There are some days you really don’t feel like going to work. Driving for Uber is no exception. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and I had just driven a tribe of urban hippies to a park for a picnic and then dropped a gang of Bondi hipsters to a house party at Tamarama. Both groups beamed with happiness as they chatted about the day ahead, a day of endless possibilities. I secretly seethed with envy as I made joke after joke of, “Hey, I might have to join you! Haha!” But no, I needed the money and Saturday is the busiest and most lucrative day for an Uber driver.
My dark mood would soon be compounded by my most infuriating Uber passengers to date.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Lydia – 5 minutes – Redfern
I weaved my way through the congested hell that is Bondi Road and headed to Redfern. Not the Redfern of old, but the trendy, arty, million-dollar Redfern of 2015. I pulled up at a beautiful Victorian-styled terrace house and waited for Lydia. As many of you who use the Uber app know, when a driver pulls up out the front of your home you are notified through the app. I usually wait around two to three minutes before sending the customer a polite text message just in case they didn’t hear the notification. I sent a reminder to Lydia after waiting for close to four minutes:
“Hi, Lydia, your Uber is out the front! Cheers.”
The response:
“Okay! Okay! I’m coming!!!!”
A further five minutes went by. I was just about to cancel the job and drive off when I heard, “Tap, tap, tap!” on my rear driver’s-side window. I turned my head quickly but saw no one there. I thought I must be hearing things, but then there it was again, this time louder . . . “TAP, TAP, TAP!” I lowered my window and stuck my head out of the car to inspect the sound further.
Standing next to my car was a child, no older than four, dressed in old man’s clothing and clutching an enormous packet of popcorn with both hands. He was wearing a long sleeved buttoned-up white shirt, a black vest, black suit pants and had black leather shoes on his size three feet. A tan-coloured trilby sat upon his head of curly brown locks. Before I could open my mouth to speak, the mini-man had secured the novelty-sized packet of popcorn between his little white teeth, reached up to open my rear driver’s-seat door, and clambered his way into the back of my car. He sat there without saying a word.
I turned around to face my unexpected passenger. “Hi there, little guy!” I exclaimed in the most excitable children’s voice I could muster. “Who else are we waiting for?”
The boy didn’t just dress like a man, he had the mannerisms of one too. He stared back at me, before rolling his eyes and shaking his head from side to side in disapproval of my question. He then tapped on the glass of the window with his pointer finger, gesturing for me to look in the direction of the terrace house.
Hopping out the door on one foot, the other foot in the air with her right hand trying to fit a high heel on it, was a tall slender woman dressed all in black. She even had a black bowl-cut hairstyle. She slammed the door and began storming toward my car. Meet Lydia.
Lydia had a predilection for slamming doors. My entire car moved with the force of her next slam.
“Okay! Let’s go, let’s go! We’re already late,” said Lydia abruptly, as she hurriedly secured the buckle on her high heel.
“Philippe!” she shrieked at the little man. “Seat belt. NOW!”
Lydia entered her destination into the app: an art gallery in Darlinghurst, twelve minutes away. Off we went.
And then it began. The man child, Philippe, started kicking the back of my chair relentlessly. So much so that I jolted forward with every kick. My first thought was: “That four-year-old has impressive leg strength, I wonder if he does squats?” This thought was quickly replaced with “How much of this do I take before saying something?” His mother was far too engrossed with the contents of her phone to notice the bucking bull beside her in the back seat.
Lydia did speak up moments later. Not to reprimand Benjamin Button, but to criticise the route I had taken. “We were supposed to be there ten minutes ago,” she moaned. “Can you go another way?”
I replied as pleasantly as I could, “Sure.” I was running out of patience. The main factor holding me back from any level of confrontation was the Uber ratings system. I had a score of 4.95 out of 5 stars and I wanted to keep it there. I could tell that if I said anything about Philippe kicking my chair Lydia would likely give me a terrible rating.
The kicking continued. I could now also hear the crunching of popcorn. I pictured my back seat looking like the floor of a movie theatre during school holidays. “Fuck Philippe,” I thought to myself.
And then it happened. “HH-HMMMM!” Philippe cleared his throat loudly from the back seat. I secretly hoped he had choked on a piece of popcorn. “HH-HMMMM!” he cleared his throat again. “DRIVER!!” he announced in a high-pitched voice. “AIR-CON!”
I couldn’t believe it. I looked in my rear-vision mirror to see Lydia’s reaction. She was entranced by her phone, scrolling mindlessly through Instagram. I ignored Philippe and asked Lydia, “Would you like the air-conditioning turned up?”
“Yessss!” she hissed in a tone of annoyance.
I gritted my teeth, turned up the air-con, and continued toward the destination. As soon as I pulled up at the art gallery they hurriedly exited my car. I turned around to see the mountain of popcorn left on the back seat. As I swiped my phone to end the trip, the option appeared to “Rate my passenger.” My revenge on Lydia the terrible and her dastardly son, was a score of 2/5. Petty, I know, but it did make me feel slightly better.