Rideshare Passengers: Some Want to Impress You. Some Don’t.

A few weeks ago, I gave consecutive long rideshare rides. One took me out to Lago Vista. One took me back from Lago Vista. One was great and hilarious. One was annoying but hilarious.

The first was a pair of women I’d estimate to be in their late 30’s. I might be off on that estimate. It’s mostly based on their conversation, because, well, you don’t see your rideshare passengers much. You’re looking at the road, they’re in the back seat, so on, so forth.

Anyway, the thing about these women is that they acted like I didn’t exist. They did not care at all what I thought of them. They came out, dressed for a rehearsal dinner but vaguely enough that I (again, not really seeing them) thought they were going boating, sat in the backseat, I believe continued to pregame the rehearsal dinner in the backseat (I don’t ask what’s in the cup), and spilled out one hell of a catching-up session. One recently dated a divorced serial cheater. One’s going to the Mexican wine country later this summer and wants the other to join. One took a test somehow related to Autism when she was younger and was told she’d never be able to learn more than one language. They seemed to not have seen each other for a while, so they had plenty of other people to catch up on too, and I was entirely a car to them, as opposed to a person driving a car. They weren’t rude at all, or anything like that. I was just a car. Nothing, it seemed, was off limits.

The second was a guy I’d estimate to be in his early 40’s. He had a big house, but it was a long way from Austin, but it was also new development so I’m guessing he was doing pretty well for himself. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, which was a good sign. He asked if he could just not wear a mask, since the windows were open and we were both vaccinated and the ride was long, which was a medium sign. He asked if he could vape, which was a bad sign, and reflected poorly upon what kind of sign the Hawaiian shirt was. He made a big deal about how he’d accidentally forgotten his THC cartridges and could only vape nicotine, as though I cared at all what he was vaping out my window, which was the worst sign.

Contrarily to the women from the previous ride, this guy cared what I thought. A lot. He wanted to be cool. He was trying so hard to be cool. He was calling old friends and leaving them voicemails and talking like a character from a proverbial SNL sketch who thinks of himself as the king of organizing work-related happy hours, which is to say he was talking like Andy Bernard. At one point, he decided to tell me how great it was that Austin had decided to recriminalize homeless encampments, and when I pushed back with an “ehh, feel like that’s not a solution,” told me that police departments around the state were bringing their homeless populations to Austin and dropping them off downtown, something he then tried to back up by saying he had friends from Long Island who told him New York City used to bus folks who were homeless out to San Francisco, which is of course absurdly illegal and expensive and the best “she goes to a different school!” equivalent I’ve ever heard out of a grown man trying to give a monologue but thinking he’s having a conversation about local politics. At another point, he had me turn the radio off so he could talk about some new technology his business was using that was going to revolutionize buildings. It’s possible it will revolutionize buildings. Would be kind of funny if it did. I could read an article about it and say, “Hey! That guy spouted conspiratorial dehumanizing nonsense in my back seat! He likes hard rock and went to Texas A&M!”

And so, it occurs to me that some rideshare passengers do not care at all what you think, and they are often the best. While others, at the opposite end of this particular spectrum, desperately crave your approval, and they are often the best but only when they are not in your car and you’re getting to tell stories about them. Good luck with the technology, dude. Don’t get yourself bussed to Portland after the concert.