Finally, volume 1 of Rideshare Storytime is available in paperback and Kindle formats. It’s 14 unbelievable true stories from your favorite rideshare driver! A reunion of ex’s in a carpool, a dying pet rabbit, a Holocaust survivor and that’s not even the half of it! Order your copy today!
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1795382627/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_6EqwCbBG5302H
Kindle:
One Sunday morning, I pick up a woman in Echo Park headed to downtown LA. I immediately think of how slow downtown is going to be, and how I’ll likely have to waste gas headed back to a crowded area to get my next ride.
The woman starts making small talk with me and tells me it’s going to be very busy downtown. Does she mean traffic, or Uber business? Both? Either way, I’m certain she’s wrong. On Sunday mornings, downtown LA is a modern urban ghost town.
So as we approach downtown, she explains herself a little, as I actually do see some traffic ahead. She’s an executive for AirBnB, and they are having their second annual convention for their hosts and giving out awards.
“We’ve got thousands of people in LA for this. Cool things all over the city. Bands playing, movie screenings, you name it. It’s pretty cool.”
So I typically lock my doors between customers, because you never know what weirdo is going to try to hop in. But I got my next request before even finishing the first one, which threw off my rhythm a little.
“See! I told you you’d be busy. And look at this traffic!” She genuinely seemed so excited to be right, that I didn’t even bother pointing out how very annoying the gridlock Sunday morning traffic was. She gets out of the car and I have to pick up a woman named Whitney, just four blocks away. Reality never meets your expectations yet I still wanted this to hop in my car and brighten up my Sunday:
Now Whitney is only four blocks away, but with this current bumper to bumper traffic situation, it’s going to take ages. Ten minutes pass and I’ve only traveled two of the four blocks, and I’m not stuck at a red light that has cycled through a few times and I can’t go anywhere.
I’m worried that Whitney is going to cancel. Then I’ll be stuck, directionless, in this traffic. Then before you know it, I get a new request and have to go a different way. Then that person cancels. It’s a vicious cycle that’s giving me anxiety just thinking about it.
The thing a lot of people don’t realize when your driver is taking a long time, is that they’re not going slowly to be funny or just to annoy you. They’re going slowly because they’re in a car and there are other cars, and even people, in the way. Sometimes order a car on your phone and watch the map thinking “Why is my driver turning right at that intersection? He should’ve gone left!” Sometimes we get requests when we’re already in a turning lane, so calm your tits, Brenda.
Whitney doesn’t cancel. But as I’m sitting at this red light, I see this random goon on the sidewalk. Some insane looking white guy, possibly homeless, total methhead look. He’s covered in face tattoos and neck tattoos, like a tight paisley print all over him that looks to be at least a few years old. He’s got on sloppy sweat clothes with holes and stains all over them. Aaaaaaaaand he’s looking right at me.
I panic for a second and white knuckle the wheel and stare straight ahead. If I just ignore him, he won’t see me and he’ll go away and nobody will die.
Just don’t make eye contact, and everything will be ok.
Except I’m an idiot, so I made direct eye contact with him after that thought. He starts walking out into traffic directly toward me, and I still look forward, praying that the light changes and the traffic disappears and I can go. It doesn’t, so he taps on the window and says, “Hey man, roll down your window.”
He knocks on the car and starts almost shouting at me. “Hey man, are you fucking deaf?! I said roll down your fucking window!” And I’m panicking a little, just trying to bide my time until traffic clears. I don’t want no beef!
I tell him, “I’m sorry, I’m working right now,” and motion toward my phone. “I don’t have any change.”
Now he’s irate, straight up punching my car. “DID I FUCKING ASK FOR MONEY, DICKHEAD?!! I SAID ROLL DOWN YOUR FUCKING WINDOW!!!”
At this point, I need to comply because next he will break the window for sure. So I roll it down, about half an inch, just enough to technically have rolled it down. Surely this will appease him. With his fists balled up in the pockets of his hoody, he pulls one out and I’m like, “Oh God. This is it! He has a gun and I’m being carjacked but I haven’t got a huge will to live, so I’m letting him kill me over a 2016 Kia Soul!” He pulls his right hand out and in it is…
His phone.
“I’m Whitney, you fuckin’ asshole,” and gets in the car.
Now all my de-escalation training from my previous career comes into play. It’s best to just be calm, take the blame off of sweet Whitney, and get him where he needs to go as calmly, politely, and efficiently as possible.
“Sorry about that,” I politely say.
“Yeah, what the fuck, man?! This is ridiculous. You’re like the fourth fucking driver I had. They keep cancelling on me.”
“You know what it probably was?” I’ve got a laundry list of obvious reasons but don’t want to aggravate the guy. “The address you put in was still a few blocks away, so I didn’t think that was you.”
Also, you fucking ingrate, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got *kind of* an intimidating look, what with the face tattoos and all? Also, you don’t super-duper look like a Whitney to me. Also…. if you’re trying to inspire any amount of confidence for the driver to let you into the vehicle, TRY TO DO LESS PUNCHING/SCREAMING/SWEARING AT HIM!
He said he had to start walking toward me because I was taking so long and he had “to go to work.” We’re calling our drug deals ‘work’ nowadays? Cause you’re not going to any other job in stained sweats with holes in them.
I politely informed him, to avoid the headache in the future, to just use the “contact” feature in the app and you can text the driver and describe yourself to them:
I apologized for the delay and said we’ll be at his “work” in less than 15 minutes, and prayed to God silently for some mercy from this cruel, wicked world.
As we approach the address, I ask him if it’s a regular street address or if it’s located in a plaza that I see on the right. I wanted to make sure he didn’t have to walk far or be unsafe, because God knows he would probably stab me if things didn’t end perfectly here. That’s when he gets a little weirder…
“I think it’s the place on the right?” Ummmmm… It’s your fucking work, and you *THINK* it’s there? Oyyyyy…
It was one of those ghetto burner cell phone places. Everything but a sign that said “Stolen phone? No problem!” And he confirmed that was definitely the spot.
…Which was precisely the moment that I realized, I didn’t have Whitney in my car. I had the guy who stole Whitney’s phone from Whitney, in my car.
I drop him off and let Uber know about the situation, but doubt that anything will get done. I hope the real Whitney is fine, wherever she is nowadays. And I hope for God’s sake that she has a fucking passcode lock on her phone these days. Not to blame the victim or anything, but your whole life is in that phone.
There are few things that irritate me as much as waiting outside someone’s house during rush hour because they’re not ready. I’m kidding, there are plenty of things that irritate me that much. Everything irritates me.
So I’m picking up a woman in mid-city (just the thought of mid-city makes me mad!). I’m about to cancel because I’ve messaged her to no response and it’s been almost five minutes. She finally comes out and slams first the door to her house and then the door to my car.
I don’t say anything, but sometimes I don’t really need to. You know that feeling when you just know someone’s angry? That’s largely the same feeling I try to exude when I drive for Uber.
Her destination is a bank on the West side of LA, which isn’t a terribly long drive. I assume she’s going to work. I fire up Waze and we get on our way. That’s when she begins giving me directions. “It says to take the 10 but don’t take the 10.” My favorite type of California right here.
It was a short trip, and as much as I felt like arguing, I didn’t do it. Just then she asks for a charger. Bitch, you just came from your HOUSE. Don’t they have chargers in mid-city? Again, it was a short trip so I lent her mine. But then she makes a phone call, but since my charger is the one that came with my phone, it doesn’t extended very well to the back seat. So she starts out by just leaning forward almost in my ear having a conversation, and then leans back and switches to speakerphone. So no matter what, I’m gonna know the details of this call whether I like it or not. And it sounds like it’s a fight with her boyfriend.
He was barely saying anything, because he was clearly gaslighting her about something. From what I gathered, he’s insinuating that she’s having an affair with her boss. He can tell this because the passenger’s seat of her car was moved when he went to use it. She explains why this is ridiculous:
“Babe, I work 18 fucking hours a day. And you get to stay home and sit on your ass while our kid sleeps. It’s 8am and I won’t get home until after 2am. The fact that you think I have the fucking energy to consider cheating on you is insane. Do you know what I fucking gave up to be with you? And after you cheated on me anyway? I would not do this. We have a child together, and another one on the way. You know I would never do this.”
She starts explaining how her boss moves her car for her every day so she doesn’t have to pay for parking. And that her boyfriend (husband? fiancee? future murderer?) knows this. The reason the passenger seat was moved was because he took someone else to their car because they were done with their day, as opposed to this poor woman who would have a whole second job ahead of her once the shift is over.
The idiot guy just talked in circles and repeated his insinuations and insisted she didn’t care about his feelings, but wouldn’t listen to her. She begged him to trust her, to listen to her, to have faith in their relationship and her dedication to him as a part of their family. She says when he gets like this, it makes her feel like he’s cheating again. Please keep in mind that I am silent and just driving, as I’m not a part of this.
She hangs up the phone because they’re not getting anywhere, and asks for my advice. She explains the situation that I already understood, because she doesn’t realize I’m an excellent eavesdropper. “What would you do in this situation?”
I told her my honest advice. That right now, it doesn’t make sense to engage about it, because emotions are running high and people have a difficult time listening to reason when that happens. But also, her suspicion of him seems spot on. I told her that while I know nothing about their dynamic, it seems like he’s trying to blame her for something that didn’t happen, to deflect blame or guilt on his behalf. 18 hours a day at home with a child that can’t speak to tell you what he’s seen? Seems like the perfect opportunity for a scumbag to cheat.
I told her I’d wait a few days until things were more calm, and set a list of goals for the conversation before starting it. Ensure that his feelings are valid and get to the root of why he doesn’t trust her. He clearly doesn’t trust her, and he is very possibly cheating, and she deserves better than that.
“You’re totally right,” she says. I was engaged to a really rich guy when I met him. He doesn’t have a pot to piss in. But I fell in love, and I was set for life with my ex. He took me to the fanciest places, we’d fly all the time. I gave it all up for him. You’re totally right. I do deserve better.” She grabs the phone to call him back again. “Carlos, I’m leaving you. Have your shit packed by the time I’m home tonight. Don’t try to leave with my son because the cops will be escorting me home tonight. I gotta go, I’m at work now.”
She completely misinterpreted my advice! I wanted the family to stay together but I wanted her d-bag man to clean up his act! Did I just break up a family? At any rate, I feel like I could’ve said anything at all, and she would’ve pieced together a way to leave her man. It seemed like that was her plan all along, which I totally respect. You can only take so much.
“Thanks for the advice, I’ll be sure to give you five stars.”
You’ve done some great work here today. This is a breakthrough. I’ll see you the same time next week?
Driving around in a city like Los Angeles, you see celebrities fairly regularly. I came here from a small town, so for a while it was quite shocking to me.
My very first week living in LA, I saw someone in Beverly Hills walking down the street, and bigger than life – I knew him! What are the odds?! I thought to myself, “Wow! What a small world! I drove 2,000 miles to get here and in the first week I see an old friend!” I slowed down and couldn’t place where I knew him from. Was it high school? Were we friends in college? Did we work together at some point? Oh, no. It wasn’t an actual friend. It was Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad.
Maybe in my mind we were friends, but not in real life. So one morning I was flying down South Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, near all the super-fancy shops of Rodeo Drive). I was keeping up with the somehow smooth, fast flow of traffic. If you’ve ever been around this area, you probably will find this part of the story to be the least believable.
But it’s true! Anyway, I’m marveling at the rare and wonderful treat of moving quickly in Beverly Hills, and there’s an older woman on the sidewalk coming up from where the shops are. She’s got short gray hair and is trying to make a call on her phone, but it’s clear that she’s not getting great reception. She’s doing that thing where she’s holding it to her ear, then pulling away to look at it, and realizing she can’t see that well because she’s old and needs to have it further from her face to see clearly, then putting it up against her ear again.
We’ve all been there, right? Where’s the Verizon guy when you need him? I continue flying down the street when this woman, completely lost in her struggle of trying to complete a telephone call, walks RIGHT OUT INTO TRAFFIC.
I slam on my brakes and slam on my horn as loudly as I can, and she immediately realizes what she’s done, backing up onto the sidewalk, nonverbally apologizing. That’s when I recognize her face. Jamie Lee Curtis, is that you?!
I’m a huge fan, but really, you need to take better care of yourself! I realize how badly that could’ve gone, and go about my day with thankfulness that I did not kill international film star Jamie Lee Curtis.
Several months later, I’m on the West Side in Santa Monica very early in the morning and have to pick up someone closer to Malibu. If you aren’t aware of the social geography of LA, Malibu is more posh than posh. Private beaches galore. I rarely have pickups in Malibu because a lot of those people have their own drivers and couldn’t be seen living like one of the plebeians who uses something so cheap and common as an Uber! Aka the opposite of me.
I adore making sweeping generalizations, so I’ll tell you that this place is largely a bunch of 1% d-bags. Filthy rich people who only care about themselves. This was illustrated perfectly as I tried to enter Malibu on surface level streets. They are tight in some spots, near the hills of the Pacific Palisades, and at one point a two way street was down to a single lane because a moving truck was sitting there unloading. I was heading in, but it was rush hour, so everyone else was heading out towards the city. And every single person went right past without any regard for me at all.
I got angry, I swore, I saw red, but the bottom line was that I needed someone to do the right thing. Just one single person in this sea of pricks to look out of their Tesla roadster through their Gucci sunglasses and see that there is a human being in need of some help. Just a simple act of, not even kindness, but civility more than anything. That’s when my savior appears.
Some really fancy car, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what kind, as my mind was foggy from every Mercedes, Maserati, Ferrari, Bentley and Porsche that passed me over those several minutes. The woman driving slows down and stops traffic, leaving room for me to go around the truck, rolls down her window and waves me in. I give profuse thank-you waves, and literally say it out loud, even though she can’t hear me. And as I pass her up close, I recognize her face. OMFG IS THAT JAMIE LEE CURTIS??!
It was nice to know that after our last encounter, she didn’t hold any bad blood against me. Considering it was her fault anyway, I felt like maybe this could be interpreted as her making up for her little misstep near Rodeo Drive. On days like this, LA drivers could all stand to be a little more like Jamie Lee Curtis. LA pedestrians on the other hand, not so much.
During rush hour, people are in more immediate need of a ride. Everybody needs a car, so the service bottlenecks completely. Not enough rideshare drivers on the road, plus traffic is terrible. Prices soar and patience often plummets. If you’re in a rush, you’re likely to order a car at an elevated rate and really expect it to be there PRONTO!
If you order a car and find that it’s too far away, you might cancel it in hopes of finding one that’s closer. But the driver you just cancelled on may have turned his car around upon getting your request. They may have gotten on or off of a freeway to start making their way to you. He or she is probably very aggravated at you right now.
One morning in particular I had three or four of these cancelled calls in a row, where I was bordering on 20 minutes of wasted time, gas, and emotional energy. I finally get a new request and get off of one freeway to hop on another headed toward my customer, Barbara. That’s when I receive a phone call from an unknown number, presumed to be my customer.
A female voice, A BRITISH FEMALE VOICE, is on the other end. She begins the niceties of how I’m doing, who she is, and why she’s calling. This of course means that this will likely not be a regular pickup without complications.
“Well, I’ll be there to meet you but I’m in a bit of a hurry.” Girl, everybody is. It’s 7:45am Calm down. “The thing is, the customer you’ll be picking up, isn’t a human…”
Really, Barbara? And what exactly will I be picking up? That giant thing from Stranger Things? E.T.? Wall-e?
“It’s our pet rabbit. He’s fallen gravely ill, I’m afraid. What you’ll be doing is picking him up in his carrier cage and taking him to the veterinarian’s office.”
Oh, that’s what I’ll be doing, is it, Barbara?
“My husband’s just popped off to work and I’ve got to take the children to school. There’s usually parking in front of the office, and if not, you can probably get away with the employee lot, since you’ll only be in there a short while.”
Oh, cool. So now I’m taking unpaid time during rush hour to handle your dying rabbit, and risking a parking ticket. Fan-freaking-tastic.
“I’ll text you the details. See you soon,” said Barbara, completely certain that this was all fine. Now comes my dilemma. Do I trust that she understands what a gaping imposition this is, and that she’ll pay me some lump sum in cash for this outlandish, ridiculous errand? I think at this point I was 0 and 1,203,538,092 sooooo… I cancelled the ride.
That’s when the texts came through, giving me the address, the veterinarian’s name, her family name, and all the details. Ending multiple texts with one huge statement that could’ve changed it all:
WE WILL PAY YOU IN CASH OBVIOUSLY FOR YOUR TROUBLES, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Needless to say, I felt quite sheepish after reading that last one. But learn from Barbara’s cautionary tale.
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