Another repeat passenger. I remembered her because her depressing life. She works long hours at Family Dollar and is so tired she can hardly talk. She is in her late twenties but she is already haggard. She lives right next to a MARTA stop in a dump of an apartment and doesn’t have much hope to improve things.
New Years Eve 2025: Driving on major holidays is different. At least that’s what I had heard. I hadn’t done it because (a) my car was in the shop for a while (unrelated to Uber), and (b) I spend time with my own family on holidays. But New Years Eve is a dumb holiday, we’re not doing anything, let’s see what it’s like and earn some good money!
Notables:
- The couple that I picked up from the fancy restaurant. They seemed like they had been dating for a year or two. They weren’t happy. There was dead silence the entire ride. They didn’t say a word. Until two minutes from the dropoff. Suddenly he turned to her and yelled, “So what the fuck are you so mad about!?” “Because the dinner was terrible, that’s why!” “The dinner was terrible? The $400 dinner I saved up and bought you was terrible!? That dinner!? Jesus, wah wah!!!” It got worse from there.
- The newly engaged couple. I give them five years at most. He was obsessed with a 4-carat ring his grandfather had passed down to him to use for an engagement ring. The ring had somehow been taken back by the other family branch. There was a lot of family drama that was hard to follow. At any rate he had spent $9,000 of his own money on a new ring to replace his grandfathers. $9,000 was a huge amount of money to him. Every time I pivoted to how did you meet or something nice he kept going back to it, could not get past it. She sat quietly the whole ride and left a nice tip.
- I picked her up from a nice restaurant in Roswell. She got in. I asked how her night was going. She didn’t answer at first. Then she sighed and very quietly said, “I tried. I really did.” I liked her, this 38-year-old divorced content-creator. She was a very nice woman and we had a great conversation. She did not like New Years Eve, she did not like the noise, she did not like the whole idea of forced fun. She never does stuff like this. This year she left herself be talked into it. She went out for several hours across multiple restaurants and clubs to be social — and it was terrible. She was very happy to get home.
Happy New Years 2025 (to 2026)!