Internet Sensation Joe Santagato Describes His Eventful Uber Experience
Joe Santagato is famous across multiple Internet platforms for his rants, story, and other humorous videos. His most recent story dives into what can only be described as an eventful experience in the back seat of an Uber.
Santagato describes himself as a frequent Uber rider; “I’ve taken tons of Ubers and I’ve never had a problem, until I met D.”
D, the name of the Uber driver, should have tipped Santagato off from the very start. “I don’t know if it was short for David or something like that, but all the app said was ‘D.'” Not Dee, which would’ve been a perfectly normal name. Just the single letter: “D.” With a mysterious, one-letter name, the driver pulled up and they were on their way.
As soon as Santagato hopped in the car, he hollered up to D: “All right, buddy, fire up that A/C!” Santagato said. On cue, the driver turned on the heat on full blast. “I guess he heard ‘fire’ and was like, ‘Fire is hot,’ and just put the heat on,” Santagato said in his video. So there they sat, blasting the heat in the middle of the summer. But on they went.
Now, Uber rides can become very awkward very quickly if you let them. To try and make light conversation, Santagato posed a question to his driver: he asked him if he was married. The driver responded quickly, “No, no, no, no.” Then, the driver paused and said, “Well, my wife is.” Now, if you’re confused by his answer, you’re not the only one.
Santagato went a bit out of his mind at that point, trying to figure out how those two answers fit together. “It felt very illegal and dangerous, I didn’t want to dig deeper […] I didn’t want to get a nosebleed or a headache so I just left it at that.”
Whether or not the driver sensed Santagato’s apprehension was unclear. Regardless, the driver asked Santagato if he wanted a piece of gum. He said sure, checking the pockets and compartments in the back seat for a pack of gum.
Instead, the driver shifted in his seat, while the car was still moving, and pulled a pack of gum out of his back pocket – the one he’d been sitting on for their entire ride. Then, he pulled a piece of gum out of the pack, unwrapped it, and handed the now-naked strip of gum to Santagato.
“Am I the only one who thinks that’s […] insane?!”
Santagato took the piece of gum, pretended to eat it, and let the ride proceed.
However, the ride didn’t proceed as you would expect in most Ubers. The driver began asking Santagato for directions, even going as far as to ask him if he should go down the street clearly marked “Dead End.”
They finally reached downtown Manhattan. “Now, I think this field trip is over because I’m literally four blocks from where I need to be,” said Santagato. “But no. D had other plans.”
As they made their way through the busy New York City streets, a cab began to pull out of its parking spot and into traffic. Instead of letting the cab merge onto the street, D accelerated to try and cut off the cab. Naturally, the car smacked into the side of the cab. Oops.
At this point, Santagato got out of the vehicle and decided he was done. “D, you are on your own, bud,” he said to the driver.
While you might think this driver probably received complaints and an extremely low rating from Santagato, the Internet star actually gave his driver the best rating possible. “That is a five-star ride,” he said.
Santagato’s video has received more than 1.2 million views on Facebook and more than 800,000 views on YouTube as of the publication date of this article.
You can watch the full video here (video contains some explicit language):
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