“I Have Never Felt Worse For A Human Being In My Life”: Taxi Drivers Share The Craziest Stories
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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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.
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.
It's stories like this that help pull me out of a nosedive of complete disgust for humankind.
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 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!
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.
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!
This is the least frightening and the most amusing of all these stories! :))
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.
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.
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.
have a story like this this, my aunt has diabetes and cancer, and once in the middle of winter, coming home from chemo and dialysis, she was weak and sick, she started gagging, she had puked at the place before getting in, but she was beginning to get sick again, I quickly took my shirt and sweater off, folded them up and put them in front of her and let her puke in them, the driver was impressed at my quick thinking and that I was willing to give my shirt and sweater up for my aunt
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.
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.
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".
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.
There's no way you could've known that would happen. Just a tragic story, and the only person responsible is the scumbag who shot the driver. Please don't let someone else's bad actions haunt you for the rest of your life ... I have a feeling you would say the same thing to someone else in the same circumstances.
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!
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.
Hey, first off, I love your name, also, I took a look at your profile, you seem like genuinely such a sweet person. You brought awareness to Lusion, and you have bullying awareness in your profile! You are such a great person, I just wanted to say that, have a nice day <3
Load More Replies... 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.
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.
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.
The number of times I picked up demented old people who were running away from their care facility.
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. .
It shouldn't be that easy for unstable people to obtain firearms. We (I'm assuming this occurred in the U.S.) really need better gun laws.
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.
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.
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.
Wasn't a very nice guy because he had clearly burnt all his friends
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?
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.
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.
Wait... isn't indian food spicy?! I guess it was rougher for her after the cab ride! :))
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.
I used to drive a Supershuttle van for extra $$$. About 2:00 AM i pick up a man at a hotel to take him to the airport. He was a middle-aged, solid-citizen type; in a suit and tie. He said he was flying home to Dallas. Since he lives in Dallas he decided that makes him an authority on U.S. Presidential assassinations. He spins all of these yarns about the Kennedy assassination. Then (this was near the end of Obama's first term) he slyly reveals that he is part of a group planning to assassinate Obama. He was hoping to impress me. Instead, I told him that my brother David is an FBI agent, and I am legally obliged to report our conversation. He turns stone-white; shaking, he blabbers that he was making the whole thing up. I kept insisting that I must legally report him to the FBI; I have his name, address, and cc number. Near tears, he gets out at the airport BEGGING me to know that he was just joking. I remain firm. Punch-line. I have no brother. I know no-one in the FBI. Just having fun tormenting this egotistical, right-wing blow-hard.
My husband did a gig somewhat like Uber in between jobs and he picked up this russian dude (this was pre war and pre Covid) at the airport who was on vacation. He was a quiet dude, with a plastic bag on him other than the usual luggage. The moment he sits in the car, he proceeds to pull out those tiny liquor bottles from that bag and keeps downing them. It was a 2h ride and the aftermath was a backseat full of little glass bottles my husband had to empty out. The dude was fine btw, russians really can hold their liquor...
I'm not a cabby, but I do drive for HopSkipDrive, which provides rides for kids to school. A lot of the riders are experiencing homelessness and many are at risk youths. I don't have any particularly tragic story, one time I had an adorable little boy who got into my car, asked me to draw a skeleton for him ( it was Halloween) and then proceeds to tell me how he's living with his grandma now because his dad shot his mom and you can tell he just wants to talk through his experience. After I dropped him off I looked it up and for real, his dad had kept his family hostage and shot his mom and sister! Such a sweet little boy talking about such horrible things he's experienced.
What a wild ride of a thread! Half were pretty fun to read and encouraging, while the other half was just the absolute worst s**t imaginable.
If you like taxi stories, you may like one of my all-time favorite songs from an old hip-hop band (from my hometown) that isn't widely known. It's called "Meters". You have to read the lyrics as you listen. My favorite lyric is "It's this type of morning that can keep my hair curly." YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSfEeEgnLAg Lyrics: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107859546797/ (I don't think these lyrics are 100% accurate).
these stories were pretty cool, but also made me feel like I definitely live in a safer country than America or the uk
I used to drive a Supershuttle van for extra $$$. About 2:00 AM i pick up a man at a hotel to take him to the airport. He was a middle-aged, solid-citizen type; in a suit and tie. He said he was flying home to Dallas. Since he lives in Dallas he decided that makes him an authority on U.S. Presidential assassinations. He spins all of these yarns about the Kennedy assassination. Then (this was near the end of Obama's first term) he slyly reveals that he is part of a group planning to assassinate Obama. He was hoping to impress me. Instead, I told him that my brother David is an FBI agent, and I am legally obliged to report our conversation. He turns stone-white; shaking, he blabbers that he was making the whole thing up. I kept insisting that I must legally report him to the FBI; I have his name, address, and cc number. Near tears, he gets out at the airport BEGGING me to know that he was just joking. I remain firm. Punch-line. I have no brother. I know no-one in the FBI. Just having fun tormenting this egotistical, right-wing blow-hard.
My husband did a gig somewhat like Uber in between jobs and he picked up this russian dude (this was pre war and pre Covid) at the airport who was on vacation. He was a quiet dude, with a plastic bag on him other than the usual luggage. The moment he sits in the car, he proceeds to pull out those tiny liquor bottles from that bag and keeps downing them. It was a 2h ride and the aftermath was a backseat full of little glass bottles my husband had to empty out. The dude was fine btw, russians really can hold their liquor...
I'm not a cabby, but I do drive for HopSkipDrive, which provides rides for kids to school. A lot of the riders are experiencing homelessness and many are at risk youths. I don't have any particularly tragic story, one time I had an adorable little boy who got into my car, asked me to draw a skeleton for him ( it was Halloween) and then proceeds to tell me how he's living with his grandma now because his dad shot his mom and you can tell he just wants to talk through his experience. After I dropped him off I looked it up and for real, his dad had kept his family hostage and shot his mom and sister! Such a sweet little boy talking about such horrible things he's experienced.
What a wild ride of a thread! Half were pretty fun to read and encouraging, while the other half was just the absolute worst s**t imaginable.
If you like taxi stories, you may like one of my all-time favorite songs from an old hip-hop band (from my hometown) that isn't widely known. It's called "Meters". You have to read the lyrics as you listen. My favorite lyric is "It's this type of morning that can keep my hair curly." YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSfEeEgnLAg Lyrics: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107859546797/ (I don't think these lyrics are 100% accurate).
these stories were pretty cool, but also made me feel like I definitely live in a safer country than America or the uk