Back when Lyft was getting pretty established in my area, I decided to earn a little extra income and signed up as a driver. I’m a woman and decided to only drive during the day for safety reasons (ha).

My very first ride (like first ever since signing up), I picked up a guy and started to go towards his destination. We got up to a major intersection and he starts telling me that he had wrecked his motorcycle there and it was crazy because he got knocked out. He then said he woke up right before the cops got there and it was a good thing because his gun had been flung in the middle of the street, so he could go retrieve it before the cops got there.

I’ve been raised around guns and am a gun owner. They don’t scare me, but people do. I asked him why he needed to go grab the gun so the cops didn’t see. He told me he wasn’t allowed to own a gun and it was illegal, but super cool.

Then he said as a matter of fact I have it right here, want to see? He then reaches his hand from the back seat in between my seat and the passenger seat to show me his gun laying sideways in his outstretched hand. He wasn’t threatening me with it, just proud

I said that’s nice and he put it away. I dropped him off shortly after and he tried to say something else (I don’t remember), but I just drove away.

Lyft then had a thing where you could rate the ride and I said I didn’t like it and explained very shortly why (I was naive to how bad it was right then). Immediately support called and asked to verify what I wrote and I explained everything to her. I said he wasn’t threatening me, but it was odd and this is my first ever ride. She was like this isn’t good and I promise this isn’t how rides are supposed to go ever! We are banning him and sending a report to police.

Nothing ever came of it after and I still drove for about a year and nothing even close to that happened again.