1. So I had a few weeks off between jobs a few years ago so I decided to try Uber. The worst experience was at 3am I picked up 2 couples from the stretch of bars downtown after some big country concert. The guys were super nice, the one in the front seat even had the same 1st name as me and we were chatting. Turns out that the guys met the girls at the bar and they were all heading back to the girls hotel. About halfway through the ride one girl decided she wanted McDonald’s and since it was her Uber (it was the guys) I had to take her to McDonald’s. The other girl said she didn’t want McDonald’s and she just wanted to get laid.

They keep arguing and I keep talking to the guy in the front seat until the guy in the backseat tells me I need to pull over. I look back and see the girls fighting in my backseat. I pullover and we get the girls out, somehow they got loose and started fighting again in the middle of the street. I call the cops and by the time the cop got there we have them separated again (McDonald’s girl tried to bang her friends head against the concrete).

I tell the cop that it’s McDonald’s girl that is the aggressor so he goes to arrest her and she starts resisting so I help the cop restrain her. Once we get her in the backseat she starts trying to kick the windows out so we get her back out of the car because the cop wanted to hog tie her. Finally 2 other cops show up and I’m relieved of my duties. She just kept yelling about how she’s a lawyer and she wasn’t read her Miranda rights.

I turned off the app, took the 2 guys home and never gave another ride.

2. I took a guy to a nearby town across the river at 3am.

When he got out he came to the driver’s window and said “Ever see pure evil? I am the reincarnation of Jeffry Dahmer!”

Then he walked away down the dark street.

3. I drove a cab in the ghetto in the 90s. This stuff doesn’t even rate on a week to week basis.

I had a guy get in my cab once with a large woman’s purse full of crack cocaine. I don’t mean he had a lot of crack, I mean he had 1 gallon ziplock bag full of crack stuffed into a giant women’s handbag. Big spender though, he tipped me in powder cocaine. Do you think I told the police? Hell no because in the 90s in the ghetto that’s how people got murdered.

I had a stripper get into a fight with a prostitute/drug dealer over drug money that the stripper had hidden in her vagina.

I had a passenger that decided my car would look better without its rear windows so he laid down in the back seat and started kicking them out. I had to call the dispatcher on a CB to call the cops because I didn’t have a cell phone and then he attacked me. I had to take off my seatbelt, crawl out of the passenger door to get away from him at which point he climbed over the seat and proceeded to try to hotwire my cab (read: mangle the wiring to the lights and dash controls) until the cops arrived and maced him through the busted out back window. He screamed bloody murder like he was on fire and pissed himself and my drivers’ seat.

I had a drunk try to rob me with a knife for the money his friend, who was in the car, just paid me for the fare. The friend gets upset at knife wielding guy, apologizes and tells me not to mind him because he’s just crazy. The friend manages to talk the guy into getting out of the cab and then begs me not to call the police on them because he can’t afford to go back to jail.

And that’s not even what made me decide to quit. That one was the time a pregnant hooker got in the car, told me she had HIV and that she needed to get away from where she was but had nowhere to go. (not necessarily in that order) I drove to a donut shop, went inside and got a phonebook and called every church listed in the phone book and not a single one of them would do anything for her. That’s the only thing I could think of doing. I quit because I couldn’t handle seeing so much misery every day and really nobody seemed to be doing a damn thing about it.

4. Not Uber but Lyft. Around when I first started doing Lyft full time I decided to try the night scene out in a town that had a bunch of bars. Around 12 AM I ended up getting a ride where the pickup took me 20 minutes away to a bad neighborhood. As soon as I get to the “apartment” complex I call the passenger and tell them I am there because I have a bad feeling about this neighborhood and need to get out ASAP. The passenger answers and tells me they will be right out which relieves me a little but I’m still on edge sitting there in my car. Lyft has a 5 minute timer you have to wait before you can “no-show” the passenger and leave. The timer ends up running out but I usually wait a little longer and give another call. I call a second time but someone else answers the phone this time saying they didn’t order a Lyft. As I hang up I see two guys in hoodies coming toward my car and one seems to be reaching in his waistband for something so I no-show the ride and nope the fuck out of there. I made $10 off the no-show but I was done driving nights for a while after that.

5. 3am. Drive up to an old bar. Guy and his friend get in and immediately start laughing. I don’t question because I figured they were drunk, and from the smell, stoned too. About half way to their destination, the guys friend asked me for my wallet because he left his driver’s license in it. I started laughing because that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. My friend a few months prior bought a new wallet and left his old one in the my car, so I put a single dollar in it and handed it to him. He hopped out of the car and ran a few feet away before saying “What the hell? 1 dollar? You’re broke as hell!”

6. My second night driving ever. 2am. Pulled up to a clearing in the woods in the middle of Denville, NJ. I had to go partially off road to get to the spot, I don’t even know how it showed up on my map. I pull up to a spot that looks like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Theres a busted old barn thats dry-rotted and falling apart, and there is the rear bucket of a landscaping truck HANGING from a tree FILLED with beer cans, I mean FILLED.

All of a sudden I see my rider come out of the woods, chugging a beer with his other hand in the air signaling to me. He gets in and doesn’t say a word. We start driving and I go

“How was your night man?” just to break the awkwardness. He responded very…normally…”Good man, just hung out with some friends at the bar got really drunk and met some chicks. Then we all went out into the parking lot and dropped acid.”

….”Oh…wow!” Now I’m wondering if this dude is hallucinating that I’m Satan taking him to hell in my Honda Pilot Demon Chariot .

“So..How did you end up in the woods man? There are no bars near where I picked you up…” He was completely silent, didn’t say a word. I glanced into the rear view mirror and he was DEAD STARING INTO MY FUCKING SOUL…

I looked back at the road, at this point we were in a pretty well populated area so I felt safer. He was silent for the remaining 14 minutes of the ride until about 2 minutes from his destination he asked me if we could stop at the convenience store on the way. I obliged and he asked if I wanted anything, I declined and as I dropped him off he gave me a really nice $10 tip and said “Thanks Maria”.. I’m a dude.

The second worst was last year I was borderline sexually assaulted by another dude, but that wasn’t really weird just scary..

7. Picked up a girl at a motel and she was going to another motel (prostitute) she said she wanted me to pull up to the room and she’d give me $10 to wait 5 minutes. If she came up within 5 minutes we’d leave and go somewhere else.

Said she was nervous about this John.

She gives me $10, goes in. Comes out like 2 minutes later and asks me to take her to a waffle house.

She offered me a $20 tip and asked me if I wanted to eat with her.

I said sure since it was like 4 AM and the night was dying down anyway. Left her at the waffle house and went home.

Had some interesting stories.

8. Was driving an afternoon in the late summer. I live in a beach town so it was perfect weather and people everywhere. Went to a pick up and saw a guy and two women. Picked them up and they clearly had been day drinking, just laughing and having a good time.

It was a husband and wife and the wife’s cousin. They all were clearly sexed up a little from the booze, joking about having sex (the husband and wife). The guy makes a joke to his wife’s cousin saying “if I had met you first we’d be married”. Then the wife said to the cousin, “if you weren’t my cousin I’d let you join in when we get home”. The guy and the cousin starting laughing their asses off, and the guy said to the cousin, “ I wouldn’t mind if you didn’t”. They all laughed like crazy until I got to their house a few blocks away.

This was only maybe a 5 minute drive. Between the fare and tip I made about $7. Was definitely worth it, I’ll gladly drive them again if I see them this summer.

9. About a year ago I was driving a little before midnight and picked up someone in a somewhat run down part of town. The guy gets in the back, and didn’t respond to my greeting. He was wearing a really awkward black coat of some sort which had pink fuzz lined on the shoulders and arms. The first thing I noticed was an absolutely overbearing stench of straight up shit. I started to sniff and cough because it was so powerful and rancid. He began to quietly snicker, and I could see a grin form on his face with the little lights I had in the back of the car. He had a massive nose, and very ‘rubbery’ features. I said “hey man, whats with that smell? Its making me sick” He looked up into the rear view mirror and I could see his eyes were bloodshot. He was staring at me in the mirror with this creepy smile. He softly said “just open a window and keep driving.” He began digging in his backpack and pulled a phone out, turned the flash light on and pointed it at his chest. He opened his coat, and I saw what looked like some type of writing and symbols of mud all over his chest. He was holding his phone with one hand and picking this ‘mud’ off his chest. Then he loudly barked “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A SCAT PARTY? IF NOT THEN SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH!” Just then we rolled up to a red light, he cackled loudly and ran out of the car into the woods. I was completely dumbfounded in disbelief. I got out and looked in the back seat, where I found his backpack and this dried shit he had picked off his chest. I opened the backpack and there it was full of shit covered clothes. I immediately went home,cleaned my car, got super drunk and took a shower trying to forget everything that just happened.

10. Picked up a couple from a wedding reception for a long trip. One rule I had was to let the passenger(s) initiate conversation.

So besides the usual pleasantries, nothing, which is unusual for a couple.

I heard some kissing, pretty common, then some movement, and before long I realized these two were fucking. I recall there being an old towel in the boot (don’t ask, I was the driver not the owner) I said “uh, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but if I pull over and stop the meter, I can get you both a towel” and they’re like “why? We aren’t doing anything?” so I said “ok, well i’m pretty relaxed with what goes on here, legally you cant drink in a cab, but I allow it as long as the person takes the empties, and if you wanted to continue with your activities, i’m going to need to give you guys a towel. If theres any mess, I have to charge a cleaning fee on top of whats already going to be a long fare otherwise”. After a few seconds I hear “alright then”.

So I get it out the boot, pass it over, and get driving again. $120 fare, the guy gives me $150 and tells me to keep it. They weren’t nasty, I think they just thought they were being secretive.

11. Picked up a dude and his girlfriend in a well known bar district early evening during the summer. Dude is fine but gf is fucking wasted. I’m talking slurring speech, can’t walk, etc. Dude tells me where he’s going and I start the trip. As soon as a I take off she says she wants to go back. Dude keeps telling her that they’re going home but she keeps saying “go back go back go back.” Then she starts saying she doesn’t feel well. I tell her that if she feels like she is going to throw up, let me know so I can pull over and let her out. She says pull over so I do. She gets out and then just starts cussing me out for no reason and kicks at my door and the side of the car all while the dude is trying to hold her back. I take off and leave them there. First 1 star review I ever gave a passenger.

12. Picked up 2 passengers from a Halloween party after midnight in Hollywood. One wearing a full Batman costume and the other wearing a full Spider-Man costume, masks included. They didn’t say a word and just pointed to the GPS on where to take them. The ride went all the way to Palm Springs (2+ hours), not one word.

The entire ride he said was scared for his life. They didn’t even put in the address of a house, he just dropped them off on a random side street of a neighborhood. They got out when they arrived, said nothing, tipped $200 and that was the end of it. After thinking about it once they left, his conclusion is that they must have been somewhat famous as he picked them up at a large house in a gated neighborhood and dropped them off outside a gated neighborhood.

13. I have a female cousin who very briefly drove for Uber and she said one large male passenger smelled her hair by leaning into the front seat, called her “little girl” the whole ride and tried to convince her to change the destination from a bar to the middle of the goddamn woods.

She no longer drives for Uber.

14. I picked up a guy who wouldn’t stop talking to himself and kept mentioning he had taken a bunch of unknown pills earlier. He wasn’t aware of reality at all and would randomly get angry at me, screaming that I should be telling him jokes and entertaining him since I am his driver. When we were almost to his destination, he opened the door and jumped out of my car while it was still moving. Luckily I was near stopping and only going around 5mph when he did. He didn’t get hurt.

15. I was an Uber driver for about a year. Picked up a drunk younger guy at one bar to take him to another bar. We pull up to said bar and it is closed. Instead of staying logged in the app, the drunk slams a $100 bill on my dashboard and asks me to take him home. I actually attempt to do the right thing, but he insisted. I take his $100 and proceed to his house. On the way, he tells me how he is a R & D scientist in the medical field, and this is where the story gets odd. He also goes on to tell me how he’s in the mafia and killed me a man by stabbing him in the stomach. He then proceeds to slam another $100 bill on my dash and asks if I’ll hang out with him for a little while. The guy was smaller then I was and he was quite drunk so I figured “what the hell”. We get to the guys house, which is a mansion, and then sat in the car for about an hour shooting the shit. I then took my $200 and went home left to ponder if I had just become a prostitute and hope to god that was the guys actual house and that he wasn’t currently skinning the actual occupants.

16. Went to pick up an Austin in NJ. It was about 2am, so it’s my last ride. He’s a little far out, but not awful (I’m pretty rural anyway). I meet him at his spot near the woods and he’s in some sort of gown. Almost like a graduation gown, but it wasn’t black. He then waves and four fucking kids (around ten?) come out in solid white with another person in a gown just like his and they all climb in.

They are all silent other than Austin, who is giving a monologue on the importance of some animal they were with. After about ten minutes, I look back, and I shit you not, every single kid was glaring at me in my rear view mirror. All. Frickin. Four. Immediately Austin asks to halt the ride and asks for a new drop off, about two minutes away. Pretty confident the other gent in the gown was staring at me too, but I couldn’t see his eyes. I tremble and ask him to update the app. He says he won’t, as it’s a discrete location. I’m shivering and do that trick where you call a friend and let them listen in. I get to the location and they all pile out, except for that Austin guy, who looks at me dead in the eyes, then at my upside-down phone, then back at my eyes. He then got out and went into the woods.

Wtf man.

17. I was driving in Virginia Beach late one night and I get a ride that I have to pick up from the busiest bar and intersection on the beach. So I get there, call the guy to let him know he’ll have to cross the street because it’s shut down for some kind of event. He doesn’t answer. We get paid for the time we wait, so I just sit there calling and texting him over and over. After about 25 minutes I ended the ride because it had kicked me out of the waiting screen after a while. As I’m stopping for gas 20 minutes later, he starts blowing up my phone asking where I am and telling me to come back. He was super drunk and told me it was my fault because he didn’t hear his phone ring. I reported it to Lyft since I’m sure it gave him the option to one star me because the ride had technically started. Best part: his destination was over 2 hours away in the middle of a snowy December. He got really aggressive on the phone so it was a little rattling.

18. In-app tipping became a thing in Australia a couple of months ago, and keep in mind that tipping isn’t a thing in Australia. This story involves an American , who I guess was a tourist or here on business.

A few weeks back I picked up this guy in the city, and his pickup location was somewhere I couldn’t get to (closed to traffic). So I send him a message saying this, and I’m maybe 100m away on a side street, he’ll need to come to me as I can’t do any better.

He walks around to me, and it’s pretty obvious he’s pissed at me. Starts a rant about how bad my service is and it’s pretty terrible that I made him walk to me. Try to tell him that where he was is not a street I can actually drive down, but he goes on and on about not understanding the service business and all this shit. Gave up and just wrote him off as an arrogant yank cunt.

Drop him off at his hotel, 1-star him and move on. Look later and he tipped me $10 on a $5 ride. No idea if he felt bad afterwards and it was his way of saying sorry, or just the American tipping thing kicked in.

19. Not really creepy or weird but definitely unexpected and a bit bizarre at the time. Three older women paid me to take them an hour ride to a casino and then by the hour to hang out and give them a safe ride once they were done gambling. I was in school at the time and one of the ladies ended up helping me restructure my resume and this Monday I’ll be starting me new job as a Data Engineer.

20. Just for a positive weird one, ended up becoming a close family friend to three generations of an immigrant family. Grandpa was the only one to order a ride through Uber proper, enjoyed talking to me and decided he’d rather just pay cash to have me come get him to run errands. Not that weird of a request and it was Summer in a college town, not a bad deal.

He was there hashing out details for his daughter/granddaughter about to move to town, figured (correctly) I’d get along well with his daughter who didn’t know anyone in the area. Arranged it so I’d get them to/from the airport for cash whenever one flew in, and over time he was right. Friends with her now, dude’s wife loves talking to me to/from the airport, and even the little granddaughter asks about me if she hasn’t seen me for a while. Drove for about a year, and that’s the most interesting story I have from it for sure.

21. Ooh, ohh, got one.

I’d been driving for a little while, few months or so, and pull up to this bar with a man and two obviously inebriated middle-aged women. The guy says hey, it’s my account, but I’m vouching for these two, can you take em home. I’m like sure.

So we’re heading down the road, and they’re shit-faced. I’m talkin, it’s no wonder this guy was kickin them out of the bar, basically; and the one was shittier than the other.

So we’re goin down the road, and the one in the middle back seat starts just asking me all these weird questions like “How do you know the people you pick up aren’t some kinda *weirdo* crazies or something??” And I’m thinkin: “uhhhh… WuT?!” But tryna play it off, you know, by this point I’m driving, going 60 down the freeway, and I just kind of mumble some kind of non-committal answer – but she’s gettin all aggressive like for some reason.

Her friend’s trying to calm her down, while the first one straight-up says something to the effect: “What would you do if someone just *attacked* you while you were driving…?!”

Mind you, at this point, she had also been making numerous physical movements which to me appeared to be either her “mimicing”, or actually *going* for some kind of weapon of some kind or another, like reaching down under her shirt/ belt region and shit. When out of the blue she shouts “What if I just STABBED YOU IN THE NECK RIGHT NOW!!!”

Which is at what point I was like “Whoa!! – That’s it!!”

Her friend by this time was “trying” to half-ass control her wild friend, but again, she was fucked up herself. So I pulled over at the first exit I could see, my heart beating about out of my damn chest, thinking I’m about to get freakin Stabbed in the neck at any moment. Luckily there was a Chevron gas station right there, I Skkrrrrt!!! Stopped and said “This ride ends now!!!!!”

As humorous as it may sound, they actually looked at me dumbfounded, like, “are you really kicking us out?” I said I was serious, ya’ll gotta go. The other woman actually seemed to have sobered up a bit once we pulled over and realized I wasn’t playin around. Her friend looked at me pissed for a second and then was just like “Okay.”

They got out, and I drove off, heart beating fast as fuck..

That shit scared the goddam piss outta me.

I didn’t drive on the clock again for weeks…

Anyway, usually alcohol has something to do with the worst stuff, I’d imagine. Now I try to drive earlier in the day so I don’t have to deal with that.

22. My brother is an Uber driver.

He dropped a guy, dressed up to the nines, with a bouquet of beautiful roses, box of chocolates, at his fiance’s address.

She was utterly surprised that he broke the engagement.

23. This happened to my friend. He drove a drunk girl home and she begged him to walk her to the door. He did then she begged him to walk her to the bed. He did Then she begged him to fuck her. He did. Ever since then I’ve been trying to drive for Uber but I don’t think it’s worth it.

24. I was doing Uber here in Miami, some chick came into my car to be dropped off at work. Asked me if I ever lived anywhere else told her Atlanta, then she says ohh yeah hotlanta, ended up giving me her number. After work she came over, we had sex, she vomited on my bed.

25. Drove for a bit a few years ago and one night I picked up a dude and his buddy around a popular bar area who were pretty drunk. They were going back to a rich part of town so I took the ride hoping for a nice tip. They started talking shit close to home and when we got there they started beating the crap out of each other in the driveway as they got out of the car. I left pretty quick.

26. Pulled up to a hotel and women came to my window. And I said you Tracy she said yeah I am. I said are you going to such and such address and she is like no I’m not going there. Then another women comes to my window knocking on it and says I’m Tracy. I said oh shit well who the fuck is this other lady? Ended up driving the real Tracy to her destination and then dropped off the stranger where she wanted to go for 20 cash. So basically picked up and drove a stranger. Overall bad decision

27. I once picked up two kids from a jewish high school on a wednesday night. They spent the first half of the ride talking about colleges and where they were going to go. Then it got quiet and I was treated to the ambient sounds of face sucking and fucking UNDER THE PANTS FINGER BANGING.

Then they had the self-awareness to get out of the car at the end saying thank you and CLEARLY thought they got away with it. I gagged and wiped down the backseat just in case.

28. St. Patrick’s Day, I get a bunch of drunk college ladies in my car. The three in back are cheerful drunks, chatting and laughing. The one riding next to me is motionless. For the first 20 minutes of the trip, this woman doesn’t move a muscle. Her phone is on on her lap, but she isn’t looking at it or touching the screen at all. Having had similar situations before, my concern was that she would revive in a spontaneous shower of vomit.

Instead, as we’re heading into the downtown tunnel, the aforementioned song pops up on my playlist. Dr. Frankenstein would have killed for the resulting resurrection. The previously motionless young lady gasps loudly, shoots forward in her seat, and eagerly asks me to turn it up. I nearly drove into the wall of the tunnel. The rest of the trip was spent telling me how she was a huge fan of Jack Black, and how she recognized the song from School of Rock.

29. I’m pretty sure I picked up a young girl (~19) that was running away from home (or worse)… The entire ride she was talking to some guy on the phone talking about how she was so tired of all the crap she was getting at home, how she hated her parents… She talked about how she wasn’t sure how she was going to support herself and that she only needed this person’s help for a few days…. She wasn’t exactly in very good shape herself (looked a little dirty and not very well kept)…. The whole ride was very weird and then it was made worse by the fact that I was dropping her off at some really rundown motel in the middle of nowhere… Made me feel like she was possibly being abducted… I checked the news for a while to make sure I didn’t see anything… But to this day I wonder what the heck was actually happening.

30. One time I was driving this pregnant lady to a strip club and she said she was looking for her husband. I asked why her husband would be here and she replied saying that this is where she left him last month.