Way back in the day, HBO had a show called Taxi-Cab Confessions. The premise was simple, taxi drivers come across some of the most interesting people day in and day out - so why not put a camera in the cab and see what we can learn. It turned the cab into a confessional booth - and people loved it.
The show may be a thing of the past, but the premise is just as solid now as it was then. Ride share drivers absolutely meet some serious "characters" and we still want to know all about it.
Reddit user Baaraban asked:
Welcome to the confessional, my friends. Things are about to get interesting. Here are some of the more popular responses:
Drunken Babysitter Time
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I used to drive Uber at fort Myers beach. I picked up 4 drunk as a skunk middle aged people and crammed them into my tiny car. I was about to pull into their neighborhood (nice, gated, on the water) and the one guy was like, "I need you to follow that car!"
And I'm like "whatever, let's see how this plays out".
So we start following this random SUV and I'm like "who is this guy?" And they're like "we don't know, but we have 20 minutes of babysitter left and we aren't wasting it." I reminded them they were on triple rate surcharge and they literally didn't care.
Eventually the car pulled over and everyone shouts at me "GO GO GO!!" And we sped off into the night.
$100 ride, $20 tip, 5 star review. 100% worth it. Entertaining drunk, otherwise responsible people is a blast.
The Officer's Daughter
Friend of mine visiting NYC took a taxi back to his hotel late night. Riding in the back he found a small women's clutch purse thing. Inside was the ID of a ~19 year old girl, and the business card of a police officer in a town neighboring state. The police officer had the same last name as the girl, so my friend figured the officer was the girl's father and she carried the card in case she ever needed to get herself out of a traffic ticket or something. My friend figures he can leave a voicemail on the officer's business number when he gets back to the hotel, then leave the purse at the hotel front desk for the girl to come pick up, so that is exactly what he does as soon as he gets up to the hotel room.
About three hours later--now 3 or 4 AM--he is in a deep sleep when loud knocks on his hotel room door wake him up. It's a bunch of NYPD detectives who want to know all the details of how he found the purse, like where he originally hailed the cab, etc.
Turns out the girl was, indeed, the daughter of the cop on the business card - and she had been missing for a few days. The discovery of her clutch purse was the first sign of her that had popped up.
My friend had paid for the cab via credit card and had kept the receipt, so he was able to pass that along to the detectives who, presumably, were able to use that to track down the cab driver and find out any information he could provide.
Ultimately my friend doesn't know what happened, the cops never contacted him again.
NFL Players And Six Flags
Picked up two guys from a hotel. Destination is in the Hollywood hills. When we're navigating up the winding roads of the hills, one of the guys mentions that he "hates going to [famous football player]'s house" because he always gets a little carsick. He tells me he knows this player because he plays for the famous player's Alma mater and is in town to work out for the NFL draft that year.
This house is at the top of a hill with a beautiful view. When we get there, the drafted asks me to wait for a couple minutes and he enters the house. After a while, he gets back in the car and tells me I'm gonna follow three other cars to Six Flags. First car is a big, black Suburban followed by two luxury German sedans and here I am with my economy car with an Uber sticker on it.
The PBR Match
I matched with a girl on Tinder by accident, and she messaged me saying she liked PBR, which is in one of my pictures. Being awkward and not wanting to waste her time, I just unmatched without saying anything. Around this time I was near the beginning of my brief tenure as an Uber driver. Who do you think I pick up the very next day? Yup!
I immediately try to slouch hoping she doesn't recognize me, and after 5 minutes of silence, right when I think I'm in the clear, she says: "Hey did we match on Tinder?"
To which I reply: "I don't think so."
Then she says: "Yeah, I messaged you about PBR and then you unmatched me."
And I just let out a feeble kind of "Oh, yeah." Then I look down at my GPS, and there's 25 minutes left in this ride. I did not get a tip.
Lady Of The Night
I picked up a guy who either refused to pay a lady of the night from the night before or didn't know she was a lady of the night. She proceeded to follow us. Finally he gets a call from someone, seemed like it scared him because he told me to bring him back to his place. She followed us back there, I promptly left. Probably should have kicked him out sooner.
The Live Tweet
Had a former NFL player live-tweet from my back seat that he wanted to punch me in the mouth because I was chewing gum and he could hear it. Never said a word to me. I didn't even realize I was doing it. Maybe be an adult and let someone know next time instead of threatening them on social media like a little b. The folks driving you are people, too.
- jough22
"Do you not like Christian music?"
I was the passenger for this one, but I've been mortified ever since so I'm gonna put it on the internet to make the memory less powerful.
So, I had had a miscarriage five days earlier, and I was resolutely continuing with my life because not continuing with it would've involved telling people why I needed to take a few days, and I just really didn't want to because I hadn't even disclosed that I was pregnant in the first place. So I was Uber-ing to work in my numb emotional haze.
The driver had this aggressively Christian music playing, which was fine, until one of the songs got really into babies. It was something like, Baby Jesus is the holiest thing ever and you've just got to love him, with his little feet and his little face and his innocence and all this pure love in your heart because baby.
So I, somewhat frantically 'cause I'm half a degree away from bawling my eyes out in this Uber, go "Sorry, can you change the station?"
And the driver goes, "Why?"
"I just really need you to change the station."
"Do you not like Christian music?"
"Please just change the station."
So she changes the station, and gives me a weird look, and for like two seconds I'm taking deep breaths and thinking okay, this is fine, I can keep it together, I can contain this situation to just "that one time I gave a ride to a panicked atheist," as far as she's concerned,aaaand then I went ahead and cried eyes out anyway.
while the driver gave me a rather alarmed look, and her perception of the situation probably became "that one time I gave a ride to an atheist who might need an exorcism, idk." She didn't ask, so I just stumbled out of the car and went to work with no more words exchanged between us.
And then.
When I was coming home from work.
I got the same driver again.
And I got in the car and she immediately turned the radio off and drove me home in complete silence.
The Sharpest Tool
I drove a taxi in a suburb of Boston for awhile in the 80's. One day, a kid in his 20's with a baseball bat hailed me and asked me to take him to a pharmacy nearby. It was the middle of the day, so I assumed he was coming from softball practice.
He told me to wait, then he went into the pharmacy, and left the bat in the car. A minute or two later, he came running out of the pharmacy, with the pharmacist right behind him.
Was this guy nuts? What kind of criminal uses a cab as a getaway car? I casually reached back and locked the door just as he reached the cab.
He fumbled with the handle, realizing that he left his only defensive weapon inside, and then ran off. I let the pharmacist into the cab, and then the two of us made a slow pursuit of the guy, while reporting his location over the radio (no cell phones). Eventually, he was so exhausted that I got out of the cab and held him until the police arrived. I had to testify in court and identify him. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.
From The Strip Club To The School
Picked a guy up from a strip club around 5pm. He had clearly been there for a while and was talkative drunk. He started talking to a friend on his phone and kept saying he couldn't go into detail because he had a lady driver. He told me he was going home and then taking his daughter out to a basketball game because there was an after-game concert she was very excited about.
Little did he know (or I know because I was just following the gps) that he had been routed to her high school. His wife or daughter had scheduled the Uber so he could get back to the suburbs from the city (where the strip club is) in time to take the daughter to the basketball game that night. He thought he was going home to meet her, which would give him a chance to clean up. Whoever scheduled it sent him straight to the school to get her.
Dudes in a rumpled suit, smells like strip club, and is clearly not sober. He got a resolved look, handed me a few singles, said "Thanks for the ride boo," and just hitched up his pants like a man embracing his awful situation.
The Next Best Thing
The first that comes to mind was the 78 year old lady that insisted that I needed to know about the hookup she was going home from. She went into descriptive detail about her sexual life. When she realized that I wasn't into that conversation, she decided that talking about Trump was the next best thing.
"You Like What You Saw?"
I picked up this woman from a bar. She is obviously too drunk to stand on her own. So a man who she was all over helped her get into my backseat and sent me on my way. In my head, I was thinking he's gonna get a second date.
I noticed that her destination was 45 mins away from where I picked her up. So my assumption that it was a work outing or whatever. Next thing I know her phone rings, she picks up and says "Hey honey! The Uber is bringing me home!" Hangs up and says to me "Man my husband is so annoying asking why I'm out so late." Turns out she was having affair with the previous guy that helped her in my back seat. But that's not the crazy part.
She starts complaining she has to pee, I told her I can't pull over for her to pee since we are on a highway. She starts crying and begging and I finally give in because I didn't want piss in my car. So I pull over, she gets out and starts peeing. Next thing I know the door opens, she still has her pants down to her ankles and just climbs back into my car and falls asleep. At this point I'm freaking out because she can blame me for anything at this point.
So we are 10 mins from her house and she wakes up finally. She realizes the state she is in and immediately apologizes to me. But before she pulls up her pants she says to me "You like what you saw?" And pulled her pants up and went to her husband. I got 5 stars and a $5 tip for that.
Peeing Out The Windows
I picked up 4 college students late at night from the bar area in town. None of them were really that drunk it seemed like. One of the guys asks me to get them home fast because he really has to pee. I jokingly say "Why wait? My window is right there."
Without skipping a beat, 3 of the 4 guys roll down their windows, stand up, whip out their junks and started peeing out my car windows while I was driving down the highway at 2 in the morning.
- Bobby408
Brazilian Frog Venom
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I work Lyft in Los Angeles. A couple of months back I picked up a middle aged Asian woman who seemed rather ill. She immediately let me know that she may pass out in the backseat on the way to the airport but assured me that everything is fine. I asked what was wrong, she had just come from a holistic practice where they injected Brazilian frog venom into her leg as a cancer testament. This was her second time doing such a thing. Nice lady. Interestingly enough she also worked in the medical field, yet still sprung for such an alternative treatment.
- B_don