of the car with a quick thank you.”
St. Patrick’s Day
“I picked up a couple in their thirties on St. Patrick’s Day this year at 2 AM. They wanted to take about a 35-mile drive at 6.3x surge, so I was about to give the third highest paying fare I’d ever given, a great way to end the night!
They had clearly been drinking like they were 20 somethings since early in the day. The wife (in the front seat) was super apologetic for the first five minutes or so, completely embarrassed about their level of wastedness, while the husband (in the back) was trying to be my new best friend. After five minutes or so though, the sandman paid them a visit, and they both passed out. I drove for the next 20 minutes in relative peace.
When we arrived in their driveway, the husband was sound asleep, and they had a half inch of wet snow in their driveway, so I took the wife inside first. While on the way in, she upended her purse in the snow, but I was more focused on getting her safely inside. Once we got in, I helped her to the bathroom, and then went to the garage to get a snow shovel. I cleared a four-foot wide path from the garage to the car, so I could get the husband inside (he’s a bigger guy, and I wanted to be safe) and finally got him awake. I gave him my shoulder and got him inside. He begged me ‘please, just get me to the recliner, I can’t make it to bed,’ so that’s where we headed. All the while, the wife is throwing up with the force of a small waterfall in the bathroom.
I ran outside and grabbed the contents of her purse, which included her phone (absolutely soaked at this point) and came back inside. She begged me to rice her phone, so I started to dig through her cupboards for a bag and rice. While digging, I came across their medication and pulled some Advil for them. I riced her phone then gave them both Advil and water and told them to take more in the morning, as they were going to need it. Then I locked the door and showed myself out. In the end, I was dropping them off for well over half an hour, but the fare was awesome and the day was my second best day of driving, so it didn’t really bug me.
The kicker? They left me a 5-star review the next day: ‘Pretty OK guy.’
Best ride ever.”
No Light Grey Upholstery
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“I picked up a client who said he was on his way to the hospital to get ‘something’ removed. It was very clear by his movements that he had something stuck in his butt. I asked if he needed an ambulance instead but he said that he didn’t have insurance, so he couldn’t afford it. After I dropped him off and helped him in, I got back in the car and looked back to find a blood stain on the seat.
The morals of the story are
1) If you’re poor, don’t shove things in your butt that can get stuck.
2) Never get light grey upholstery in your new car.
I didn’t charge him. I honestly felt bad for him more than anything else. He seemed like a nice guy and if he was really in such a hard time financially that he had to take a bumpy Uber ride with something inside him, I couldn’t do that to him so I got it cleaned myself.”
Lots Of Interesting Rides
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“Let’s see…
- Gave a ride to an adult film star who had me take her to several stops to pick up party favors before going to an industry party.
- Dropped an agent off at an FBI sting. He identified when and where I’d see helicopters while driving to the destination and pointed out the unmarked vehicles.
- Lots of intimate favors offered, often in jest as harassment, but quite a few have been serious (and usually from married women).
- Get offered illegal substances multiple times per week.
- Threats of violence when I kick people out are pretty common. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if I’m murdered over this terrible ob.
- Jaywalking is a HUGE issue. There have been quite a few times where I’ve nearly hit someone. One time, in particular, I had to slam on my breaks and swerve into oncoming traffic. I stayed frozen for what seemed like an eternity before making sure she wasn’t actually hit.
- People try to sneak adult drinks into my vehicle almost every single night. It’s really freaking annoying. I’m almost at the point where instead of telling them to finish or dump the drink, I’m just going to drive off – they’re gonna be baby and rate me low with no tip at that point anyway.
- I’ve had a grown man pee himself because he could he handle his excessive drinking.
- Had an adult dancer change clothes in my car after her shift while en route to meet what I assume was a client at a nearby hotel.
- I end up taking lots of streetwalkers back to their homes after they’re done working.
Never a dull night I suppose.”
Grandma Don’t Play
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“Two gay men (a couple) got into a slap fight in my back seat as I drove them to church. I realized they were serious as the slaps started to get louder and I heard the telltale, ‘I am NOT playing with you,’ (also known as ‘I’m about to hit you with REAL force’).
I could not physically break them up, so I cracked a joke and told them in my best grandmother voice that I’d pull the car over and give them both spankings if they didn’t stop. They stopped and laughed at me and I dropped them off. I’m glad they laughed!”