Uber Nightmare

Peter Moran
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

I could tell there was something special about her right away. Maybe it was the way she verbally berated our Uber driver as he went out of his way to pick her up from her inconvenient location. Perhaps it could’ve been how she disgustedly screamed “Oh my God!” when he turned on the radio. It may have even been the tangible aura of external disgust she brought into the backseat. Either way, I muted my earbuds the second she entered our vehicle and buckled up — this time metaphorically — for the rest of the trip.

Timidly, I gave her a side-eyed glance, careful not to let this Medusa notice me. She was furiously typing a lengthy text into a — God forbid — Android, and I sent out a silent prayer for whoever the recipient would be. Every movement she made came with an audible sigh; not the type of sigh one releases softly, either. Her sighs were like darts, shooting forth from her stern glare and piercing anyone within range. A minute of requests, from a song change to a window adjustment to the seat in front of her being moved up followed her entrance into the Uber. Finally she settled in, but it would not be for long as a third rider contacted poor Adama, the unfortunate driver.

The newest addition to our unhappy gang of commuters came with a request. “Can I bring a small table?” she inquired. Ignoring the sharp “What the hell? Absolutely not!” from the aforementioned impatient rider, Adama consented. “It’s very small,” she lied to him. “About the size of a small piece of luggage.”

As Medusa threw her hands up in disgust, Adama pulled alongside Tammy and her full-length desk. Five minutes of treating the trunk like a battering dummy and Tammy was finally ready to give up. After listening to Medusa’s string of obscenities and other derogatory statements regarding Tammy’s intellect (lack thereof), and I was ready to give up as well. On humanity. But I didn’t mind the show.

“I’m going to bring this in,” decided Tammy, who had clearly slept through her geometry classes. “Can you move up front?” As naïve and unnecessarily persistent as Tammy was, she was also kind. I obliged, taking the long way to the front seat as Medusa decided to direct her comments about Tammy to Tammy. They were not well-received.

“Could you maybe not?” Medusa began. “You have to know better than to bring a f***g table into an Uber Pool? Like? Just get an Uber X? Are you broke or something?” she continued, as judgmental as she was unaware.

Adama’s face fell into his hands as Tammy slammed the desk into his door, somehow thinking the sixteenth time would be different than the first fifteen iterations.

“You’re just a miserable person,” she accurately assessed her co-rider. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m really just trying to get my table home.”

The descriptor elevated Medusa to a new level of rage, and she started screaming at Adama, requiring him to not only kick her from the car but also to report the indecency of Tammy’s remarks. Unfazed, I continued to inconspicuously record snapchat videos.

Finally, Adama chose to take action and Tammy offered — for our sake, not her rude counterparts’ — to cancel the ride. Just as she was about to leave and end the unique Uber episode, Medusa chose to take a picture of her for her “files.” Tammy did not appreciate it.

“Give me that phone!” she yelled, grabbing at it. “If you take my picture, you won’t have a phone for very long,” she stated firmly as the two wrestled.

“Please stop,” Adama begged as the shrieks of Medusa and the frustration of Tammy started to concern us.

At last, Tammy recoiled and stormed away, her table in tow. Medusa spent the ensuing twenty minutes informing us of her plans for legal action while reprimanding Adama for not intervening the way she would’ve liked him to as he and I sat in the front silently. At her first pause, Adama offered the following tidbit.

“I’ve seen worse.”

I hadn’t.