The Drunk Men I Drive Around Every Night (2020)
Before Lyft and Uber, back in 2007-08 I worked for a DD startup called Zingo. Their pitch was you find yourself hammered at a bar with you car outside. Call Zingo, we dispatch a driver on a foldable two-stroke scooter. Pop it in the trunk, drive you home, and we disappear into the night. We had no app or even GPS nav (because I was in their car). I carried a Motorola radio and wore an orange safety jacket. Because it was explicitly a DD service and you had to have a car to start with, my customers were exclusively hammered, and it was a dark time for me to live through.<p>I took 5-15 people home each night, and saw exactly the characters this article described. I actually plan to write about this in more detail one day, but after reading this I can&#x27;t help but share a few anecdotes.<p>On my very first night, very first pick-up, I puttered up to a steakhouse where a guy in a suit standing by a Mercedes waved at me and yelled &quot;Zippy! Over here!&quot; When we got in his car, the first thing he said is &quot;you might as well put a fucking bullet in my head, &#x27;cause I&#x27;m fucking dead when my wife hears that I just got fired.&quot; We don&#x27;t provide that service, sir. The rest of the ride he told me about his leased AMG that I was driving and kept telling me to punch it every time we got a green light.<p>I had nightly drunk Adams that were too hammered to even give me directions home. One quest I went on with Adam was first to go get chicken wings at a restaurant that I knew was certainly closed at 3:30, a half-hour past last call. After driving for 20-30 minutes to go see the closed restaurant I convinced him we should get him home. Like most hammered drunk men, he was confident he could give me turn-by-turn directions. He alternated between directions and spontaneous ideas of other places we could go to get him something to eat, and finally blacked out cold. I pulled over and shook him trying to wake him up, but he would just groan and push me away. I dug out his wallet, got his license and took him to the address on it. Luckily it wasn&#x27;t that far. I walked him to the door and kept asking him &quot;This is your place, right? We&#x27;re home, right?&quot; &quot;Mmmm nnggg.&quot; His key didn&#x27;t work. He was so noisy that someone came to the door. Apparently an old roommate that knew where he lived now, I wrote down the directions and drove him there. When we got there he was so out-cold that I couldn&#x27;t get him to wake up at all. I left him in the car and hid his keys in the mailbox.<p>Another story that sticks with me is a cantankerous old widow. I was dispatched to a fancy restaurant. Restaurant had called, not the customer, which is always a bad sign. When I arrived they were clearly in a dispute and she was angry that she had to leave. She didn&#x27;t understand the concept of my job, and seemed to think I was some kind of escort or something. She didn&#x27;t like my reflective orange jacket, &quot;you really don&#x27;t have anything nicer to wear? What kind of shirt do you have on under it?&quot; She wasn&#x27;t happy with my shirt either, so she said &quot;fine, that&#x27;ll have to do.&quot; I explained I was just taking her home. &quot;Oh no you&#x27;re not. Not yet&quot;. First I had to accompany her to the bar at another fancy restaurant. We charged by the hour and by the mile so, a stop along the way was technically part of our service if you wanted that. I felt beyond awkward as we walked to the door of this fancy place, me dressed like a street rat in a reflective jacket, and her a 60-70-year-old Miss Daisy, drunk as hell and ready to chew somebody out. By the grace of god, they wouldn&#x27;t let me in because because of dress code.<p>I don&#x27;t know how I feel about the effect of ride-share apps upon alcoholism, but I know that chronically interacting with drunks was one of the most degrading and demoralizing experiences I&#x27;ve had. I have many more awful stories. The girl that threw up all over the inside of her own car. The woman, a regular I often picked up with her husband, who I picked up with another man one night and she tipped me $100 not to say anything next time I picked her up with her husband. The disgustingly drunk and overweight big shots who were outraged that they&#x27;d just been rejected by a woman--usually the same guys that wanted to tell me about their AMGs and tell me to &quot;punch it.&quot; Blacked out people that I didn&#x27;t know how to get home. Lots of awful stories, but I&#x27;ll afflict them upon the world some other day.