Unsettling Reality

There are tons of conveniences associated with using Uber. It’s an easy way to get home if you’ve been drinking and don’t feel safe behind the wheel. It allows you to visit areas of town that might be hard to find parking—like an urban downtown area. Heck, if you live in a big enough city you might even be able to use Uber to avoid buying a car.

But that doesn’t mean Uber doesn’t have a darker side.

Reddit user jadedmonk shared a story on the popular social site a true story about their experience using Uber pool. As a matter of fact, it was their first experience using Uber at all. Definitely don’t read this story if you rely on Uber for transportation often—it will freak you out.

This just occurred this past November. A close friend and I were on fall break from college and decided to go to an Odesza concert in downtown Chicago. We grew up in the suburbs so going to Chicago to have fun was common for us.

Anyways, we had a great time at the concert and decided to Uber home since we weren’t close to the train station. My friend told me Uber wasn’t working for him at the moment so I called the Uber, but this was literally my first time ever calling one and I accidentally called an Uber Pool not knowing what it was. My friend saw that and was like “eh it doesn’t really matter.” So the driver picks us up from right outside the concert venue. There were a lot of intoxicated people around as one could imagine post-Odesza show, but we were pretty sober as all we did was smoke some weed which we were used to. We get in the car and everything is going normal, but we didn’t notice the direction the driver was taking as we were wrapped up in talking about the show. Turns out, the driver was going to the south side of Chicago which we realized after some time by looking at maps, but our suburb was exactly the opposite direction of this lengthy drive south.

We decided to attribute this to the fact that it was an Uber pool and shrugged it off, until we picked up this next passenger; tbh this girl scared us, I don’t like to judge people, but she scared us just by looks and how she talked. Once the girl got in, we asked the driver where we were going first, to which he stopped answering. Next thing I know my phone lit up and said the Uber trip was canceled… and for this duration of the ride Uber had no record of me being in the car. I asked the driver what the deal was and he didn’t answer. The girl and the driver 100% knew each other as they were calling each other nicknames. The girl was being weird and seemed to be doing some hand signals to him. Then we proceeded to drive further south to this neighborhood, the sketchiest neighborhood I’ve ever seen. I didn’t realize neighborhoods like this even existed; every house was completely wrecked, there were no street signs on most streets, most street lights were out/flickering, homeless people lying on sidewalks, and there were beat down warehouses and alleys. This was by far the scariest area I’d ever seen, no one who cared would hear a scream in this area. Once we started seeing all of this our hearts dropped because the driver would still not respond to us. My friend then looks over to me and whispers “we need to get the fuck out of here” to which I replied “dude look where we are” and so we stayed in the car. Then the we get driven down this alley behind a warehouse where the streets ended and there were just fields beyond it. The driver is going down this alley at like 2 MPH but keeps going.. The girl and uber driver were clearly discussing something serious but we couldn’t make it out since they were using mostly signals. At that time, our hearts sank even more and we literally both thought we were going to be killed in this alley, or at best someone was going to get in the car and rob us. He stopped, the doors unlocked, and I was in complete shock with a pale face when all of a sudden my friend says “Hey I’m completely sober and I’m about to fucking call 911.” (I’m assuming the driver was waiting around the concert to pick up some wasted people to allow this to happen, but we were pretty sober) Which he was serious about, he had 911 dialed up on his phone, the uber driver looks back at us in shock after he sees 911 dialed and my friends finger about to push call. He looks at the girl, the girl is in shock too, and she nods her head no, says “what the fuck Ry (drivers nickname)” and gets out of the car.

The driver then drives out of the neighborhood and on to the highway towards our suburb. All of a sudden my Uber app gave me a notification saying we were now in a ride. All of a sudden the driver starts talking to us again but he wasn’t giving any answers, just saying he’s driving us home. We were asking wtf just happened dude and he just wouldn’t answer stuff like that. He would answer about where we’re going, but nothing about what just happened. We got home safely and reported the uber driver for this ride because it was obviously messed up. We think that the uber driver was trying to wait for wasted people to call a pool so he could get away with this, but realized we were too big of a risk when it came time to do what they were going to do. We’ve accepted that we were part of a mugging scheme and got lucky we decided to not get drunk at the concert.

We had anxiety for weeks after this, but we now know just how sketchy some areas can be and how to be more safe in Chicago: by not calling an Uber pool outside a concert/bar. It’s so weird to me that people live this sketchy of lives and do this to people, but it was eye opening.

This is one of the scariest stories I’ve ever read online, and that’s saying something. What if they had both been drunk? Or what if the friend’s cellphone battery had been dead? It’s hard to say what this Uber driver and the creepy girl were planning.

No matter how you get around your city, be careful. You never know what malicious people are out there, and clearly using Uber doesn’t come without risks.