One of the occupational hazards of being a cab driver is being forced to hear all of the things happening in your back seat, regardless of whether you want to or not.
Now, being a cab driver isn't a legal binding, so if it's something very dangerous, you're allowed to contact the authorities. But you have to be there experiencing every moment of it anyway.
u/xull_the-rich asked:
Taxi drivers of Reddit, what private conversation did you overhear that you wish you never did?
Here were some of those answers.
Was The Money Worth It?
I used drive taxi on the Big Island, HI. I picked up a couple late one night from a bar, they were clearly intoxicated and they tell me what hotel, it's a bit of a drive. Good money. So we're going along, I don't hear any talking. But after about ten minutes I hear something like stirring mac n cheese if ya know what I mean. I briefly look behind and see them going at it. I really wish I hadn't. I told them to stop, but they didn't seem to care. By the time I dropped them off, I had made a $200 tip.
Unwanted Acquisitions
Only drove cab for a few months many years ago, but I drove the graveyard shift and saw and heard lots of interesting things in that short time. One night a couple, who were obviously of low socioeconomic status, got in my cab and were at each other's throats bickering from the very beginning. There was something about a missing ring and failed drug scores.
Then the woman said something that must have really pissed off the guy because he paused for a second and said, "B*tch, you gave me siphyllis and herpes, so SHUT THE F*** UP!!" There were a few minutes of quiet after that before the bickering started again.
Fuzzy!
(Man on phone with what I assumed was customer service)
"No you delivered the package to the wrong house....no....no... the white one. Yes....yes... really who else around here has been trying to order live alpacas?!"
Bye, Felicio
When I drove Uber, I picked up this couple from a strip club a little after midnight. The girl was obviously a stripper, and the guy was a pompous dickhead that was trying to pick her up. He spends the whole ride talking about how rich and smart he is and how successful his business is going to be. At first, she's asking about it and about his life, showing genuine interest.
He deflects all of these questions and goes back to just talking about how he's such a genius. Then she's trying to change the subject, wanting to talk about literally anything else.
At one point she asks, "So what kind of stuff do you and your friends do for fun?" He responds with this tone of voice that I could basically hear him rolling his eyes at how stupid her question is. "I don't have friends. I have colleagues. Fun is what people do when they have free time. I'm too invested in my start-up for something like that," he says as he's leaving a strip club…
It was the most painful conversation I'd ever had to sit through.
When we finally get to the destination, his apartment, they get out, and she tells him, "Let me just get my purse." She walks over to the passenger side front door, gets in, and tells me to go. So I did. She was the one paying for the ride anyway. She changes the destination to her place, and asks to put on the radio. The rest of the ride was pretty quiet. We get to her place, I drop her off, and she leaves me a $20 tip. Definitely worth it in the end, but damn that was hard to listen to.
This Poor Poor Girl
Not exactly what this thread is about but I think applicable. I was driving a school bus, subbing on a kindergarten route. One little 5 year old gets on and proceeds to tell me: "I helped fix Daddys lunch. I gived him a sammich and some potato chips and a apple and his lucky coin. He has to have his lucky coin or he gets mad and hits Mommy."
Brought tears to my eyes at the thought of what this darling little human had witnessed.
Avoiding For A Decade
Not a driver, but a passenger and this conversation made me not take a taxi for 11 years. I was drunk coming home at 3 in the morning and the driver tells me he has this amazing business idea, but doesn't know how to get it going.
Me in my drunk infinite wisdom asks him what it is and see if I can help.
He obliges and says "You know dog poop? You know how it sticks to your shoe and you can never get it off? There's something in that. Some kind of adhesive. I'm going to find out what it is and make a killing!"
A Court Date
My dad was getting an Uber to the airport and the driver had his hands free setup to go through the car speakers.
While they are chatting the guy gets a call and it's from court asking where he is? He says he can't make it cause he's crashed his car. My dad said the funniest bit was this call went on for a while but when he hung up the guy just went back to chatting with no mention of the call like it didn't happen.
My dad spent the rest of the ride nervously wondering what he was missing at court.
Cause It's Not The Kids' Fault
My husband was a full time Uber driver for a few years. One day, he picked up this guy his age who was going to a residential area. They're small talking, and the guy tells him, "yeah, just going to my girl's house, we just started dating, she's so hot, etc." The address was the house of my husband's best friend's long term girlfriend. She was cheating on her boyfriend and actually got pregnant.
My husband told me about it and said, "I literally could have brought him over there the time they conceived the baby." He didn't say anything to the guy at the time. He chose to tell his best friend, who didn't believe him, initially. The paternity test proved the best friend wasn't the bio father, but he's raised the kid and treats them as his own.
Cliches Don't Get Old For A Reason
Not a taxi driver, but one time on the bus this guy sitting next to me is talking on the phone about some really weird stuff. This was over 10 years ago, but I vaguely remember him talking about court dates and getting a new burner phone. And then he went on to repeatedly tell the person on the phone to dump the body. He was really casual about it too, like it wasn't a big deal.
I tried to justify it by telling myself maybe he was a mechanic or worked at a scrap yard or something and he was referring to a car or....idk. I'm not sure if that even makes any sense. I just couldn't possibly imagine anybody would be in public openly talking about disposing of a dead body.
Oh. Myyyy.
A young woman talking to her mate about how clingy her soon to be ex husband was.
'If he doesn't start leaving me alone, I'm going to sleep with his brother.' His (non working) car was parked in her drive. When I pulled up to her house, 2am, he was asleep in the car. Yep, clingy. Never saw her again so I don't know if she slept with his brother or not.
Do you hear you?!
I drove a mini-van taxi, so minus the driver seat there were 6 seats.
One evening around bar close, I get a full cab of 6 people. One woman sits up front with me. We are both white, everyone else in the cab is black. As we're waiting behind the bar for their last friend to come out, this woman WILL NOT STOP USING THE N-WORD! Like every freaking sentence!
She was using it without the hard R, but still. None of the black people said anything, so I just looked out the window and disassociated until it was time for me to drive.
Stay Silent.
Former cabbie. Once had a drunk lady who worked at the zoo talk enthusiastically about all the different animal's genitals. To be fair she sounded more like a kid talking about gross bugs than an animal obsessor. Still weird.
What is a Name?
If they tell you they'll probably have to change their name all over again.
Every time one of my coworkers is gone for a while unexplained, I assume they were outed as an international spy and will come back to work in a few weeks with one letter changed. Rick becomes Nick. So far no dice. Did have one leave Mary and come back Eric. Names changed for privacy. (That line has layers).
Keep Singing.Â
Not a taxi driver but a couple of years ago I was getting the last tram at around 12am, while getting in I passed this punk looking couple and there is a break in-between the songs I'm listening to on my headphones as I pass them just long enough for me to her him say "It was like that other time where I stabbed the Russian guy" I sat down a row behind them before my drunken brain processed the information.
Taxi Films
(Passenger) Here, we take cab to travel between cities, there is certain stations and the cab starts when the forth passenger gets on it. Three in the back and one in the front seat. I was 25. One afternoon going back to my hometown, I went to the station, the cab's front seat was occupied so I sat in the back.
The next passenger, this gentleman around 40, in a suit, with a briefcase, got on. Politely said hi and took his phone and earphone out of the suitcase and started to watch porn on his phone for 10 minutes. all this time he never tried to hide his screen. Next passenger came and cab left the station.
Oh Ladies....
Trashy strippers. Very distinct from working girl strippers.
Picked up 4 of them and they wanted to hit the McDonald's drive-thru. They proceed to be loud, obnoxious, probably drunk, and yell at and just generally give a hard time to every worker there all the while they talk crap about the other dancers being skanks, coke heads, and "thinking they're better than everyone else".
Oh, and of course they didn't tip. Even though, yeah, they get paid in tips, too. Strippers that couldn't be nice to fast food workers, hated their coworkers to a venomous degree, and get paid in tips, but couldn't tip other people.
State Lines
The conversation was between my friend and I when we were being taken back to my place after drunkenly leaving a concert by an Uber. Not disturbing really, we were very confused, however, about why the driver had taken us to a different state.
A Sympathetic Ear
Not a driver but a passenger. My parents are divorced, and when we stayed at our fathers home, he kicked us out. We had to call a cab. It was the middle of the night, our mum was going to bed, and we were lucky she heard our calls. Anyways, as me and my brother were very young, me especially, my brother explained what had just happened, and we talked about what the future would look like. We thought that the driver wasn't listening. As our mum was paying the man, he told her how lucky she is to have so smart children and wiped his tears away. Idk if he didn't want to hear it but man did i fell bad.
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