Very strange Uber ride

[caseagainstfaith]

I am almost never at this board anymore. But I had something strange happen and I just feel like telling the story...

A few nights ago, I took an Uber for about a 25-minute ride from work to a car repair shop.  The driver had his phone connected to his car audio via Bluetooth and was having a phone conversation to where I can hear the whole conversation through his car stereo.  I maybe should have spoken up right away and said, hey, maybe take your call private. But I thought surely he will wrap this up in a minute, so I figured to not to make a fuss.  In fact, the call lasted the entire 25-minutes of the ride.

The driver didn't actually say a lot, he was mainly listening to the other guy drone on and on.  The driver happened to be black and obviously the guy on the other end was as well.  Nearly every sentence had, "so this n-word said this, that n-word said that". Now, I know that black people may speak like that among themselves, but I thought the driver should know that type of conversation would not be appropriate to be on speakerphone with a passenger. I would think he would especially not have that type of conversation given that I'm an older white guy.  He can't be expecting me to be okay with this can he? Surely he would think he should take the call private. But no, he keeps on playing it over the stereo.

So it was quite annoying and unprofessional. But I was mostly ignoring as it just seemed to be just name calling of co-workers the other guy was annoyed with.  But then the conversation started to take a darker turn, where the other guy was talking about his gun and how the n-word he was mad at is lucky he didn't shoot him up.  And he went talking about how "that n-word thought I f'ed his b'word, but I didn't f' her, we were just friends.  And I would have shot that n-word if he wasn't out of f'ing range".  "That n-word has bank, cuz he does cocaine every f'ing night. He makes $100k but he still lives in the f'ing hood". Again I'm thinking, c'mon, how can this guy not know this isn't appropriate to be blaring over his car stereo with a passenger in the car?  But he never does takes the call private. Very, very strange!

I started to think, do I need to jump out of this car at a stoplight?  I followed the path of the trip on the Uber app and all the paths were on fairly busy roads, meaning we weren't ever going into dark alleys.  Therefore, I decided that as long as he stayed on the expected route, I would stay in the car.  And if he made an unexpected turn then I would jump out.  But as far as the driving itself, it was perfectly normal, and the driver dropped me off at my destination.

It did not occur to me to record the conversation until almost the end, but I turned on my phone recorder and got a couple of minutes of the conversation.

So, I entered a complaint with Uber.  I sent an email with basically the above information to Uber.  They called me by phone to take a verbal statement and I said basically the same thing.  I got an email from Uber saying "we have restricted the driver's access to the Uber app", which I think basically means he was fired. Or maybe probation. So I figure he ain't too happy with me.  Also, Uber gave me a refund for that particular trip.

I talked with a black friend of mine about the incident. He said the driver "epically failed to read the room" but overall he thought I overreacted and it was basically nothing.

[Unbeliever]

I've tried to use Uber a couple of times, and neither time did they show up. I don't intend to give them any more chances to ignore me.

I'd rather just take a bus anyway.

[the_antithesis]

How do you take a call to private when you're driving?

But then, it's Uber, an incredibly unprofessional company whose business model is running a taxi service without owning any cars. Seriously. Remember a couple years ago when they floated the idea of replacing their drivers with self-driving cars? They'll never do that because owning cars means paying to maintain cars. Also, people don't make any money driving for Uber, so the only people still doing it are truly desperate or too unprofessional to hold down a better job. Things like not having personal phone calls while working.

[caseagainstfaith]

How do you take a call to private when you're driving?

A lot of Uber drivers have an earpiece, so that you could only hear one side of the conversation. And in this case, since the driver said very little, that would have been basically like it was completely private. In any case, that would obviously been better than blasting it over his car audio.