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Taxi Drivers Break Down Which Private Conversations They Wish They'd Never Overheard

Taxi Drivers Break Down Which Private Conversations They Wish They'd Never Overheard
Photo by Adrien Ledoux on Unsplash

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.

Megan_Me_Mad

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.

noahisaac

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?!"

PonderQuestions

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.

BotchedAttempt

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.

kpbiker1

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!"

Screambloodyleprosy

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.

willy_teee

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.

chicken_arise_

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.

fancypants888

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.

jm51

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.

PrSquid

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.

plato_shrimp

What is a Name?

If they tell you they'll probably have to change their name all over again.

shroomlover0420

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).

TuckerMouse

Keep Singing. 

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.

CashireCat

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.

mhjahanbakhshi

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.

LoneQuietus81

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.

rhett342

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.

MilaB1507

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REDDIT

People Explain Which Things They'll Never Tell Their Significant Other About

Reddit user Janine_18 asked: 'What's the one thing you'll never tell your SO?'

woman making the shushing gesture

Bjorn Pierre on Unsplash

Full disclosure at all times with your significant other, right?

Yeah, good luck with that.

Let's get real—there are things we don't tell our partners for a lot of reasons.

Sometimes you just don't feel like having to explain something that doesn't really affect them.

Sometimes you're protecting them from something that will have a devastating effect on them.

These are probably going to be more that second one...

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We all have that moment where someone we know says something so completely absurd, the only response we think of is 'WTF is wrong with you?'

Sometimes, it's something woefully inaccurate that you can't wrap your head around the fact that someone believes that.

Othertimes, it's something completely offensive and you regret your association with that person.

My college roommate was a girl I knew from my high school. I didn't know her too well, but we had some big things in common, so I figured it'd be fun to live with her.

This girl was half-Korean and talked a lot about racist people. At first, I let her rant, figuring maybe she or someone in her family faced some racism. I faced some myself, and I agreed with most of the things she said about racists. Eventually, however, I realized she was equating the word 'racist' with the word 'white.'

I spoke to her once, telling her she can't use 'racist' and 'white' interchangeably. She agreed to stop doing that, but within a few days, she started doing it again. She was a very bright girl, so I was a little concerned about this, especially since her own dad was white and was possibly the nicest man in the world. Not to mention, this made her and her siblings half-white too. Did that mean they were all half-racist?

I stuck by her for a while, but when she started saying things about what she wanted to do to racist people (once again using the word 'white' instead of 'racist'), I realized I couldn't be around her anymore. She couldn't talk about anything else after a while, and every time she spoke, I wanted to say, 'WTF is wrong with you?'

We did not room together the next year.

Redditors have stories similar to mine (and some even crazier), and they are eager to share.

It all started when a Redditorasked:

"What did the person do/say that made you go "what the f**k is wrong with you?"

How To End A Friendship

"In college I used to kill time between classes hanging out with a guy who was from the same redneck county as myself. We didn’t really have much else in common, but he was nice enough and seemed eager to socialize so I figured why not. I wasn’t overly social myself and didn’t know a whole lot of people."

"One day we decided to go somewhere off-campus, and he drove us. While driving, on an interstate mind you, he proceeds to show me his handgun that he kept in his truck - not in a menacing way, but in a “Ain’t that cool?” way."

"I was not immediately frightened, but I respect firearms enough to recognize we are going like 60-70mph on an interstate in daylight, and nothing good can happen in this scenario. I calmly asked him to put it away because I was not comfortable in this situation at all. He then tells me “Oh it’s not loaded” and presses the gun to his head before pulling the trigger."

"Thank f**k he was right, but still it was a wild and frightening display of reckless disregard for his own life and mine for that matter in the event that he’d accidentally killed himself while driving us. I didn’t hang out with him much after that, certainly didn’t get in a car with him."

– omjf23

"“It’s not loaded” famous last words of many an idiot."

– GloInTheDarkUnicorn

The Worst Kind Of People

"When my dad was in the nursing home, they weren't running certain expenses, like ambulance rides, through his insurance. When I took over his financials, he was tens of thousands in medical debt that shouldn't have ever been charged to him in the first place. He was in numerous collections, and his credit score was tanked."

"When I complained to the nursing home director, he said, "Well, it's not like he's going to be buying a house or a car!" Then he laughed."

"My dad was paralyzed from the waist down and needed lifelong care, so he was never going to leave the nursing home. Even though he was technically correct, I gave him the "WTF is wrong with you look." Then I complained to HIS boss and he got canned a couple a weeks later. My dad's insurance was fixed pretty quick, too."

– MNWNM

"“Sorry, what was funny about that? Could you please explain.”"

– v3n0mat3

...Seriously?

"MIL told my wife she should divorce me bc I googled whether a lasagna should be covered with foil while cooking."

– Struggle-Silent

"This is my first laugh of the thread lmao wtf."

– koreantrvp

"It actually ruined this entire trip. It was at my BIL’s wedding, which was only close family (siblings + parents) and they had the caterer make a lasagna for an evening dinner."

"Father of the bride was gonna pop it in the oven and asked if it should be covered. I googled lasagna cooking instructions and said yes it should be covered and cooked at this temp. MIL said absolutely not!"

"Me and the father of the bride kinda gave each other a look and he covered it. MIL was furious and texted my wife that I was an a hole and she should divorce me before we had kids."

– Struggle-Silent

Hostile Work Environment

"Boss at old job told the team we needed to ‘get used to a healthy level of conflict, fear and anxiety in the workplace.’ I dipped so fast after that."

– Prestigious-Energy69

"Similarly, a boss told me that I owed him my loyalty because he was paying me."

– Kylearean

How To End A Relationship

"A girl I was with while we were still together just looked at me while I was driving to her house and said.” You know I would get over you faster than you’d get over me” I was like …… Tf did you just say?"

– omega91301

"Huh. And just like that I'm over you."

– Pineapple_Spenstar

"Honestly, that would absolutely do it for me. When I was younger, I would be stupid and hurt and argue. I'm past 50 and I got no time for that nonsense."

– Terpsichorean_Wombat

There Are Other Ways To Stave Off Boredom

"I was DD for some buddies who wanted to go to a particular dance club in Baltimore. They're all hammered, it's too loud and we've been there for several hours. Casually an older woman next to me chats me up and notices my eyes are nearly crossing from boredom. I explained what I was doing there and casually (stupidly) mentioned I'm a bit bored. This psycho BITES ME on the chest! Afterward says "Well ya ain't bored now, are ya??""

– Mike7676

"Well, were you bored after that?"

– DontWannaSayMyName

"I must say, I was not!"

– Mike7676

That Goes Both Ways!

"I'm a man who works with kids, and when I started this job, I was talking to one of my old coworkers about how every once in a while I'll get weird looks for being a man working with kids and my coworker said I deserved it because some men can't be trusted with kids. I was shocked and she went on to say that I did it to myself and deserve to be questioned about it. I immediately stopped talking to her."

– Dolhedew

"What? What in the actual f**k? Doesn’t she know there are women who can’t be trusted with kids?"

– Anonymoosehead123

That Escalated Quickly

"The lady that accused my kids of cutting the line. (They hadn't, I was watching). When I went to ask her what was wrong, she told me to go back to my own country with that sh*t. (I was born in Massachusetts.)"

"The line was to pet dogs at a Renaissance Fair."

– pasafa

Everything All At Once

"While alone with a coworker, he told me that "women in the work place will lead to the decay of the fabric of society" to me. A woman. He also asked me out, got an attitude when I didn't say yes and continues to walk around with huge incel energy. He always complains that he has no one to go home to yet refuses to look at himself as a possible reason."

– Nopeferatu31

"Sounds like they should learn something from the phrase, "if you meet one a**hole, they're the a**hole. If everyone you meet is an a**hole, you're the a**hole.""

– tmpope123

Ouch!

"I told a coworker my wife had died."

"Her response: "You're one of those bald middle aged guys with a dead wife.""

"Me: "Yeah.""

– WalrusCello

"I want to think this was a wholesome thought that came out wrong. An awkward attempt at dark humor."

– ThisUsernameIsTook

*Cringing*

"Had an otherwise normal co-worker who was completely convinced windmills will cause the earth to stop spinning."

– Shadowmant

"WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!"

– Torvaun

These are all crazy 'WTF is wrong with you' stories, but that last one blew my mind in 'how is it possible people think that could be true' sort of way!

black and red tool box

Tekton on Unsplash

One of the possible wonders of adulthood is home ownership. But homes come with so many things that can break.

And the last thing you want is a nonfunctioning furnace when temperatures dip below zero or no water when you're covered in dirt and grime.

That's what routine maintenance is for—to make sure things work when you need them.

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One the strangest and most perplexing things about being a human is the fact that we can only experience what's going on inside our own bodies and minds. Sure, we can ask someone questions, we can listen to their accounts, and technology is increasingly closing the gap, but there's still nothing like a fully immersive experience.

For this reason, it can be easy for us to think that we're the only one having trouble with something, like the only adult who can never seem to keep their laundry pile caught up, but on the reverse side, it can also mean missing something that's abnormal.

It's, quite frankly, shocking how many people live with some kind of physical abnormality while assuming that it's normal.

Fascinated, Redditor amistakewasmadehere asked:

"What did you think was normal about your body until someone pointed out that it wasn't?"

A Double Uvula

"I have a double uvula. That little hangy thing in the back of your throat... Mine looks like a ballsack."

"I thought that's just what they looked like, because how often do you look in people's throats? I remember seeing cartoons as a kid where they'd zoom in on a character's mouth when they were screaming or something... And I just thought the artists were lazy, drawing a simple droopy line. But no, that's what most people's look like."

"When I was in my 20s, I went to the doctor for something unrelated, and she checked my throat and just said, 'Huh, you have a double uvula. Neat!'"

" I went home and told my roommates and they all had to look in my mouth. I thought they would think the doctor was the weirdo but they were all shocked..."

"I'll never forget one saying, 'You've got balls in your throat!'"

- xx2983xx

A Popping Jaw

"My jaw pops whenever I open my mouth. I thought it was normal for your jaw to just "unhinge" because how else could you open your mouth wide? Turns out, nope."

- PikaBooSquirrel

The Wrong Number of Organs

"The first year of menstruating, I had intensely painful periods and severe constipation. The periods would last two weeks, with two weeks in between each one."

"Everyone told me things would calm down and even out."

"Then one night, at a friend’s sleepover, I was in so much pain that I was sobbing on the bathroom floor. My parents rushed me to the hospital."

"Everything I was describing, pain-wise, made it sound like I was in labor. But I was 14 and still very much a virgin."

"After a week of tests and painkillers, they finally figured out the issue; I then had surgery to open up my second uterus and cervix, which had been sealed shut by a membrane."

"I had been having periods for a year and had built up like 2 liters worth of old blood in my sealed second uterus. So once that was drained out and I was put on major antibiotics, I got to go home and tell all my friends that I had two uteruses."

"I was also born with one kidney. Not sure if that’s related, but I sure am a mess down there, lol (laughing out loud)."

- SM0KINGS

Heart Flutters and Palpitations

"I used the phrase, 'You know when your heart does that fluttery sensation and it’s like you can feel it beating for a few seconds?'"

"Apparently not everyone does know that; in fact, most don’t and my colleagues looked at me like I’d lost my mind."

- The_Sown_Rose

"Mine does this. I’ve mentioned it to my doctor but it didn’t show up on a heart tracing (I wore one for 24 hours)… Some days, it will happen multiple times, and then nothing for a month or two. It’s really odd."

- Gremingtonspa

Shark-Like Teeth

"That I had eight wisdom teeth grow into the extra space in the back of my jaw (two for each side, top and bottom) that all grew in just fine after 20... Only to find out on my last trip to the dentist that I have eight more growing in sideways..."

"The normal amount of wisdom teeth is four. Not 16."

- Rathewitch

"Some of the women in my family grow a third set of teeth in their 30s. My great aunt had a nearly perfect set, only one came in crooked, but my mum's sister had hers come in next to her adult teeth, so she has two rows in some places, like a shark."

"My mum got a couple extra, but they were pulled, and I haven't gotten any yet, though I got to keep all my wisdom teeth and they didn't."

- foxtongue

Transferable Eyesight

"I’ve got ‘alternating exo,’ the eye doctor called it. I can choose which eye I can see out of and can switch as I please, and whichever eye is not picked 'turns off,' and I don’t see out of it since I chose the other eye."

"Since I've been able to do it all my life, both of my eyes can operate alone, so if I lose one, it won’t be as bad adjusting. Pretty nice actually but the ‘exo’ makes me hate selfies cuz whichever eye isn’t picked drifts outward, which is noticeable to me at least."

- Nez_bit

Precordial Catch Syndrome

"You know when you’re breathing like normal, and suddenly when you inhale you get this sharp pain in one side of your chest, at the ribs behind your pectoral muscle? And every time you try to inhale further it comes back, then goes away entirely after a few minutes?"

"Yeah, that’s called Precordial Catch Syndrome."

"Doctors don’t know exactly what causes it, but the running theory is that a nerve near your ribs occasionally gets pinched when you inhale and it takes a few moments for your body to dampen the signal from that nerve. It’s very common, and does not indicate any underlying or dangerous medical issues."

- ScrembledEggs

Literally a Large Head

"I have a big head. I've never once found a hat that fits. Not even a toque."

- Grant_Ham999

"So, when I joined the army they didn't have a hat big enough for me. I was the only person out of 60 of us without a hat. Drill sergeants I had never met would run from across fields to yell at me for walking outside without my hat."

"When I explained that they didn't have a hat big enough for me... they cracked up and called me Charlie Brown. It took two weeks of that before a hat arrived big enough for me."

- mighty1u2

The Tensor Tympani Muscles

"I can activate my Tensor Tympani Muscles (they make that roaring in your ears when you yawn) at will."

"For some reason, they also activate when I feel a sudden pain, even when there’s no sound or noise involved."

- ShinyIrishNarwhal

"Wait, this isn't normal?"

- Pratius

Secret Asthma

"I thought I was bad at running because my throat would seize up and get painful whenever I ran for more than a minute. I mentioned this to my doctor when I was 30. Turns out I have asthma."

- PachinkoBiloba

Dermatographia

"Dermatographia. I have really sensitive skin with an overactive histamine response. When I’m gently scratched with a blunt object, I get a hive in the shape of the scratch. I can write my name in hives on my forearm."

- BriCMSN

Temperature-Inspired Itchiness

"I get itchy as soon as I get overheated. Like an all-over body itch. There's no rash that pops up, I just get very, very itchy."

- f**kf**k9001

Unexplained Abnormality

"I once took part in a study as a paid participant. The doctors used ultrasound probes to examine the blood vessels on my face."

"They commented on how strange my face's blood vessels were, they struggled and puzzled a little while examining my face."

"Then they handed me more cash and asked whether I would be willing to donate my body after I died to a medical study."

"(They were polite and respectful throughout the whole process, just seemed excited?)"

- breakdancing-edgily

Restless Leg Syndrome

"I constantly have to flex my muscles. Not in the douchey 'check me out, ladies' kind of way, but in a more frustrating, 'I need to move this muscle in the next three seconds or I will feel like I am being tortured' kind of way."

"I'm constantly rotating my shoulders, flexing shoulder blades, neck, arms, wrists, ankles, legs, wherever. It makes it hard to sit still or sleep."

"I only seriously noticed when I slept with my first partner, who was very confused as to why I wouldn't stop twisting and flexing for at least two hours before falling asleep. I just figured everyone got that feeling."

"Being under a weighted blanket or feeling my arm or leg fall asleep, both feel like utter torture and will make me scream and writhe about. I would love to know what the h**l this is and how I deal with it, because so far, I have no clue."

- DeviousFox

"It sounds like restless leg syndrome (which can affect your whole body, and not just your legs). Have your iron levels, specifically your ferritin levels checked. RLS is torture, but there are treatments!"

- SenseiKrystal

In Need of Glasses

"I thought I had great vision until I tried glasses and found that everything was so much sharper and more vivid! Apparently, my left eye has a vision defect, but my right eye learned to compensate so I never realized!"

- LLAA00

It's amazing what we can go decades living with, even when it technically is not the norm. In many of these cases, there are even treatments or tools to improve them!

This just goes to show how important it is to ask questions if you have a concern, and if one doctor is not willing to properly discuss it with you, perhaps try talking to another one.