Four rides too many

This week I dragged getting out on the road. I was doing this rare thing called remembering or trying to remember how to relax and nearly didn't leave to go out at all. I guess I should have listened to my intuition.

Oh Saturday night. It brings out most everyone.

This weekend it brought out a series of four groups of very angry and rude drunks. I'll write about the "best one" here and maybe you can tell why I haven't driven since then.

(*Note- I'll be back on the road later tonight or tomorrow at latest. I just needed to take some time to recoup from this weekend with this and other stuff ala stuff that's going in other areas of this site: Once Loved and Invisible Me and Scribble type posts*)

So after three nightmares of fares prior to this one it's about 3am and I'm just ready to go back to my friends place and crash out and hang out with friends or whatever but, silly me, tried to do another one and hope it was better.

I get a carpool request. The first passenger was a guy in his 40s who was already drunk but he was very laid back. He was headed to another bar called Purple which is an after hours bar in Culver City apparently. He was really nice and the story here while it involved him didn't actually have the negativity it did because of him.

I picked him up and I got a second request on the line. I head over there near the center of downtown Culver City to wait for my biggest nightmare I have yet to experience in my days of rideshare.

System Info: As there's only a certain number of seats in my car when passengers request a carpool option they have to write the correct number of passenger that they are desiring me to drive so the system knows if it can add any more people to my car or not.

When I get to the carpool location for the second passenger a couple of very very clearly drunk individuals walk up to my car. They ask if I am driving their Uber.

(Note: I was driving for Lyft at the time and had the trade dress in the window to show that)

"Are you looking for Jennifer?" the front passenger asked them.

No response.

"Hey what's your name?"

I overhear what I would presume is the the girlfriend calling the guy Ryan and see there is a request matching the name. I tell them that I am their ride and that they can enter the car.

At this point as I'm entered in that I've arrived I see that they didn't put two passengers in their request. I tell them that unfortunately I am unable to accommodate it as I see there looks to be another person on the line needing a ride and I've got to make sure I have enough seats. I tell them that they will have to re request for another driver and asked them if they could kindly exit my vehicle as I had to go tend to the other passengers on my route.

This should have been ok.

Apparently not.

Passenger Ryan refuses to exit my car. He is slurring and beligerant and just not hearing anything at all. The front passenger tries to help things.

"Hey dude can you just get out of the car please?"

Ryan then gets further aggressive.

He starts swearing at both of us and then proceeded to get worse.

"Shut the fuck up guy. You're a pussy. Yeah I'll get out of the car and beat your ass you fucking pussy."

I tell the passenger that I really don't want any problems but if he cannot exit the vehicle I will have to call a police officer to assist.

More yelling.

More threatening.

And oh it gets even worse.

This asshole swings at my front passenger and assualts him.

He eventually exits the car finally and no cops needed to be called.

I asked the front passenger if he was alright and said that I was really sorry for everything that happened. I asked him if he would like me to call an officer and report the assault. 

"That guy didn't land that punch. It's ok."

I felt really really bad about it.

"Are you ok?" he asked me.

I was a little shaken up at that point. I had had three nightmare rides with drunks before that (to be written about later) and had enough going on elsewhere that I just... was maxxed.

"I think you're my last fare of the night."

"Well do you want a drink then? Since you're not going to be driving and all that of course." he asked me.

We were getting closer to his destination. Only a couple of minutes tops before he'd be there.

"I might when I get back to my friends where I'm staying for the evening but likely not. I just want to go curl in bed and cuddle or something and just not think of driving or passengers for the night. No offense but I had three bad ones before this one and... yeah I'm done. Thank you anyway."

"I understand. Well I think that you're 6 stars but I'll just wish you a better night."

I had no booze that night but those four rides and that last one in particular specifically just did a number on me.

"Be safe out there" I told him as he was leaving.

"And you as well."

I drove away pretty in shock about all of it. I expect these things to possibly happen but it was the first time I'd actually had something that negative in my car with a ride.

I encourage all of you out there to please please be safe and if you've had too many please just stay wherever you're drinking if you cannot be a decent human being that's not going to pull anything like that.

I look forward to telling you better stories about the awesome passengers that make this all worthwhile. Until next time, maybe go check the other blogs out on here or maybe hire me for another project.

Be well!

Drink responsibly or risk pending ghost doom