My taxi rating dropped so low, only the 7th driver would pick me up. I stood on the curb in the biting cold of a London evening, staring at my phone as six different drivers canceled on me within seconds. My rating had plummeted to a dismal 2.4 stars, which is basically the digital equivalent of being a fugitive or someone who routinely spills coffee on the leather seats. It made no sense to me because I’m the kind of person who sits in silence, says “thank you,” and always tips at least twenty percent.
I checked my ride history, wondering if I had been sleepwalking and taking chaotic trips in the middle of the night. But everything looked normal, just the usual daily trips between my flat and the nursing center. Then the realization hit me like a splash of icy water. For the last month, I’d been using my account to send my 85-year-old mom, Martha, to her various appointments and bridge club meetings.
She had stopped driving after a small fender bender in the supermarket parking lot, and I wanted her to keep her independence without the stress of navigating the Tube. I thought I was being a good son by handling all the logistics through my app. But apparently, something was going horribly wrong between the point of pickup and the final destination. My mom is a tiny, soft-spoken woman who smells like lavender and always wears a pearl necklace, so I couldn’t imagine her being a “difficult” passenger.
Finally, a battered silver sedan pulled up, driven by a man named Victor. He looked at me like I was dangerous, his hands gripped tight on the steering wheel as I approached the door. He didn’t even unlock it until he had squinted at me through the glass for a good thirty seconds. When I finally climbed in, the tension in the car was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
“Bad night?” I asked, trying to break the ice and prove I wasn’t the monster my rating suggested. Victor didn’t relax; he just glanced at me in the rearview mirror with a look of pure suspicion. “I’ve heard stories about this account,” he said, his voice low and cautious. “The guys in the group chat said whoever owns this phone is a nightmare for the nerves.”
I spent the whole ride apologizing, explaining that I was a boring office worker and that I’d mostly been ordering cars for my elderly mother. Victor’s eyes widened, and he let out a long, wheezing laugh that filled the car. “Your mother?” he asked, finally relaxing his grip on the wheel. “If that little lady is the one I’m thinking of, you’re lucky I’m the only one who picked you up today.”
When I got home, I found my mom sitting in her favorite armchair, knitting a sweater that looked like it was for a giant. She looked as peaceful as a saint in a stained-glass window, the very picture of grandmotherly innocence. I sat down across from her, trying to keep my voice casual despite the fact that I was basically banned from every ride-share app in the city. When I asked what she did with the drivers to make them rate us so poorly, she calmly replied, “I just try to help them improve their life skills, Arthur. Most of them are very distracted young men.”
I pressed her for more details, and the story she told me made my jaw hit the floor. Apparently, my mom hadn’t just been sitting quietly in the back seat. She had been treating every ride like a high-stakes driving test and a personal therapy session combined. She told me that she would sit directly behind the driver and provide a running commentary on their posture, their lane changes, and the cleanliness of their dashboard.
“One young man had a very cluttered glove box,” she told me, clicking her knitting needles together. “I spent the entire trip to the doctor’s office explaining the benefits of a minimalist lifestyle and why his choice of radio station was detrimental to his heart rate.” She also mentioned that she had a habit of reaching forward to “adjust” the air conditioning or the mirrors if she felt they weren’t optimal for safety.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. My mom, in her infinite wisdom, had decided that the drivers weren’t taking the most “efficient” routes through the city. She had lived in London for sixty years and refused to believe that a GPS knew better than she did. She had been giving the drivers conflicting directions, telling them to take shortcuts through narrow alleys that were often blocked by delivery trucks, and then getting annoyed when they got stuck.
I realized that my poor drivers weren’t rating me one star because I was a bad person; they were rating me one star because they had survived a thirty-minute lecture on the proper way to hold a steering wheel while being directed into a dead-end street. I tried to explain to her that the drivers just wanted to get from point A to point B in peace, but she just patted my hand and told me I was being “narrow-minded.”
I decided that the only way to save my digital reputation was to accompany her on her next trip to see what was really going on. Two days later, I booked a car for her weekly tea with her friend, Agnes. A young guy named Sam showed up, looking cheerful until he saw my mom walking toward the car with her cane and a very determined look in her eye. I climbed into the front seat, acting as a human shield and a mediator.
Within five minutes, the lecture started. Mom began questioning Sam about his long-term career goals and why he wasn’t wearing a tie. “It’s a service industry, dear,” she said, leaning forward until her face was inches from his ear. “First impressions are everything. And you really should use your blinker three seconds earlier than you currently are.” Sam looked at me with a silent plea for help in his eyes, and I spent the entire ride apologetically miming that I would tip him extra.
As we were stuck in a massive traffic jam near Piccadilly Circus, my mom noticed something that neither Sam nor I had seen. She pointed to a car two lanes over where a woman looked like she was in genuine distress. “Sam, pull over,” she commanded, her voice switching from a nagging grandmother to a retired drill sergeant. “That woman is having a medical emergency. I know the look.”
Before we could argue, she had unbuckled her seatbelt and was out of the car, weaving through the stationary traffic with a speed that defied her age. We watched in shock as she reached the other car and began directing people to help. It turned out the woman was in active labor and was trapped in the gridlock alone. My mom, who had been a nurse for forty years before I was born, took total control of the situation until the paramedics arrived.
I expected my rating to stay in the gutter, but suddenly, it started to climb. I went from a 2.4 to a 4.8 in a matter of days. I couldn’t understand it until I saw a post on a local social media group for taxi drivers. Someone had posted a photo of my mom—the “Lavender Menace,” as they called her—but the caption was completely different than I expected.
The driver she had helped with the medical emergency had told everyone the story. But more than that, other drivers started chiming in. One guy wrote that while she was “annoying as hell” about his driving, she had also noticed he was depressed and had spent forty minutes convincing him to call his mother and go back to school. Another driver mentioned that she had spotted a mechanical issue with his brakes that his mechanic had missed, potentially saving his life.
The drivers hadn’t been giving me one star because they hated her; they had been giving me one star as a sort of “initiation” or a “warning” to other drivers that they were in for a wild ride. But once the story of her saving that woman came out, she became a sort of local legend. Drivers started competing to pick her up, wanting to see if the “old lady with the pearls” would give them a life lesson or a safety tip.
I realized that my mom wasn’t trying to be a nightmare; she just refused to see anyone as a stranger. In a world where we all hide behind our phones and treat service workers like NPCs in a video game, my mom treated everyone like they were her own family. She was bossy, sure, and her driving advice was unsolicited, but she was looking at people when everyone else was looking away.
The rewarding conclusion to all this wasn’t just my 4.9-star rating or the fact that I never had to wait for a car again. It was seeing my mom feel seen. She had spent years feeling like the world was moving too fast and that she had become invisible as an elderly woman. The taxi app had accidentally given her a platform to be a nurse, a mentor, and a friend to a group of men who often felt just as invisible as she did.
Now, whenever I book a ride for her, I don’t apologize in advance. I just leave a note in the app that says, “Passenger has forty years of nursing experience and sixty years of London shortcuts. Bring a tie and be prepared to talk about your future.” The drivers usually show up with a smile, ready for the lecture of a lifetime. And my mom always makes sure to tell them that they’re doing a wonderful job, right before she tells them they’re taking the wrong turn at the roundabout.
We often judge people by the friction they cause in our lives, forgetting that friction is sometimes just the result of two things actually making contact. We want everything to be “seamless” and “efficient,” but the best parts of life are usually the messy, loud, and inconvenient interactions we have with other humans. My mom taught me that a one-star experience can be a five-star life lesson if you’re willing to listen.
I’ve stopped worrying about my digital reputation and started worrying more about the people standing right in front of me. Loyalty and kindness don’t always look like a quiet ride; sometimes they look like a bossy 85-year-old woman telling you to clean your glove box. I’m proud to be the owner of the “nightmare” account, because it means my mom is out there making the world a little bit more human, one taxi ride at a time.
If this story reminded you that there’s always more to people than their “rating,” please share and like this post. We could all use a little more of Martha’s brand of “interference” in our lives. Would you like me to help you draft a funny note for your own ride-share profile to make your next driver smile?
