Uber Drivers from Hell

Can somebody tell me when Uber drivers became slave drivers?  Because that’s how I’ve felt lately; like I’m a fucking slave in them cars.

Over the weekend I took three different Ubers around Chicago.  They were bad.  Like… super bad.  If I had to evaluate them, on, let’s say a scale from one to five, I’d give them a one.  One star.  One star out of five.  If only there were some way to actually do that!

My first Uber driver, who we’ll call “Travis” (because that’s his name), was late in picking me up.  Normally I’m not gonna get so bent out of shape about the Uber driver chipping away a few extra minutes at my young, vibrant life.  But on this particular day, it was kind of a big deal.  I was late.  To a party.

My party.

My wedding party.

The best thing about Uber is it shows you the driver’s car on a GPS screen, so you can scrutinize the fuck out of their driving before they’ve even arrived.  And every time I happened to look at my screen, waiting for Travis, the app tells me he is “4 mins away”.  And I’m there, staring in total bafflement, watching this retard circumvent my block trying to figure out how to enter a one way street to reach my house.

After about 10 minutes, somehow, as if lightning struck a metallic rod on the roof of his car and granted him with high-school-driver-level capabilities, he figures out how to turn onto my street and pulls up to where me, The Queen, and Melvin Melville are all waiting.

He says nothing about being late.  He says nothing period.  He just sits there in his sweaty Dodgers uniform, a surly aura about him, cranking out brooding tunes from the 60’s, before he nonchalantly pulls away with us in the backseat.

I speak first.  I notify him that we are running late for our wedding party and that we need to be there by 5, which was 22 mins away.  He looks at his GPS, which pontificates that the trip will take 22 mins itself and blankly proclaims, “You will arrive at 5 PM.”

But I don’t trust him.  I’ve seen what he can (and can’t) do.  So I encourage him to drive just a little faster.  He goes,

“I am not at liberty to exceed the speed limit.”

What the cunt?  Uber drivers are exempt from the law; everybody knows that.

As expected, this guy drives slow as fuck.  I’m losing hope on arriving on time.  Not to mention, his music straight SUCKS.  Not Saturday-at-dusk appropriate.  More like Monday-after-work-just-walked-in-on-your-wife-cheating-on-you type of music.

Right as we are pulling onto the highway, I express my sentiments to Travis about his music choice.  I say that his music is kinda a downer, and I’m trying to be hella amped up for my party.

He drives past the entry to the highway and goes,

“Ya know what?  Now you ARE going to be late for your party.  I am a fucking human being!  I have feelings!”

So yeah, he just kicked us out of the car then and there.  I think I also called his mom ugly before slamming the door in disgust.  And so we are left by the side of the road in some industrial district, donning really nice clothing (we rented), and guaranteeing our tardiness (and classlessness) to our own party.

It was so ridiculous that we could do nothing but simply laugh at the idiocy of it all.

And then we attempted to call a second Uber.  We set our expectations super low and were prepared to take whatever the omnipotent Uber overlords would bestow upon us.

Really, the only qualification we wanted in our driver is that he could drive in a psuedo-straight line and get us to the party in one piece.  Oh and maybe we could get someone positive, who wasn’t just diagnosed with AIDS minutes before picking us up?  (That was my diagnosis of Travis.  May God have mercy on Travis’ dirty, horny, soul).

The second Uber pulls up.  We get in, guards up.

Guy seemed approachable enough.  Human, even.  So we told him what had happened with the last driver, and he laughed.  Laughter is good.  We started telling him more, attempting to engage him in conversation.  So then we asked him what was his craziest experience as a driver?  He proceeded to tell us an unforgettable saga.

He shifts in his seat, clears his throat and begins to recount in dramatic form:

“One time I had this passenger that needed to be picked up from the airport.  So I’m driving to the airport, you know, in my car.  Then I get to the airport, where the passengers come out of.  I was just waiting outside, in my car.  And then there’s a knock at the window.  It’s a police officer.  I roll down my window, and he says, ‘sir, you have to move your car.’  So I had to move my car.”

He laughs hysterically like a hyena.  Maybe he just remembered the punchline, which was sure to follow.  We waited.  And waited.  There was no punchline.  That was it.  That was his whole story.

Me and Melvin exchange glances, like, “Is this dude okay in the head?”  He answers my question immediately with his next quip:

“BEEP…. BEEEEEPPP…. That’s your seat belt calling ‘ya!  He’s saying, ‘BUCKLE ME!  BUUUCCKLLEEE  MEEEEEEE!!’ ”

Dude is on some straight weird shit.  Laughing so hard at this he can barely breathe.  The entire trip was filled with random outbursts of laughter.  At completely inappropriate times, too.

I tried to keep him out of our conversations by speaking exclusively in Spanish (The Queen, Melvin and I were all roommates in Lima), but he would laugh at our Spanish, too.  I was like, “Oh fuck this dude just heard me talking shit bout him in Spanish,” but it soon became apparent, the driver did not speak a shred of Spanish.  He’d just pick out random words from a sentence, repeat it, and giggle maniacally.

“OH YEAH!  LOCO!  WAHAHAHA!”

We could not have arrived at our destination fast enough.

I had to drink myself into a state of amnesia to put the tragic experiences with those two Uber drivers out of my brain.  But little did I know that the following morning, this dastardly duo would become a trifecta of tri-fuck-ta.

I was headed to my parents house in the burbs, for a big family brunch.  My hangover was debilitating.  Sunlight and oxygen, in heavy abundance all around me, were worthy adversaries.

The Uber pulls up.  Joey, my ex-roommate from California, goes to put his bag in the back of the car.  He pops the trunk.

Suddenly, I hear a frantic and shrill voice going, “IT’S AUTOMATIC!  IT’S AUTOMATIC!”  Out of nowhere appears this huge light-skinned black guy with an extremely short pair of khaki’s and a Bluetooth on his ear (the sign of a winner).  I realize that it is the driver, and he’s just shot out of the car like a rocket to rectify Joey’s sins of trying to open a car trunk manually.

Me and The Queen get in the car, alarmed.  But I didn’t close the car door just yet.  I saw the opportunity to crack a joke.  I asked the driver, in an extremely sincere tone, “Uh, sir?  Is this side door automatic too?”

He spun around from the driver’s seat and stared at me wide-eyed and incredulously.

“Oh, you a funny man!?  You like to make jokes??”

I pondered the situation.  I wasn’t ready to be kicked out of my second Uber in as many days, so I covered my ass.

“No, you see, I just got back from Japan, and the taxis all have automatic doors over there.  I got confused for a second and thought I was still in Japan.

“…And yes, I am a stand-up comedian, thank you for pointing that out.  Being funny is what I do.”

He faced forward and started driving.  But the mood had been soiled.  Even later, when he tried to participate in our conversation a bit calmer than he was initially, me nor The Queen wanted anything to do with him.  But Joey gabbed with him a bit, since that’s your job when you sit in the front seat.

I noticed the dude had a sign posted to the glove compartment, which read:

TIPPING IS NOT REQUIRED, BUT MUCH APPRECIATED!

There was a Uber logo underneath the print, as if Uber would have ever sponsored that shit.  No chance this guy was getting more money from me…  Or whoever it was that paid for that Uber.  Probably Joey, because whenever people come from out of town to visit me, I be sure to play a good host and make them pay for everything.

When we got to my parents house, I vowed to never take an Uber again.

… A promise I would break the very next day, but I did, however, vow to go on the internet and complain about Uber drivers, which is a promise I kept.

What about you folks?  Any equally terrifying/baffling Uber experiences?  Anyone drive for Uber?  Share your stories!