They pretend like they're not listening, but we know they are, right?
Reddit user, u/spaghetti1498, wanted to know what people thought they were saying in confidence when they asked:
Taxi drivers, what's the deepest secrets you've overheard in your car?
Basic secrets, issues, and concerns get thrown around in the back of a cab without much concern for the overhearing driver.
Sex. They talk about sex a lot.
"No Time. Mother Will Have What I Need." - 50 Year Old Man, probably
"A 50 year old man admitted to me that he doesn't know how to cook and doesn't have the time to do it, so he'll sneak out late at night to get leftovers from his mother's house."
Impressive?
"That he was cheating on his wife with his dealer, who came from the same country as I did (which is how the conversation got started) and it had been going on for 25 years."
"I dont know what impresses me more, a 25 year affair or a 25 year habit."
"...To clarify since a lot of you are speculating, the dealer was a woman. Quite good in bed too, from his detailed description. It was my first fare of the night, the first time working there as a "cab driver". I was helping out a friend of my dad's who owned a bar deep in Ontario, CA by driving his regulars home. Fun times, lot of fights, incredible amounts of shenanigans between the patrons, and incredibly loud corridos blasting from the speakers all throughout the night."
Plugged In To The Social Circles
"Once drove three teenage girls. At the end of the trip I knew everything about their friends' sexual life. Who had slept with who, with or without condom. Who had infected who with chlamydia. And so on ad nauseam."
Watch Your Wording
"When a girl told me she taunted her gay longtime friend to try out having straight sex with her just to find out the difference as she herself is bisexual. The guy finally gave in and liked it. They did so one more time and that's it. Sad part is that she just found out the guy is now going out with her best friend and is now swearing to be straight. She regrets having converted him to straight and now doesn't know whether she's jealous of them or truly in love with him. Asked for my advice on how to break them up without being judged."
A Regrettable Life Choice
"I've worked for Uber and once a passenger, a clearly intoxicated lady, told me she should have married her brother-in-law, cause her husband had a tiny penis and was much less handsome, but because the husband was also far richer, she married him."
"I hope she doesn't remember she told me that, she's probably mortified to this day if she does."
Everyone's Got Their Own Thing
"Uber driver. I pick a dude up from a strip club, a well known local celebrity. His drop off is an affluent neighborhood in the foothills. As I pull into the driveway a half naked middle aged woman in lingerie is standing by the garage. He says 'this is close enough' so I stop about 20 yards from the woman. She cracks a whip and points to the ground at her feet. This dude gets out and on hands and knees in his Armani suit starts crawling toward her. She cracks the whip again and points at me, 'you're next'."
"EDIT: I was not next, I am married. =]"
You know what cab and rideshare drivers hear a lot about?
Crime.
Turns out criminals are perfectly fine discussing murder in the backseat of a stranger's vehicle.
Say The Dealer's Name Louder. The Authorities Can't Hear It.
"Used to drive for Uber, and I can't tell you all the dumb sh*t I heard from idiot 20-somethings. One made a cocaine deal over the phone while I drove him around. He said the dealers' name over the phone multiple times, and I knew where he was going to get it. These two teenagers I picked up one Halloween night were fleeing their own house (well, their parents' house) because their friend had just gotten stabbed there. And all the sh-t people say and do while ridiculously drunk on a major holiday like New Years' Eve is just jaw-dropping. Eventually, I just stopped driving nights and most of that sh-t went away, but it's really incredible how people in cabs and Ubers just forget that their driver can see and hear everything they say."
People Explain Which Expensive Purchases Paid For Itself In The Long Run | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
While we all love a good deal, sometimes you need to spend a little extra to get your money's worth. The people of Reddit amassed to answer the question: "Wh...Or Almost Crime?
"I don't know what the secret was, but one day I picked up a dude who was going to the airport. He had no luggage, not even a small carry-on. It was starting to get cold out and he was in shorts. I thought it was weird that he didn't have luggage but it didn't occur to me that he might have been looking to get out right quick & in a hurry to avoid law enforcement."
Wait For It...
"I carried two medical professionals once and one of them talked to his colleague about that time he was "kindly kidnapped" out of the hospital by two guys that took him to a mansion outside the city and asked to examine the heart condition of a man who seemed to be a local mafia boss that was wanted from the law. They somehow provided him with all the tools and help and made him operate on the boss. They finally let him go and paid him with a big sum of cash saying they would contact him again for anything else. He said it was of the scariest yet most interesting experiences in his life."
They Have A Decision To Make
"My uncle was a cab driver in LA. One day he picks up 2 guys who then discuss a murder they are going to commit. After a while they begin discussing whether they should also kill the cab driver because he heard them talking about the plan and could identify them. They eventually decided not to, but that was the day my uncle decided to stop being a cab driver."
Sometimes You Just Don't Know, Do You?
"I gave a ride to two women who spent the whole ride debating whether or not the man whose house I had just picked them up from had killed their friend who had died in his kitchen earlier that same day. The alleged victim was a woman in her early 40s who lived with the man and had, according to his report, dropped dead quite unexpectedly after an afternoon of yard work and bike-riding. Her best friends weren't having it."
And then there's these, life-changing discussions leading to real shifts in a person's world. Maybe it's a little karaoke or maybe it's a long overdue discussion, but either way, it was needed.
Hearing The Axe Drop And The Good News Call
"Used to uber on the side, here in Ottawa. Honestly, one could surveil both business and governement here while driving an Uber if they wanted to. You could run 3 drivers and get intelligence about just a ton of things happening night and day. I definitely heard a ton of things, but the one that got me was about businesses closing and firing every one of its 200 employees months before it happened. It sucked for me when that one hit the news. I was there when they made the decision."
"Sweet things happened too. A woman had a fun dinner with her best friend and got in the passenger side first and said to me "watch this, I just found out I'm pregnant today, going home to tell my husband, but she's going to be the first to know." "After me. . . .?" "Oh my god! That's right, you're the first I've told. I'm totally freaking out right now." "It's cool. No big deal." Anyway, 5 min later they're joking about it with me and she asks me my name. I tell her and she's like "It was between that and Andrew for the middle name. This is a sign! It has to me (my name)!" "What if it's a girl?" "She'll be a badass with a male middle name like Michael Burnham." Coolest, sweetest conversation of my life."
Letting The Family Have A Heart To Heart
"An 18 year old lad, regular customer, was stressing over his exam results and told me seriously if he'd failed that his life was over and he would commit suicide. He was completely serious, apparently his parents had been putting string pressure on him. I brought him home and called his father out of the house, by this time the poor lad was in tears. I said to him that he should tell his dad what he'd told me, by this time the father was distraught."
"I let them both talk for a bit right there and then the father got him out of the car and brought him inside. The update was that he told his parents the whole story, they were horrified and got him into therapy. I've no idea whether he passed the exams or not but I do know he was all right afterwards. I was very shook up about it. The situation could do easily have gone wrong and I take no credit at all."
He's Already So Talented Why Does He Also Want To Be A Rock Star?
"My best ride was Michael Fassbender (actor) Lax to BH, he treat in n out burger and we karaoke all the way to hotel (he said his dream as a teen was to be a rock star) coolest guy ever!"
"Love this, what did you sing???"
"Led zep, Chris Cornell, ac dc... Seatle rock, he has great voice! I have pic, I'll figure out how to upload, he humble, awesome human! At 1st I didn't know who he was since I hardly watch mov/tv"
"Michael Fassbender and me https://imgur.com/gallery/PsAnJ5C"