I have been a limo driver for a little over three years. I can’t say I love the job, but I can’t say I hate it either. I’ve definitely had jobs much worse. The good thing about being a limo driver is that you’re basically working by yourself, you make your own hours, and you get to see different parts of the metropolitan area. The bad thing about being a limo driver is having to deal with traffic, sitting around at the airport waiting for a delayed flight to arrive and the pay could be better. People find it shocking that I usually don’t have any wild crazy stories to tell. I normally drive the corporate types during the day and evening and it’s usually in a sedan limo. A lot of people think being a limo driver is a cool job because we drive in stretch limos and drive famous people around. That may be the case for some drivers, but as for me, nothing really exciting happens. I’ve heard some pretty funny and crazy stories from other drivers and I’ve driven some famous people such as Kloe Kardashian, Gilbert Godfried and a few professional athletes, but my most memorable and interesting passenger was not a reality star or a professional athlete. It was a mother from Huntington, Long Island.
One day I got to work in the afternoon about 4 o’clock. The dispatchers know that I don’t like to be out past eleven at night because I have school the next day. So being that I had to be back by eleven, the dispatcher gave me a job going out to New Paltz and I was to collect the payment amount of 550 dollars from the customer once I dropped her off. I’d never heard of New Paltz, so I thought maybe it was out in Westchester or maybe a town in the Hamptons. Until I put it into my GPS and realized it was a two and a half hour trip upstate. I also usually don’t like to travel outside of the Long Island area and the five boroughs. I especially don’t like to drive out to New Jersey. So I figured as long as it’s not New Jersey it couldn’t be that bad. So I arrive at the home in Huntington 15 minutes before the pick- up time. Since I knew I was collecting $550 dollars from the customer once I dropped her off, I was a little surprised when I arrived at the location. I assume a lot of the passengers I drive are rich because they live in nice affluent towns on Long Island in very nice homes. This house was a nice small modest home. About five minutes later a lady comes out with a carry on. So I got out and helped her with her bag and put it in the trunk. Then she asks me if it was ok if she sat in the front. I normally don’t like it when passengers sit up front with me but I wasn’t going say no to her.
So I start to drive and I can tell she’s pretty sad and down. Then she starts talking to me, making small conversation. Then she asks if I had any kids. I told her no, I didn’t have any kids. Then she goes on to tell me that she’s got three kids, the youngest a freshman at SUNY New Paltz. So as soon as she said that, I figured she was going up there to visit her daughter. She then goes on to tell me that her youngest daughter told her a few weeks ago out of nowhere that she wanted nothing to do with her and that she hated her and didn’t want any type of relationship with her. As she’s telling me this she begins to cry. I’m not the most sentimental person, so I really didn’t know what to say to her to make her feel better that her kid hates her and doesn’t want to talk to her. All I could come up with was, well she’s young and it could just be a phase she’s going through. She tells me that her daughter recently came out of the closet but she was accepting of it. She explained that she was always the disciplinarian in the household while the father was more the cool dad. So now that she’s out the house she only calls to speak to the dad and not her. She tells me that the thought of her daughter hating her and not speaking to her was hurting her so bad that she couldn’t work or do anything and she couldn’t get it out of her mind. So out of the blue she decided to go out to her school to speak with her since she wasn’t answering her calls. She had a car but wasn’t comfortable with driving out there and she didn’t tell her husband because he wouldn’t have agreed to it. She told me that she was a waitress at a diner and that she really couldn’t afford the trip but the pain of her youngest not speaking to her was so much that she had to make the trip.
The ride out there wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. She ended up falling asleep an hour into the ride. This was my first time out there, so it was nice to see the mountains along the highway. I was born and raised in Brooklyn and live on Long Island now, so I’m not used to seeing mountains. So we finally get to New Paltz in a little over two hours. She asks me to find a hotel right outside the campus so that she can stay in for the night with her daughter and have her husband pick her up the next day. I find a hotel. She goes in and pays for a room for the night. Then I take her to the school campus. After driving around for a bit, we found the dorms. Normally once I reach the destination of the passenger I just leave. But I decided to stick around for a few minutes because something told me the girl wouldn’t be too receptive to the mother’s visit. About five minutes later she walks back to the car crying and tells me that her daughter says she was not going back to the hotel with her and told her to leave and walked away.
She didn’t want to stay the night out there in the hotel room by all herself, and she didn’t have the money to get back to Long Island. So I called the dispatch office and told them the situation and they told me it was okay for me to take her back but I wouldn’t get paid for the job. So I drove her back home to Long Island. Throughout the ride she cried until she eventually went to sleep.