There are few jobs that give you an inside look into people's lives quite like a taxi or Uber driver. Day after day you witness the places people go, the ways they conduct themselves under the influence, and how they treat you - a stranger they usually expect to never see again.
While most taxi rides are relatively uneventful interludes of phone scrolling and radio bops, anyone who has driven professionally has a few wild rides tucked up their sleeve.
In a recent Reddit thread, taxi and Uber drivers shared some of the wildest stories on the job, and they range from criminal to heartwarming.
1. ___Turd_Ferguson___ used their rider's words to give them a lesson.
"I picked up 4 guys wearing neon green tutus. The guy in the front seat looks at me while I’m driving and says, “Don’t do drugs.” Then proceeds to snort cocaine from some sort of vial. I smiled and said, “please don’t do drugs in my car.”"
2. EitherChipmunk's life was changed by their passengers.
"I was unemployed at the time. Quit a job due to an abusive/toxic work environment. Had recently graduated a coding boot camp but wasn’t having any luck landing new opportunities. Bills were piling up, and honestly I was losing hope. I’m about to call it a night, driving drunks around gets tiring when I decide ehh what’s one more? Turns out these three older women wanted to do some gambling in the next state over and had trouble finding a ride."
"I said yes, figured I’d just call it a night after. We get talking, turns out one of them is an IT consultant. They decide to pay me basically $100 an hour to hang out til they are done and drive them all home. We ended up connecting, she revised my resume and put me in touch with some references of hers. I ended up making a good buck off the fares alone, and also ended up completely turning my life around by landing a dream job with a little bit of help. I wrote her a sincere thank you once I accepted the new offer and she replied with “Help others because you can.” Not a day goes by where I don’t think about how lucky I am."
3. Superschutte literally followed a car.
"I used to drive Uber at fort Myers beach. I picked up 4 drunk as a skunk middle aged people and crammed them into my tiny car. I was about to pull into their neighborhood (nice, gated, on the water) and the one guy was like, “I need you to follow that car!” And I’m like “whatever, let’s see how this plays out”.
"So we start following this random SUV and I’m like “who is this guy?” And they’re like “we don’t know, but we have 20 minutes of babysitter left and we aren’t wasting it”. I reminded them they were on triple rate surcharge and they literally didn’t care."
"Eventually the car pulled over and everyone shouts at me “GO GO GO!!” And we sped off into the night. $100 ride, $20 tip, 5 star review. 100% worth it. Entertaining drunk, otherwise responsible people is a blast."
4. meatfrappe's friend helped track down a missing person.
"Friend of mine visiting NYC took a taxi back to his hotel late night. Riding in the back he found a small women's clutch purse thing. Inside was the ID of a ~19 year old girl, and the business card of a police officer in a town neighboring state. The police officer had the same last name as the girl, so my friend figured the officer was the girl's father and she carried the card in case she ever needed to get herself out of a traffic ticket or something. My friend figures he can leave a voicemail on the officer's business number when he gets back to the hotel, then leave the purse at the hotel front desk for the girl to come pick up, so that is exactly what he does as soon as he gets up to the hotel room."
"About three hours later--now 3 or 4 AM--he is in a deep sleep when loud knocks on his hotel room door wake him up. It's a bunch of NYPD detectives who want to know all the details of how he found the purse, like where he originally hailed the cab, etc."
"Turns out the girl was indeed the daughter of the cop on the business card, and she had been missing for a few days. The discovery of her clutch purse was the first sign of her that had popped up."
"My friend had paid for the cab via credit card and had kept the receipt, so he was able to pass that along to the detectives who, presumably, were able to use that to track down the cab driver and find out any information he could provide.
Ultimately my friend doesn't know what happened, the cops never contacted him again."
5. rawsynergy drove a guy who owed a sex worker money.
"I picked up a guy who either refused to pay a hooker from the night before or didn't know she was a lady of the night. She proceeded to follow us. Finally he gets a call from someone, seemed like it scared him because he told me to bring him back to his place. She followed us back there, I promptly left. Probably should have kicked him out sooner."
6. UniverseBear got a job out of a ride.
"My most memorable would be: I picked up a girl coming home from work. We started talking about my education and what I did before Uber and it just turned out that her company was looking for my skills. She gave me her card, I shot her my resume and 2 years later I'm still working for that company and have been promoted to a Jr executive lvl. I've never had to drive am Uber since."
7. twotimetony received a tip via magic trick.
"Drove for uber for a bit. Once picked up this guy who ended up being a magician. It’s 2am and had to drive him into manhattan to his apartment. It was weird cause nobody was around. The city was dead quiet for some reason. He sat in the front seat and told me stories the whole ride there. Once there he told me to get out and did a magic trick for me. He made 4 100 dollar bills turn into 4 dollar bills and gave me it for a tip."
"I drove a taxi in a suburb of Boston for awhile in the 80s. One day, a kid in his 20s with a baseball bat hailed me and asked me to take him to a pharmacy nearby. It was the middle of the day, so I assumed he was coming from softball practice."
"He told me to wait, then he went into the pharmacy, and left the bat in the car. A minute or two later, he came running out of the pharmacy, with the pharmacist right behind him. Was this guy nuts? What kind of criminal uses a cab as a getaway car? I casually reached back and locked the door just as he reached the cab."
"He fumbled with the handle, realizing that he left his only defensive weapon inside, and then ran off. I let the pharmacist into the cab, and then the two of us made a slow pursuit of the guy, while reporting his location over the radio (no cell phones). Eventually, he was so exhausted that I got out of the cab and held him until the police arrived. I had to testify in court and identify him. Not the sharpest tool in the shed."
9. Mokumer drove a loaded car.
"Back in the 70's as a student I drove a taxi in the weekends and some evenings/nights to earn some extra money. One time, late at night I got a call to pick a guy up at his home, at arrival the guy hops in the back with a sports bag with few rifles sticking out, I could see that in my rear view mirror."
"He wanted me to drive out of town to some B-road and in the middle of nowhere he told me to stop the car on a small road in an area with a lot of trees, hopped out of the car with his bag, came back few minutes later without the bag and told me to head back to his place and drop him off. He gave me a huge tip and this is the first time I ever mentioned this happened."
10. banana-damage's mom delivered Uber Eats to a train conductor mid ride.
"Not me, but my mom. She was delivering uber eats last winter to some guy a little out of town. The location was a bit odd, but she went with it. Just outside our city on one of the side roads by some train tracks she parked her car and looked around for any houses. None."
"There was a train stopped nearby and suddenly my mom noticed a guy waddling through the deep snow towards her. "Are you (random name, calling him Bob) Bob?" He nodded, took the food, and waddled towards the train. Suddenly it starts up, and continues down the tracks. This guy deadass ordered uber eats while conducting a train!"
11. sqkypants's picked up a dad in bad shape.
"Picked a guy up from a strip club around 5pm. He had clearly been there for a while and was talkative drunk. He started talking to a friend on his phone and kept saying he couldn't go into detail because he had a lady driver. He told me he was going home and then taking his daughter out to a basketball game because there was a after game concert she was very excited about."
"Little did he know (or I know because I was just following the gps) that he had been routed to her high school. Dudes in a rumpled suit, smells like strip club, and is clearly not sober. He got a resolved look, handed me a few singles, said thanks for the ride boo, and just hitched up his pants like a man embracing his shitty situation."
12. Uvegotfail got to taste test a new vodka.
"I drove for Uber and Lyft for a short time. There was one situation I will never forget. I was driving downtown DSM and picked up a gentleman who was just getting out of the ICubs game. He was loaded down with Cubs gear (he told me about 400 dollars worth) and was absolutely trashed from drinking all day at the game."
"The first thing he says when he gets in is, "I know my destination is X, but I need to go to my hotel first to put all this stuff away." I say, "no problem" and he lets me know how appreciative he is and he will "make it worth my time." I honestly didn't mind waiting because the ride was still active so i was still making money. He gets back in the car and we start heading toward his original destination (about 30 minutes away)."
"We get to talking and apparently he is a beverage distributor for a company in CA. He is doing some sales in the area and asks me if I like to drink. I told him I do on occasion, to which he replies, "do you like vodka?" and passes a FULL BOTTLE OF VODKA to me in the drivers seat (it was sealed thank god). He told me it was a new kind of vodka that he was trying to get on the shelves of some local bars because this vodka was originally created by some ISU students. When we arrived at the destination, he thanked me again for going out of my way to drop him off and let me keep the bottle as a tip. Definitely one to remember."
13. Crazylegs704 drove around a rejected Tinder match.
"I matched with a girl on Tinder by accident, and she messaged me saying she liked PBR, which is in one of my pictures. Being awkward and not wanting to waste her time, I just unmatched without saying anything. Around this time I was near the beginning of my brief tenure as an Uber driver, and who the fuck do you think I pick up the very next day."
"I immediately try to slouch hoping she doesn't recognize me, and after 5 minutes of silence, right when I think I'm in the clear, she says "Hey did we match on Tinder?" To which I reply "I don't think so." Then she says "Yeah, I messaged you about PBR and then you unmatched me." And I just let out a feeble kind of "Oh, yeah." Then I look down at my GPS, and there's 25 minutes left in this ride. I did not get a tip"
14. tehdoughboy drove to an NFL player's house.
"Picked up two guys from a hotel. Destination is in the Hollywood hills. When we're navigating up the winding roads of the hills, one of the guys mentions that he "hates going to [famous football player]'s house" because he always gets a little carsick. He tells me he knows this player because he plays for the famous player's Alma mater and is in town to work out for the NFL draft that year."
"This house is at the top of a hill with a beautiful view. When we get there, the drafted asks me to wait for a couple minutes and he enters the house. After a while, he gets back in the car and tells me I'm gonna follow three other cars to Six Flags. First car is a big, black Suburban followed by two luxury German sedans and here I am with my economy car with an Uber sticker on it."
15. reezwon picked up some horny mallrats.
"The last uber rider I ever picked up was a teenage kid (maybe 16ish) and what I would assume was his girlfriend. They got in the backseat and after a few minutes started to hear some unsettling sounds. Look back and she is straight up blowing him in my back seat. It was like 3 in the afternoon and I picked them up from the mall. Who does that?"
16. illusion_control read from the book of positivity.
"Not a driver.. but was recently a passenger in an uber. It was a Monday morning, so of course I was a little down and not in the mood to talk too much. The driver starts going on about how beautiful the weather is and starts explaining a good day starts with being positive.. She then ask if i would like to see her book.. i was a little confused, but i said sure. She starts explaining that she carries this scrap book with index cards and markers for all of her riders. She said she usually ask them to write some sort of positive message or just tells them they can simply write whatever they want."
"This book was filled with notes from people where we live, outside of the area, and even from people travelling from outside of the country. Some writing uplifting messages, some writing random funny lines, some drunks scribbling support for our sports teams, just so many different messages from so many random people on different walks in life."
"Before i got out, i told her how the messages completely turned my monday around for the better and i really appreciate what she does. She simply said, if she can bring a smile to someones face.. her day is made."
"I now always hope that i have the same driver whenever i request an uber so I get a chance to continue reading the book of positivity."
17. AimlessPeacock picked up kids with homicidal plans.
"I used to Uber/Lyft in Vermont. Picked up four 20-something year old kids from New York who were visiting Burlington. I drove them back to their Air B&B in Stowe, a little less than an hour away. We are having a great time, doing sing alongs to David Bowie. I get to Stowe and the GPS is leading me off the main road, then I turn again onto a dirt road and then another dirt road. It's like 11pm and I don't see a single light from a house, a car, or a street light anywhere. I jokingly say, "Man, where are you guys taking me?"
"One guy replies, "This is where we are going to kill you." Mind you, I have a twisted sense of humor and have actually used this as a joke when I first met the woman who is now my wife, but I immediately followed it up with joking and laughter. I share this with my passengers, and another one replies, "Well, we really are just going to skin you alive." At this point, I ask them to please stop messing with me and that the joke is lost at this point. I kid you not, someone replies "Don't worry, we'll make sure we put olive oil all over your skin so it doesn't dry out."
"Finally we get to the location and they invite me in for a beer. I decline. In fact, I declined to pull in the driveway. As they were getting out of the car, someone dropped their Juul in the car and needed help finding that. No chance in hell I was going to help them find it, as I wanted to be ready to bolt at a moment's notice and I wasn't going to put myself in any vulnerable situations."
"I went home after that one. I'm a pretty big guy, so it takes a lot for me to feel unsafe, but this was one time where I was absolutely terrified being an Uber driver."
18. nathangouge has a few stories up his sleeve.
"I have several...
The first that comes to mind was the 78 y/o lady that insisted that I needed to know about the hookup she was going home from. She went into descriptive detail about her sexual life. When she realised that I wasn't into that conversation, she decided that talking about Trump was the next best thing."
"The other was a guy that I picked up at about 5 PM on a Wednesday. This dude was probably the most drunk person I have ever met. He kept calling me "smart guy" and asking me if I spoke French and German. When I told him no, he insisted that I did and called me a liar. I had to ask him if he wanted to take the tollway and he said it was up to me since I was the "smart guy."
"I ended up taking the tollway, and he yelled at me asking why I went that way. I ended up basically giving him two options: Get out of the car on the tollway or shut the fuck up. When I dropped him off, it took him 10 minutes to get out of the car. His house was right before a cul-de-sac so when I came back around he was standing in the road so I couldn't pass. Dude was a psycho."
19. Acc87 knows occasionally gut instincts are wrong.
"Probably not what you wanted to read, but I've read a book of a taxi driver full of stories like this.
One was a couple directing the driver deeper and deeper into the woods, then down a side road close to the autobahn (at which point he initiated his silent alarm). There the couple found what they were looking for: A small cross with burned out candles around. It was where they had lost their infant daughter in a car crash (on the autobahn next to it). Driver reverted his alarm while they put up new candles"
20. ClownfishAreAssholes got a firsthand look at swinger fashion.
"I was driving on Halloween in a relatively small coastal City and had to pick up a couple from a local hotel. The women was dressed in a long button down jacket that was tightly closed, fishnet pantyhose, and stilettos. Dude was dressed in sweatpants and was also in a buttoned up long coat but I could see something black and shiny around both of his wrists and at his collar. It was around 76 degrees out so I knew they werent dressed for the weather. I thought, "okay, maybe just a weird Halloween couples costume, its fine."
"I picked them up and made small talk as I drove them to an industrial complex in a small community just outside of the city. They were traveling here from Florida and just meeting up with some friends for a Halloween party - only thing super weird about them so far was their clothing choices."
"We pull up to the drop off location and it's a small strip mall with drs offices and small businesses but at the end, there's a door with a bright red heart symbol with a devil's tail. I then noticed the other people getting out of cars and walking up."
"Most of the women were dressed as slutty nuns, teachers, librarians, pretty much every fetish you can name. Some of the men were in leather assless chaps, a gimp suit, and one dude was already stripping buck naked in the parking lot."
"The couple grinned at me, tossed me a $20 tip, and pretty much ran in the building. 99% certain dude was wearing a leather body suit and woman wasn't wearing much of anything. That was my first time delivering people to the local swingers club. Now, I pretty much have their schedule memorized and try to be on the other side of town when the events end."