Being an Uber driver seems simple enough—pick someone up and take them to their destination. Sometimes, a ride really is that simple. Not always though.
Uber drivers have heard some pretty crazy things while on the job. We know this thanks to Reddit users who are or who have been Uber drivers in the past.
From close-calls with violence to overhearing worrisome fights between couples or friends, Uber drivers are used to hearing unbelievable secrets during a ride.
Follow along as we retell some of the wildest secrets Uber drivers have overheard on the job. All content was edited for clarity.
Crazy! Content has been edited for clarity.
“I Heard A Cell Phone Ring In My Backseat”
“I picked up this young overly affectionate couple that spent the entire trip making out in my backseat and telling each other that they loved each other. Cute.
So I drop off the couple and head on my way to pick up my next fare.
I hear a cellphone ring in my backseat, realize it’s my previous ride’s, and pick up the phone to let them know I have it and I’ll come back to drop it off. Turns out it was the guy’s wife phoning to check in on him while he was on a business trip, which he was thoroughly enjoying with his mistress.”
“I Hope He’s Okay”
“One time I was driving a dude for a bit of a long trip. Was gonna take around 25-30 minutes. He wasn’t hammered, but definitely a bit lit. It was late and he must’ve been feeling a bit down, so he confided in me and asked me for some advice.
He told me he’s madly in love with his fiancé’s best friend but he couldn’t back out now. He’d been with this girl 4 years, engaged for 1, ready to be married in a few months.
It was pretty sad to hear, because it wasn’t just your average story. It was filled with a lot of subtle emotional and mental anguish. The guy went through about 5 years of ups and downs with his girl, and found an innocent friend and comfort in the best friend. After a few years, he developed feelings and it was just downhill from there.
I felt bad for the guy because he seemed like he was truly in love with his fiancé too, although he had strong feelings for this friend. He knew that going through with the marriage meant a lifetime of being around the friend and suppressing feelings, but also breaking it off meant that he lost the girl of his dreams.
Seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and I hope he’s doing okay.”
These Guys Had A Sinister Plan In Place
“Two 40-something guys who I picked up from a bar were talking on a phone with the speaker on.
They were trying to make plans with a third guy who was at a party with a bunch of sloshed 12 graders (exact words). One guy in my car asked if there was anyone younger there.
The other guy said, ‘Dude really?’
Followed by silence until he said, ‘Freaking sweet.’
I’m almost positive the younger teenagers there already messed up and these older dudes were going to pick up.”
“I Didn’t Know What To Say”
“I had someone get in my car who told me he’s in his late 20s and that he’s involved with a girl who just recently turned 18. I awkwardly told him that’s good for him and he proceeded to tell me that it’s not, that his life sucks and everything he does to make himself happy doesn’t work.
He told me he watches vids of people committing suicide and wishes he had the courage they did to go through with it. He told me he’s going to go to San Francisco and spend every last penny he has on vacation and just jump off the Golden Gate Bridge when he’s done. I didn’t really know what to say. When I dropped him off I told him that I hope things start looking up and he just said, ‘They won’t. They never do’ and left.
He also asked weird questions like ‘If I hit you would you beat me up?’
When I said I’d rather no one hit anyone, he said ‘Dude, you’d whoop my butt because I’m an absolute piece of garbage.”
I really, really hope he got help.”
“I Bet He Never Took Uberpool Again”
“An Uber driver I know ‘George’ was doing Uberpool one night in Austin where you pick up multiple people en route to the destination.
First Girl #1 gets in the car alone and sits in the back seat on the passenger side. Then a couple (guy and girl) comes, and there’s not enough room for everyone in the back, so Girl #2 sits behind the driver and guy sits up front. The two girls in the back start chatting and seem to be getting along well.
Girl #1 asks what they’re doing tonight, and Girl #2 says, ‘Oh, me and my boyfriend Josh are going out to celebrate. Josh works at XX and just got a promotion.’ At this point, George notices Josh is crouching down in his seat and looking guilty.
Then, Girl #1 says, ‘That’s funny, my boyfriend is also named Josh and works at XX. I wonder if they know each other.’
Then Girl #2 starts tapping her boyfriend on the shoulder and bugging him to turn around to meet Girl #1. At some point Josh can’t avoid the introduction any more, and is forced to turn around. He does so with a look of utter horror on his face, as it slowly dawns on both girls that they’re dating the same Josh.
Anyway, both girls start screaming and kick Josh out of the Uber.
Not sure what happened after that, but I bet Josh never took Uberpool again.”
“The Lady Started Going Ballistic”
“I was an Uber driver for about six months.
I pick up an older couple in the middle of rush hour in downtown. It was also mid-snow storm.
The man was on his cell and his wife seemed like she was in a rush. We needed to go north to get to their destination, but we were stuck in traffic and the wife tells me to make a left.
I tell her, ‘Ma’am, if we go that way that street is going to take us south and it’s going to take longer to get where we need to go.’
The lady snaps back with, ‘I KNOW WHERE I AM GOING JUST TURN!!!’ After asking her like 3-4 times if she was sure, I finally said okay and made the turn. A block or so later the street curves—as I warned her it would. As I predicted, we were going south the completely wrong way.
She then says, ‘WHERE IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU GOING!! YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!!!!! YOU ARE TRYING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US!!!!’
I said, ‘Ma’am I told you we shouldn’t have turned. I asked you 3 times and you told me to turn so I turned AFTER telling you it was the wrong way.’
The lady starts just going ballistic, yelling and cussing and saying I was going the wrong way to ‘rob her’ because of the price surge.
The husband was on the phone the whole time and said, ‘Let me call you back.’ He hung up. “
‘WE WOULDN’T BE GOING THE WRONG WAY IF YOU LEARNED HOW TO KEEP YOUR DANG MOUTH SHUT!!!!!’ he said.
‘When will you learn to just SHUUUUUUT UPPPPPPPPP!!!!’ he continued. Then he consoled me.
‘Buddy this isn’t your fault… This is my fault… I married this woman 20 years ago and should’ve just offed myself a long time ago.’ Then they started going at it.
The woman told him, ‘MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE PUT THE WEAPON IN YOUR MOUTH FOR YOU…’ And then they were just yelling back and forth. I finally get back on the right street get them to their spot. Because of the completely unnecessary detour per her request, it took over an hour ride to get them to their destination and it cost about $70.
The whole time they were yelling (I just raised the radio and let them go at it they went at it the whole hour non-stop).
When I get them to their spot, they stopped yelling mid-sentence and say in the most eerily calming way possible, ‘You have a great day! Thank you!’
It was crazy.”
“I Started To See Red Flags”
“I drove Uber in Denver for a couple months, but the singular event that forced my retirement happened on a classically Colorado night in late December of last year: cold, snowy, everyone lit.
I wasn’t planning on driving in such miserable conditions. I’m a bad enough driver as is—I have no confidence in my abilities nor should anyone else. I find the need to mention that the only reason I Uber’d people around was because I lost my job at Chick-Fil-A because of some customer who wanted fat-free ranch, despite my insistence we didn’t have fat-free ranch. I gave the lady attitude and got fired, which finally showed me that customer service probably isn’t a good job choice for me.
But I’m chilling at my apartment and the heating at my place was broken because my landlord was too busy catching up on Game of Thrones to fix that, so I decide I’m available to drive this girl to the DCPA (Denver Center for the Performing Arts) just to get out of the apartment.
This girl lives directly underneath me, but I’ve never met her before. She’s a solid 8/10: curvy, blonde, about 5’2 and with the goofiest smile you’d ever see. As I’m driving her there, she starts telling me the story of why she’s all alone on this chilly pre-Christmas night.
Turns out, her ex-boyfriend ‘Scott’ was supposed to go to this play with her tonight but he sucks. The stories about him start off small enough: he slept with her best friend and lied about it, but the stories continually got worse. Turns out he was dealing from the basement of her old house, and got her arrested for it. Thankfully she was proven not guilty in court (the evidence was entirely circumstantial) but he had skipped town, so she was left to suffer on her own. She tells me he was abusive, beat her nightly, and tried to physically assault her before she broke up with him. My sympathy senses are going off the charts for her. She even sheds a few tears.
Apologizing for spilling her history, she asks if I want to see this show with her. She still has the extra ticket. I, of course, jump at the chance to go on a date with this hot bombshell who’s probably out of my league, so I agree.
We park about a block away from the DCPA and have to walk the rest of the way. The snow is sprinkling around us like we’re in a magical fairytale and I’m getting seriously flirty vibes from her.
We get to our seats in the show when she asks me if I want to go backstage to meet the actresses before it starts. That’s against the rules, right? Well, the girl insists she knows them and it’s fine. So she takes me on this shady little path backstage and pulls out a set of keys (KEYS) to unlock the doors.
I started to see red flags, yea, but I’m wanting to get laid, and the last thing I wanna do is blow her off.
She takes me to the green room and introduces me to this dude called ‘Scott,’ one of the lead actors. He looks at her and starts freaking the heck out, which is when she pulls out a knife and stabs him in the gut.
That Scott was the same Scott that broke up with her. I immediately got out of there, called the cops and ER, and when everything calmed down, searched his name online.
Turns out, she was the dealer and psycho ex that skipped town. He was her innocent boyfriend who found out and ratted her out to the cops, and she wanted her revenge. She tried to pin the stabbing on me, but when the police interrogated me, they found out all about the cash that she left in my car before she left. She was actually a monster in disguise. Who knew?
That was the end of my Uber career.”
“I Cried All The Way Home”
“I’m a former Uber driver. I picked up a sweet girl from a bar on a Wednesday night. She was absolutely hammered at about 10 pm. She got into my car, apologized for being so lit and politely asked if we could just drive around a little while, with the windows down.
I was prepping for a cleaning fee, trying to drive and pull a vomit bag out of the glove box, but no, she just did that airplane thing with one hand out the backseat window. She asked me if I had ever thought about dying, to which I replied, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’
That’s when she told me that she had cancer. It was in her brain and it was too far gone to consider chemo. I remember my heart just pounding. She told me she was dying and she was not going to be okay. Tonight she was celebrating with her work friends who threw her a going-away party. She told them she was taking a position abroad.
‘I just didn’t tell them that abroad was heaven.’
Jesus. Christ. I turned off my app and cried all the way home.”
“I Encouraged Him To Make The Move”
“I was driving a couple of lit friends and the one guy was lamenting being in his dorm with this girl he thinks really wants him but he doesn’t know how to approach it. He says her smile and everything drives him crazy. He really wants to hookup with her, but he doesn’t know how to really go about it because it could go all wrong.
He’s looks for confirmation in the green light by sharing his story.
His best friend says, ‘It’s not that simple, you see. It’s his cousin. He wants to do the deed with his cousin and it’s going to be bad.’
He explains that yes, in fact it was his cousin. But, they grew up differently.
She’s really hot, and he really wants her, he told me. And, it’s not actually as bad as it sounds because she’s a married-in cousin—actually only like a half-cousin. I never even worried about trying to mind-bend how that would be possible or not.
I conclude that he’s probably going to have some bad days ahead of him at family reunions if he pushes forward. But just for the heck of it, I encouraged him to make the move.
Maybe he’ll get laid by his cousin?”
“He Came Around To My Window While Reaching Into His Coat Pocket”
“I once drove some well-dressed Russians in between bars on the west side of Chicago. I used to work for a Russian-owned cab company and I understand a little Russian, and I heard two of them talking back and forth about something one of them was very anxious about.
The phrases that jumped out at me were ‘This is death, this is serious,’ ‘Blood is on me,’ and ‘I’m not a bad man.’
The other guy was mainly just telling him to relax a lot, and telling him, ‘There are no fools here’ or something along those lines.
Upon dropping them off, like an idiot, I temporarily blanked that I had just heard parts of a seemingly harrowing conversation, and I said good night to them in Russian. Only one of them heard me (the older guy telling his colleague to relax) and he just stared at me.
Then he came around to my window while reaching into his coat pocket, which scared me. He then pulled out a $100 and said (in English), ‘My friend, do we understand?’
I just took it, shook my head in the affirmative, and drove off. I didn’t take any rides for the rest of the night.”
“I Tried To Tell Myself I Was Overreacting”
“I was once driving for Uber and picked up two young Spanish guys about the age of 25. They were clean cut, spoke English very well and were really polite. The first thing that seemed off was that both decided to sit in the back, when typically one of two people would usually ride up front. It was quiet for a bit after the usual small talk I made, and then they started speaking to each other in Spanish.
I know some Spanish, but I wasn’t really trying to listen in on their conversation, but with how quiet they were speaking I decided they were trying to be secretive, so I started doing my best to eavesdrop. This became kind of easy because they started getting louder and it was obvious they were arguing. Now my Spanish skills are rough but I think kept hearing ‘me,’ ‘you,’ they,’ ‘where,’ and ‘location.’
I’m not sure what the one finally said to the other but they stopped arguing and that’s when I heard, ‘You get out,’ and in the Spanish form that is considered a extremely disrespectful way to speak to someone. Then there was a lot of arguing where I could only really hear ‘get out’ and ‘I paid’ for a short while.
Finally, they stopped fighting and one of them said very politely to me, ‘My friend forgot his date tonight, could you please let him out here so he can walk home before we get further away?’
I was conflicted but I complied with his request and decided I must’ve been interpreting their conversation wrong. The one getting out thanked me for the ride, apologized for the inconvenience, said one more thing in Spanish to his friend before he left. After that, I thought I had definitely misunderstood them. But then, the dude asks if I can change the destination, saying his plans have changed now due to his friend’s date.
I said of course, now getting very suspicious but trying to tell myself I was overreacting. It was a long drive, longer than the first destination, and we began to leave town. Finally I pull up to this old farm house that looked abandoned but figured it must’ve just been his place and was a bit shabby, but when the guy got out, he didn’t walk toward the house, he just kinda stood there and said bye.
Being suspicious, I drove off down the road for a while before turning back around and I saw that the guy was walking along the side of the road toward a small graveyard, a decent ways away from the house.
I didn’t slow down because I didn’t want him to think I was snooping, or even notice it was my car. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m pretty sure there was something waiting in that cemetery hidden somewhere, and as soon as his buddy told him where it was, he cut him out of the deal and made him get out. I think he may have even been scared of the other guy.
It was the weirdest night of my life.”
“I Never Did Hear From Her Again”
“I’m a cab driver on Long Island. Pick up these two women, in their mid-20s and bring them to a restaurant. We were on the way there and we start chatting and the topic of depression and suicide comes up (one of them was in school to eventually become a psychiatrist). I, myself, deal with depression and anxiety and I also have a history of suicide attempts and I speak openly about it when the topic comes up because I want to stigma of mental illness to go away.
I drop them off and they ask for my name so they can have me as a driver later. A few hours later, the dispatcher sends me back there to pick them up on a driver request. Sweet! I pick them up and we’re heading back but the mood in the car has DRASTICALLY changed from earlier. It was pretty much silent. I figure maybe they’re tired or whatever.
Halfway home, one of the women asks if she can ask me about my depression and suicide attempts, and although it was kind of an odd question, I go along with it because I want to get rid of the stigma. Now she’s visibly upset and she confesses that one of her best friends killed herself a few days before, no warning signs or anything. Without too many details, I basically said that that’s actually not uncommon, as some people who attempt suicide don’t want their friends or family to know how they’re feeling (this is one of the reasons I would like to see the stigma surrounding depression and suicide go away) so she shouldn’t feel guilty about it.
THEN she confesses that she was having suicidal ideation herself and had nobody to talk to about it. So I basically said it’s good that she’s talking about it now and she should because this is not a thing that can be fought one on one. I gave her my phone number so that she could talk to someone who knew what she was dealing with. I also gave her the number for the suicide hotline and told her she should contact a mental health professional. I never did hear from her again but I really hope she went and got some help.”
“I Hate This Job”
“I picked up a girl to take her straight from work to the hospital to see her dad, who had cancer. Her mom had called her work to make her end her shift early because it was serious.
I dropped her off and was like, ‘God, I hate this job cause I’ll never know how her night ended.’
Thankfully, I was wrong. Next night, I’m taking people home from bars and her two guy friends took her out to get wasted because her dad did end up dying that night. They were being lit idiots, so when I took them to get pizza, she came outside and we talked about it a little.
That was probably the one ride where I felt I had a positive impact on someone’s life beyond getting them home safely.”
Proposition
“I picked up an attractive lady at Atlantic City during the Walk of Shame hours. She came in my ride, visibly upset, sobbing. Dressed like she was going to a charity event, this lady was gorgeous with dirty blond hair in a 40s noir hairdo.
It’s rides like these that the only thing you can do, as a driver, was keep your mouth shut, drive and observe.
The ride was about 15 minutes yet, to me, it seemed like eternity.
As I ‘observe’, each call was adding to her anxiety. I believe she was going though her whole contact list. Most went to voice mail. Yet, four people answered. It sounded like all dudes. She was to the point-
‘So, what’s it going to be? Are you in?’
‘….BUT WHY???’
‘WELL, FORGET YOU! BYE!’
and she would slam her flip phone shut and sob even more.
She’d finally gave up half way though the trip and by this time she was crying so much that I ran out of tissues.
She then made her move. Asked for my name. Then she asked me if she was hot. Seeming it was a loaded question, I asked what was going on.
She proceeds to tell me that she is a career woman and although she made it on top, she wants a family.
She never was into social scene so really, she doesn’t have a man. Told her to get hire a male lover. She did laugh.
Then she went for it- would you sleep with me?
I asked her if she was joking. She began to cry again. I told her I was sorry but, whatever she’s thinking of doing, some guys will freak out by such a prospect. I asked if she ever saw ‘Species’.
I did politely decline and said, what she trying to get, Uber’s not the place to pick up what she wants.
I try to console her and explain that any guy will give the world to have someone like you to be with. It just takes time. She rebutted and said she was 34. I lied and said that’s more than enough tine.
I do hope she was able to find that right suitor.”