The Lady with a Sick Father
The people I meet while driving Uber are, say 90% of the time, polite.
60% of the time, it's fun - because the riders I had were engaging and fun.
40% of the time, it's just boring - because these people are boring, anti-social or down right have no manners.
Quite a number of them are women. Maybe they think male drivers automatically want to hit on them?
I picked up this lady from Royal North Shore Hospital. She was going to Manly. (About a 30-minute drive)
She got in the car, I asked "How are you?" and she answered "Good, thanks."
Silence.
Uh oh, here we go again. It's going to be a long ride.
But being the hospital, I asked one more question: "Is everything ok?"
She said "It's my dad. He's got cancer. End stage."
And with that, we talked.
I shared with her how I lost my dad. I think we found comfort in sharing the sad part of our lives: hers was about to happen while I re-lived mine, still hurts even after all these years.
We spoke about quite a few things, even managed to make her laugh from time to time.
The ride to Manly didn't take that long.
She got out of the car, I said again that I was very sorry to hear about the situation with her dad. I said I hope she gets to spend as much time as she can with her dad.
And then she was gone. Our paths very unlikely to cross again.
I don't know if she gave me a 5-star rating but I felt, for the lack of a better word, "good" that I made her laugh during our ride, which made her forget her sadness for a brief while.
It's fun driving Uber. Mostly fun, not so fun at other times, but some times it's just sad.
I try to make my rides a comfortable and fun ride for my riders, but sometimes it's just sad. https://t.co/h2yePmdt12
— Bevan Ting (@BevanTing) May 4, 2016
