As Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver showed, a lot can happen when you're making a living behind the wheel. This job can expose you to the raw, unfiltered reality of urban life in just a single shift, leading you to encounter all sorts of characters and situations.
To learn more about this enigmatic profession, Reddit user CatSk8Scratch made a post on the platform, asking everyone from the industry to share the things they experienced on the job that they just cannot forget. Here are the most upvoted replies.
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It was about 4am on a really foggy Sunday and I was heading back to the Taxi rank. I was heading through a bridge with a dual-carriageway above it when I spot a person on the bridge. The road on this bridge has no pavements it this caught my eye. I pull up at the side of the road to get a closer look (due to the fog) and realise it's a young woman on the wrong side of the railings. I immediately call 999 and request police and an ambulance then jump out of the taxi to talk to her. I've dealt with my own mental health issues in the past as well as having a few people close to me that suffer from various issues. I got her chatting about her life, general things. I shared from my life too in the hopes of connecting or at the very least distracting her. Eventually the paramedics and police arrive and long story short she was alive. It was terrifying to see someone in pain and all I could do was to chat about random stuff.
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I have a relative who is one. One night, near the end of his shift, he’s at the front of the line up, and a bunch of guys say they want to go somewhere pretty far. It’ll be a really big fare, especially for the end of the night. But something about it is making his hair stand up. He says no, that’s too far for him and he’s going home soon. He tells the driver behind him not to take these guys. The driver laughs, calls my relative a dumb N word, and takes the guys. Next day? The other driver is found dead. They robbed and murdered him. He lost his life, for the promise of a $100 dollar fare. Always trust your gut!
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I had a habit of asking this question to every cabbie in every taxi I took for a few years. One that sticks with me is the cabbie was stopped at a red light and a body landed on the hood of his car, smashing the hell out of it (s*icide jumper from a condo balcony). I felt pretty bad for asking because he didn’t seem to want to relive that.
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Back in the 90’s I did some cabbing in a small South Coast town in England. We had contracts for some school runs, normally these were to pick up kids who’d been excluded from state schools. One day I had 3 lads in the car aged about 9-12 I’d say. Kid in the front was arguing with one in the back and called him a wanker. I quietened them down and it was silent for about a minute. Kid in the front then pipes up “What is a w*nker?” I said “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing I should be telling you lads. Ask your parents. What do you think it is?” He ponders for a moment and says “Well, I’ve always presumed it’s part of a woman.” Nearly crashed!
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Not a cab driver, but I gave a cab driver a story to tell. I was a stock analyst on a marketing tour. These consist of giving a breakfast presentation, flying to a different city to give a lunch presentation, etc.. I had my breakfast presentation in Zurich and went to the airport to get the flight to Geneva. It was cancelled. So I had a problem: there would be 25 important clients in Geneva waiting for me at a very expensive restaurant. So I walked over to the cab line and asked a young cab driver how long it would take to get to Geneva. He looked stunned and said "I've never been to Geneva", which I thought was rather odd. He called his dispatcher and told me it would be 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours. So I said "Would you like to got to Geneva?". He really lit up. So I spent the next few hours chatting with this pleasant young guy. Apparently I made his day. He got me there with a few minutes to spare. I don't actually remember the fare (I think it was 900 francs but this was in 2000) and gave him a huge tip. Man - he was a happy guy.
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Friend of mine drove cab near a naval base in the 1970s, told me this story: He picked up two sailors late at night, who gave him directions to a grocery store. He drives them there, it’s obviously closed. In the deserted parking lot of the closed store, the guys pull out an ice pick, with the obvious intent of robbing him at ice pick point (weird, but definitely sufficiently menacing). He’s white, the two guys are black. He was also in the GI movement at the time (vets and service members organizing against the Vietnam war). So he makes eye contact with the guy holding the ice pick in the rear view mirror and starts casually talking about the work the movement was doing to bring black and white sailors together, advance black issues. They looked at him for a minute, then put the ice pick away and got out.
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Some lady tipped me a bag of frozen trout.
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Uber, not taxi, but I will never get over the drunk/high yuppie bros. I picked them up from a golf tournament. They were cooked out of their minds. They made me go to a drugstore so they could buy drinks and cigarettes. They made me go through a Wendy's so they could get snacks and kept trying to order fried chicken like it was a KFC. The woman taking their order was not amused. I drove them to their stupidly fancy neighborhood full of mcmansions. They talked about how they married hot twins and asked if I wanted to see nudes (I passed) and then asked if I wanted to go do coke with them in their yard (I passed on that, too). They were both so fried that I got tipped twice. The first one tipped me twenty bucks and the second one tipped me twenty bucks because he "knew" that his friend was a cheap bastard who didn't take care of me. They were intolerable by being arrogant and friendly in the way only high a******s can be. But overall it was a good trip.
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Been driving for 15 years, lots of stories. Picked up two guys took them to the bar, gave them my card, and they called me to take them home. They convinced me I needed to see the house one of them built, beautiful woodwork. They wouldn't let me leave, they just gave me $$$ to watch them do c*ke and listen to their stories, mist were incoherent nonsense. One though stuck in my head. They made their money in network TV, sports. They did it all, camera, sound, lighting then they were in charge of crews. Once one of them had some money, he took his family to Europe on a long trip. One day in France his grandpa asked where they were going tomorrow. He told him "Chateau St Whatever" and his grandpa freaked out and said he couldn't go there. Later that night, after several drinks, his grandpa explained he dropped bombs on that city in WW2.
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I used to drive cab and worked mostly nights. I liked working the strip clubs because the girls there were genuinely nice and always tipped well. They would usually just tell me how rough their night was. They always just wanted to vent a little. One night, a young woman offered me a bl*wjob in lieu of her fare. Her fare was $8... lol Another time, a kitchen manager who I gave rides to all the time called me at the end of my shift saying he REALLY needed me to come pick him up. He had obviously had the s**t beat out of him the night before, his hair had been butchered, and he had an AR-15. I was working a day shift, covering for another cabbie. I get a call to pick up the old f****r at a local watering hole. He was s*itfaced and immediately started arguing with me about the fare. Said he wasn't gonna pay, and I needed to just take him where he needed to be. I took his a*s to the edge of town and kicked him out of my cab and gave him a single plastic bottle of water. It was August in N California, and the temp was like 102°.
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A taxi Driver was violently attacked by 2 passenger because he was of Arabic descent a few years ago. Not that long after, maybe 2-3 months top, I was taking a cab and after a few minutes of small talk, turns out my driver was that guy who was attacked. I didn’t ask many questions but he was so gentle, polite and resilient. Gave him a big tip after the ride.I'm a very part time Uber driver and recently had a pick up going to a doctor's office/clinic. When I got close to the building I could clearly see from the road that my passenger was extremely upset. After a couple minutes she proceeded to tell me that she was 12 weeks pregnant with twins and had just found out that both had passed away. To make it even more emotional she showed me pictures of the ultrasound. I have never felt worse for a human being in my life. After I dropped her off I had to park and re group my head for about an hour. That was freaking rough.Friend of mine was a taxi driver and told me this story. It's the dead of winter and my friend picked an old dude up from a bar and drove him home. The guy was dead drunk and at some point on his way home had my friend pull over so he could puke. He does, guy pukes his guts out and when he's OK they continue home. Guy pays.. all is well. The next day the dispatch calls my friend and says they tracked him down from the guys description and time he got home. They say he needs to go pick the guy up that he drove home last night. He picks the guy up and the guy tells him they need to go to where he puked. My friend notices that the guy can hardly talk. After a bit of searching they find where the guy puked. Old dude gets out and finds his in-puke-frozen-dentures and gets them out of the gutter. Success. Dude has his teeth back. Driver gets a fat a*s tip. Everybody is happy.I drove a cab as a 2nd job for a while in Boise, ID. Had a lady fly her private plane from Boise to Jackson Hole, WY. She left her purse in the Boise airport by accident. Hired a cab to pick up the purse and deliver it to Jackson Hole (5.5hr drive each way). She paid the fare and tipped $200. After it was delivered, asked why she didn’t just mail it. She said she had her diamonds in her purse. Oh the lives of rich people.The weirdest one has to be a very attractive mid 30s lady that I picked up at a Walmart at around 8 PM, she asked me if there's any limit to how far she can go, I told her there is not, so she wanted to go to her boyfriend's grandmother's house, which was in a small rural town about 70 miles away. I'm thinking this is the easiest money I've ever made, and I wasn't wrong. We finally make it there and she's like wait don't go into the driveway yet, and she's looking around, and she says Ok good, he's here at his grandma's house like he says he was, which means he's not cheating on me. Ok, we can go back now. So we drive 70 miles back where we came from, stopping by different convenience stores and fast food places, she buys me food and asks me if I want anything along the way, and I take her home, the ride is up to $450 at this point and it's around 1 AM. She starts bringing all her stuff into the house and she comes back and asks me if I want to come inside, I can keep the meter running so I'm technically still on the job. I told her I can't, and she paid the tab and gave me a $100 tip. I always wonder what would have happened if I went in there. I was 22 at the time.The number of times I picked up demented old people who were running away from their care facility.My dad was a cab driver for 20 years. He had plenty of stories about drunks, fighting couples, women in labor, people nearly missing their flight, etc. Three I remember the most:
He was dropping off a young man and had come to a stop but hadn't put the car in park yet. The passenger jumped out, then leaned back in through the open door with a knife and demanded Dad's money. Dad just stomped on the gas and knocked the idiot out of the car. He tried to back over the guy but he jumped up and ran away before Dad could get the car into reverse.
He was renting his car to another driver on his day off. She had a diabetic blackout and rammed the car into a wall at the airport at 40 mph. Fortunately, she survived and didn't hit anyone else but Dad couldn't work for a couple of weeks while he found a new car.
He was driving a guy to a small airport where the guy's friend had a plane and they were going to fly to some event that morning. When they got there, the plane wouldn't start because it had a dead battery. So my dad grabbed his jumper cables from the trunk and gave the plane a jump start. He got a nice tip.
One funny thing about one of his taxis was that it was an old police car and still had the spotlight. He would use it to find house numbers and also to heat up frozen burritos while he was waiting for fares.Forgot about two others that my relative still talks about. My relative picks up a bunch of people from a Caribbean food store. They load up the trunk with a ton of bags of food. When they get close to the destination, that my relative is clearly driving towards and knows where they are going (this is pre GPS), they start giving specific directions, like turn here, straight here, which is usually a tell tale sign that they are going to try to run and skip out on the fare. Which they do. My relative locks the doors and sits there calmly. When they realize he’s not running after them they stop, and turn. He grins, points to the trunk, and starts to back up slowly. The idiots realize that they have run out on a $20 fare, but also on Iike $250 dollars worth of groceries. They run after him yelling “cabbie we’ll pay, we’ll pay.” He bounces. Brings the groceries home to his Caribbean wife, who gives him mad props for picking out such great stuff.
Another similar story - two dudes load up a ton of black garbage bags into the trunk, run out on the fare. Relative drives off, opens the trunk, and finds that those garbage bags are full of WEED. Gives the bags of weed to a fellow cabbie that he knows smokes. Refuses money, just wants the stuff gone. And as a Black dude, no way he’s going to the police. Couple weeks later, the other cabbie just drops two grand in his back seat. He donates it all to charity.Friend of mine at work is a retired Taxi driver and told me this story. He was dropping off 2 riders in Aurora CO and decided to help this elderly couple with their bags. He walked their bags to their doorstep and noticed 2 guys attempting to steal his taxi. He ran towards them and was able to have half his body in the car because he had the windows down while they were driving. He was able to turn the wheel and they drove straight into a stop sign. He said adrenaline kicked in and he started to fight both guys. He said he got quite a few licks into one guy while the other ran and left his buddy there. I forgot to mention but at this point my friend was around 350ish pounds. Anyways cops show up, separate my friend and the guy stealing his car. The cops had to call the ambulance for both people because my friend had beaten this guy to a pulp. My friend then mentions that the cops said how are you still walking and he looks down and notices he has a knife in his stomach. I guess adrenaline kicked in and he never felt it. To make a long story short, he got to the hospital and they had to remove a little more than half his stomach. He now currently weighs around 160 or so. So good for him for basically getting some form of weight loss surgery out of it.Classmate of mine was a former taxi driver. Had a well-dressed man, probably in his 50s, get in with a woman that was probably 30 years younger, and requested to go to the airport. As soon as they get in they start engaging in full blown sexual intercourse in the back seat. The taxi driver ignores this until he warns them that they're only 5 minutes from the airport, to which the guy asks him to drive in circles for another 15 minutes. Since the meter is running he's happy to oblige. They wound up leaving like a 50% tip. so he didn't mind doing a quick wipe-down of the seat after they left.Not a driver but out of high school I was a dispatch and driver coordinator. One day I had a guy who kept calling in for a cab and the rides would get dropped for being missed. He tells me he’s asking for someone to pay 58 dollars for bail, and whoever bails him out will get to take their pick of like a tv or basically anything they wanted when they dropped him off. I tell him sure, I’ll take him up on the offer if he hasn’t been bailed out by 5 am when my shift ended I would drive to get him personally. No idea what the dude did. I assumed alcohol or dui related.
So I bail this dude out, drive him home and got a Samsung flat screen for 58 dollars and the cost of gas round trip. Lives in this nice a*s house, says he’s a pharmaceutical rep, got popped for possession and a dui.
Two months later this dude calls me back and says he’d give me his whole nice a*s living room furniture if I drive him to rehab 3 hours away. I was so tempted but I couldn’t free up time for that type of trip.
This was in 2014, looking back I was f*****g nuts.I drove for Uber for years. Lots of crazy funny stories. I kept narcan on me and used it a couple of times. I did have a guy pull a knife on me, so I d**g him out of my car. He was a super skinny d**g addict, in a 6'5" bear.
But honestly, the Conservative guy going off on gun rights and then pulls a hand gun out and starts waving it around. Oh and he was aggressively drunk. Legitimately feared for my life. Just tried to stay quiet and agree with him on everything. I drove as fast as I could. Drive lasted 40ish minutes.
I have a concealed carry permit, but never carried. It was only for convenience when I went to the range. Really considered starting to after that. It was also the first time I really considered that we need those involved in DV to have their gun rights taken away. This guy was clearly an abuser. .I was an Uber driver back about 5 years ago. I picked up this guy over by the Boston Garden after the bars closed. While waiting at the next light, this drunk girl in the back seat of the car to my left saw me and we both had our windows rolled down.
She then proceeded to say:
"Oh....a ginger man! I love gingers. Hey! Take me out! I love your hair so much!"
To put it into perspective, I am a bald man with ginger hair and have a beard.
Here friends were in the car trying to get her to stop talking and she let this slip out:
"I want to suck your d**k....I LOVE GINGER D**K!!!! AMY HAVE I TOLD YOU HOW MUCH I LIKE GINGER D**K!!!!"
The light changed to green and we went our separate ways.
Ma'am, who ever you are, thank you very much for this story and the compliment. As a heavyset bald ginger dude, I felt like a damn celebrity for those 2 minutes. Even the passenger was jokingly chuckling saying, "Hey man, you should get her number".I was a cab driver for three years when I was in my early 20’s. Was driving the 15 passenger van picking people up from a music festival. Van is full of drunks and I see in the rear view mirror one woman is looking rough. I told her I will pull over for her to puke because we had a rule that if someone pukes you charge them a couple hundred bucks. She tells me I don’t need to do that and proceeds to take a ziplock bag out of her purse, chunders her heart out into the ziplock, perfectly, zips it closed and puts it back in her purse. Apparently she has thrown up in a lot of cabs before and learned to adapt. I was very impressed.One time, I picked up a passenger who insisted they were running late for an important meeting. We were zooming through the streets like a scene out of a movie when suddenly, they asked me to stop the car. I obliged, thinking they needed to rush out for their appointment. Instead, they got out, paid the fare, and ran off... leaving behind a briefcase full of rubber chickens! To this day, I'm still puzzled about that incident. Was it a prank? A strange business venture? Who knows!I drove for Uber for a while during the pandemic. This popped up in my FB memories a few days ago:
My BFF and I were just talking about a relationship thread on reddit and she said she thought it was fake, since it was a little crazy and possibly implausible. I found it pretty believable, because I think people are f*****g insane and told her this Uber story that I forgot to share.
I picked up a couple a few weeks ago, in the middle of the night, and I could hear them yelling at each other on the curb before I even pulled up. Both drunk, coming from a family party. They got in and proceeded to scream at each other the entire ride about how someone at the party had disrespected the dude and the lady didn't have his back.
As I'm approaching their exit on the expressway, the dude is like pull over, let me out, take the next exit! I was taking the exit anyway, so when I got up to the light at the end of the ramp, he jumps out of the car and starts walking away. The light turns green and I ask her if I should just go or what?
There was nowhere for me to pull over and I couldn't block traffic. She said yes, he'll find his own way home (her dropoff was still about a mile and a half away) so I go. And as we're driving the last 3 minutes to her house, she very calmly calls her cell carrier, gives what I presume is his number, says she's thinks she lost her phone with that number somewhere in her house but just in case, can they please deactivate it?
Stone cold.
This is her FIANCE. Who just got out of the car miles from home on a random road, and now has no cell service.
I actually drove back in that direction after I dropped her off, but I didn't see him along the road between where I dropped her and the exit ramp where he got out. I don't know where he went, but I didn't find him. I was going to give him a ride home if I had.
So anyway...yeah. People are crazy petty, toxic, vindictive, you name it. Nothing surprises me anymore.Drove years ago.
A really smashed guy gets in the back and says something like "Frbshr shtreet". I ask him to repeat it and he says the same thing. I look in my street directory and there is indeed a place called "Frobisher street" so we set off.
By the time we get there he's asleep. I pull over and start shouting "wake up!". He stirs and I ask what number is his house. He opens the door, falls out, and promptly goes back to sleep on the grass. I sigh and think that I'm probably not getting paid for this one, the fare is about $15. I briefly contemplate leaving him there, but it's 2am and cold enough that he might get hypothermia if I do. So I get out and wake him up again, hoik him up under the arms and ask again which house.
As it turns out, it's only three houses down so I put one of his arms over my shoulder and walk/drag him to his door. He has no money on him and says "jush gotta get it inside, wait here", so I do while he goes inside and I think for the second time "I'm probably not getting paid" but I hang around and a couple of minutes later he staggers out again and sort of collapses at my feet. He reaches up and gives me at $50 note. I say I'll need to get change and he reaches for my fly and I don't know if he's confused about our relationship but I push his hand away and say -"woah buddy! I don't swing that way". He hands me another $50 note and says "please" in a really plaintive way. I demur and try to give the money back but he just tells me to keep it.
So I left, $100 richer.Not a driver but my first time in NY (Bronx) my taxi driver hit a dude on a bike broad daylight. Dude was trying to speed across the road while taxi was turning so it wasn’t really a bad collision at all. Taxi driver rolls down the window and cusses the biker out. Biker proceeds to pick up his bike and throw it at the taxi. They both flick each other off at the same time, both laugh at the timing & then just go on about their day. People around looked but didn’t actually seem too concerned or amused. I’m in the backseat at a loss for words.
That’s the day I found out NY is just different.Picked a guy up, and he was kind of stand-offish, but not overtly rude. We get to his destination, and he goes to open the door, and it won’t open. Somehow the child lock had been engaged. This guy starts flipping out like I’m trying to kidnap him or something, and is screaming in a high pitched voice that his door won’t open and he’s trapped. I just hopped out and ran around the car and opened the door, because trying to tell him it was just the child lock wasn’t stopping him from screaming like a woman. Once I opened the door he stopped screaming, but he kept looking at me and wouldn’t turn his back to me as he backed away. Maybe don’t take rides from strangers from now on my guy.Not a driver but was a dispatcher about 15 years ago. My main job was to clear the board by the end of the night so there were no waiting fares by the time everyone went home(suburban can company). In order to do so you had to make friends and know who the workers were. About 2 am one night I had a fare left in a not so decent town going to an another questionable place however it wasn’t uncommon for the area. Had a driver call in saying he was logging out for the night if there was nothing else. I told him I had one that was still pending if he wanted it. He obliged. Being a stale fare I called and made sure they still wanted to be picked up customer said yes. Thought nothing of it and finished my shift. Came into work the next day and found out the driver was shot multiple times near the destination town, but managed to hold the offender down until police arrived and then was hospitalized after with life threatening injuries. Went through the whole interview process with PD etc and eventually the driver died due to his wounds. To this day in my mid thirties I still feel responsible for that night instead of just letting the driver go home. Hard worker with a wife and kids and me just a dumb 20 y/o at the time. Don’t know that I’ll ever be able to not feel responsible.Ex UK Uber driver here, this story is the one I tell every time I get asked how it was to drive people around.
I picked up this dude from a wedding at around 8pm in the evening. He was completely wasted and I could hardly understand what he was saying. After around 15 minutes I finally get where he wants to go, the hospital.
It's only at this point that I notice something very wrong with his shoulder, it has a stiletto heel hanging out of it. Turns out he had been dancing with a girl at the wedding who wasn't his girlfriend, she responded to this by impaling him in the shoulder with one of the high heels she was carrying around.
Surprisingly there wasn't a lot of blood and the guy was in quite good spirits about the whole ordeal, I always wonder what happened to him after that evening.Not a taxi driver but did Uber. One time this drunk couple was leaving the car and the boyfriend face planted and was bleeding from his face. I asked them if they needed help and the girl was just like “it’s all good, he does this all the time”. I think about that sometimes.Uber pickup at a residential house. Middle of evening rush hour I ended up having to cut someone off pretty bad as I needed to get over to make a right. He honks, throws the finger, mouths off something, etc... w/e these things happen sometimes. It's about a 12-15 minute drive to the customer's house from here.
Anyways, this guy starts 'following me'. 3-4 side streets onto the highway. Takes the same exit as me 1-2 miles down. 3-4 more side streets until I reach the customer's house which is located inside a col de sac. This guy pulls up to the house RIGHT NEXT to the customer.
I've been on somewhat high alert for awhile at this point as I noticed he's been right behind me this whole time, but now I knew something was about to go down. Whether he's gonna yell at me, wants to fight, or something worse, I just sat in my car looking his way trying to figure out what my next move is.
So this guy exits his vehicle very assumingly, doesn't look my way at all, walks around and grabs something from the passenger's seat and then just walks to his door. WTF, really? Even if I didn't cut this guy off badly, I would've noticed the same car behind me for so long. Just happens he's going to the same exact place? Boring ending, I know, but what are the odds?I drove a cab in Boston for a couple of years. I got some stories. Best one was when some guy was robbing cabbies and they’d been looking for him for several weeks. Usually he was being picked up around China town. Well, one late Sunday afternoon I pick up this regular looking young man in China Town. He gets in and he wants to go to Revere. Cool, good fair. I make a comment or two and he says nothing, just looking out the window. That’s it, nothing else has happened, he’s a nice looking young man and there’s nothing for me to worry about, but, the hair in the back of my neck stands up and I suddenly know this is the dude.
This all happens about three blocks. I’d just gotten married and my wife worried about me so I’d recently gotten my first cell phone. It was an Erickson phone in a little leather case and the phone had a little, green led light on the to front when it was on. It was laying on the passenger seat. I reached over, picked up the phone and hung it on the center A/C vent. As soon as I stopped at the traffic light at the end of that block dude bailed out and ran like his a*s was on fire.
I was happy to see him go.This time I had a drunk old woman in the back of the cab - it was late she wanted to go home and stop at an Indian take out, I said okay but to be clear she can’t eat the food in the cab, after the wait and on the way home she opens the take out…..
Pours in on the seat, pulls down her nickers and squirms in it…..
Ffs.I drove a few years of Taxi. Robbery attempts, fare disputes, etc.
Craziest I saw was a pickup call for a guy who tried to get into my car in @ -30 c blizzard in his under wear. No other clothes.
“No you can’t get in my car. Let me put you back on the other side of that door where it’s warm”. Dragged him into the warmth & closed the door. He would have died if I hadn’t shown.News Years Eve, my father was doing Uber Black with my mother's Cadillac SUV. Guy gets in with his girlfriend, covered in blood. Turns out the guy got stabbed a couple of times at a bar, by the time they got to their appartment the entire formerly tan interior looked like a scene from Dexter. To top it off they both left their shoes in the car when they got dropped off...It was a pretty warm night, really dark, no lights where I was driving. I saw something in the middle of the road, so I slowed down to not hit it, and see what it was. First I thought that maybe it was a trash bag or something, but it was a human. A man, maybe in his thirties, totally passed out, just laying there. I stopped the car, put my hazards on, and started waving my phone in the air with the flashlight on, so I could stop the oncoming traffic so they wouldn't hit him.
I went to the man who slowly started waking up, and others stopped to help as well. The man started puking all over the place, and he also spat his dentures out on the ground, covered in puke. He did put them back in.
We started asking him questions, how he's feeling, his name etc, but he only got upset. I ended up calling the cops, cause he had clearly enjoyed more than just alcohol, and he was definitely in no shape to take care of himself. The cops came, but I had to go so my clients wouldn't need to wait for too long for me to pick them up. I assume the police picked the man up and probably kept him overnight so he could clear his head.
I've experienced a lot of other stuff as well, but that one came to mind first. Also, I have to mention that during these experiences I've been 19-20years old, and really just a girl, so these things are a little scarier for me than they would be to a full grown man, since I really can't stand up for myself the same.London Black taxi driver here. Picked a up a passenger off the street for a journey to Heathrow airport. This single guy is wearing to me what looks like bed clothes and is carrying nothing more than a single use bag.
Get to airport he says he has no cash and needs an atm! I told him
I could not leave taxi parked at deptures at airport so he leaves his single use carrier bag and goes inside for cash machine.
After a long time I realise he’s not coming back and probably I should look at the junk he’s left me in his bag on my back seat.
As I open rear door and start emptying his junk on my taxi floor I sense the sun has gone behind a cloud- no it’s not - he’s standing over my shoulder with a hand full of cash as I kick his rubbish around the floor of my cab!A guy I drove one time. Left his wallet in my cab. I didn't know about it until another customer told me it was back there. I jumped through a bunch of hoops to get his contact Info. I eventually called blockbuster and got his contact info. Called him. He wanted me to meet him 40 minutes away. I told him I could meet him where I picked him up at. So I meet up with him to give him his wallet and the cops are there. The guy is missing $7 and is worried about identity theft. Of course I had a small amount of personal use d***s on me and I got arrested for posession. I still do good deeds but honestly worry about getting arrested any time I do something like that. One time I found a wallet at an airport and made my girlfriend turn it in. It really made me not trust anything. For anyone wondering, I did not steal his $7.Not really a taxi driver but my side job i work at at a cab company which also deals with dialysis patients. I literally have to pick up people from their homes with a wheelchair and strap them into and load them into my car. What stuck with me was a patient with bandaged feet. The bandages have been Yellow and everything smelled. The patient hasn't changed his clothes for a long time. The whole car smelled rotten and filthy after we unloaded him at dialysis Me and my mate went to the place it was all filthy with old magazines and books and it hasn't been cleaned in ages.
Another time i picked another patient from dialysis. He didn't feel well. The nurses tried to convince him to go to the emergency room instead. He wanted home. He refused, i just wished he wouldn't die in my car because my last first aid training was 14 years ago. Tried to get a thumbs up at stop lights just to make sure he was still there. Brought him home just fine. Haven't habe a fare from particiluar client since.
I also have no more compassion for these old people. Most are narcissist a******s and racist. One complained about young people building homes where there was a good viewing at the canyon and the young ones destroyed the view. Others are mad at ukrainian refugees. F**k them a******s.Does Uber/Lyft count?
I picked up a blind guy one time and we were having a great conversation. The app on his phone gave him auditory updates about his location as we drove, and I had to skip his exit on the freeway due to construction.
Dude absolutely flipped out. He started accusing me of trying to kidnap him, threatened to call the police. Shouted at me for the entire remainder of the trip (probably less than 5 mins). I tried to explain why we were taking a different route but he was in a full panic.
I stopped accepting rides after that and went home.Not a taxi driver but I witnessed a cabbie yelling at this dude for j walking in front of him, the guy j walking tr was trying to walk backwards and chrip back to the driver.. He tripped and had his skull crushed by a street car.. That s**t still haunts me to this very day.Ubered for a few years. I should've driven away when the 2 ladies came out to open the door to keep me there. Waited like 5 minutes for a woman in labor to get in my car so I could drop her at the ED.
Had a guy drunkenly wave his gun around, telling me he'd tip me if I voted for Trump.
Found 3 guns total, 1 was definitely from a LEO. SMH.New Year’s Eve 2022. Picked up a 55+ year old man leaving the bar around 11pm. He was incredibly tall with scars on his face. He kind of reminded me of the neighbor from home alone 1, but larger.
His condo was about 5 minutes away and asked me drop him off by his garage door, which was located at the end of a long, dark alley. It was raining.
When I reached the drop off point he reached from the back seat and quietly put his massive, hairy hand on my right shoulder and kept it there for what seemed like eternity but was probably around 5 seconds. I became tense and thought this is about to get ugly. He squeezed my shoulder, then with his right hand reached forward, gave me a 20 dollar bill, said happy new year, and left the car.Driving a group of girls to Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. Two of them were begging the third not to go to R. Kelly's house, but they did not succeed in convincing her not to go. Still f***s with me to this day.Picked up the owner of a liquor store and his wife who just got into a fight at the bar or something. He was blotto and gave me directions and fell asleep. Wife told me to keep the meter running. Dude took like. 250$ nap can’t remember the tip. He got angry put hands on me and I brake checked him into the seat back.Took a younger lady to get all of her teeth removed. No idea how someone so young would need this done. I left her my direct number for the return trip because it was a Saturday and dispatch was closed. I worked for a Medical Transport at the time. When I picked her back up she was obviously high from the procedure and joked that she had my number and would give me a call. She never did. I was disappointed.Got a few…
Couple of drunk bikers, one of which who started cleaning his hand gun in the passenger seat, half an hour out of town… in the middle of nowhere…
A beautiful young lady who came to the cab pulling her skirt down and making herself presentable before getting in, and then on the drive telling me about the guys she met in the alley. She wasn’t making it up based on the stain she left on the passenger seat…
On our way to pick up 25 soldiers in the next town with 5 taxis… going 150 km/hr beside each other on the highway…
Too many drunks and cheaters and guys talking about running off without paying to make a lasting impression….My buddies dad is a taxi driver. When we were teens, I had my license before my friend, so he called me one day to pick his dad up from jail.
From the way it was explained, he picked up a fairly normal looking guy. Said guy pulled down his pants and started s******g in the back seat out of nowhere. Buddies dad was yelling at him to get out of the car but he wouldn't so his dad went back there and started punching. He got him out of the car when the cops showed up. Buddies dad got s**t on him in the melee and he went a little crazy about it.1)Picked up a couple of strippers that sware they left their cd's in my cab. Dispatch said they had a 'surprise' for me if I found them. I tore the cab apart even looked in the trunk knowing I never opened it for them. Never found the ? nor got the surprise. 2)Drunk guy at the bar wasted his friends put him in pay me in advance w/tip. Got him home, stumbles out, pays me again. I told him it's been taken care of multiple times. Im not turning down forced $$. Thank you sir..beep,beep. Both stories 96,97ish. I was a late teen.Used to drive for Lyft: I have a couple.
Someone pre-booked a ride for a blind homeless man who I ended up dropping off at an abandoned hotel in the middle of skid row. We barely fit the f**k ton of stuff he has with him in the trunk. He was very concerned about me bending his plastic dust pan.
Picked up a pregnant lady who was definitely on some kind of d**g who started telling me traumatic things like her sister dying, wishing she was the one taken instead. Reaching in the front seat trying to show me her jewelry and just being generally distracting and a horrible passenger.
Picked up some guys in a sketchy neighborhood. They came off as gang bangers. At first three were about to get it… and one said to another, “should we (mumble) this one?” Other gang banger says “naaaa not this one” other dude jumps out. Luckily I had a plastic Covid divider up, but I was thinking I was about to get robbed. They then proceeded to roll a blunt on the way to their destination. On the phone bragging about how many “bands” he was making. Didn’t leave a tip LOL
I’m sure I have a lot of others but those are the ones that jump out to me off the top of my head.I used to Uber before getting my substitute teacher credential. One day I pick up this woman who was super into Hello Kitty. Backpack, clothes, the whole 9. Well I drop her off and drive to pick up another dude who is just giving me judgmental looks for seemingly no reason.
After I drop him off I head home and make sure no one left any belongings in my car, and lone and behold, there’s a Hello Kitty pin stuck face up on the floor in the backseat of my car.
The guy must’ve thought I was some creepy 30 year old Caucasian Hello Kitty fan lol.Driving uber to make extra cash to pay for medical bills.
Driving on the weekend and two middle aged women get in the car around 10pm and sit in the backseat. They had just finished karaoke at a bar and were laughing and having a good time. These rides tend to be non-eventful, especially when they’re happy, mostly sober, and wanting to go home versus bar hopping and trashed.
5 minutes into the ride I hear fumbling sounds followed by pump pump, pump pump, pump pump. I looked back wondering what in the world is going on, and sure enough both women had taken the opportunity to break out their breast pumps to load up on milk before returning home to their infants. They screamed at me to turn around and not look.
I couldn’t believe 1) the audacity to do this in my car without asking and then 2) the accusation that I was trying to spy on them as if those sounds are normal and wouldn’t cause any surprised driver to look back.
I ended up taking them home for the next 10 minutes or so, mostly because I knew kicking them out would be an even larger issue for me given their personalities.One incident that still sticks with me today happened a few years ago when I picked up a young woman who was visibly upset. As we drove, she confided in me about how she had just found out that her boyfriend had been cheating on her for months. She was heartbroken and didn't know what to do. I could see how much pain she was in and I tried my best to console her and offer some words of encouragement. It was a reminder to me of the emotional baggage that passengers often bring into my cab and the importance of being a compassionate listener.College kid and her dad who was visiting her. Both wasted and stumbling off into the night with the same gait.
