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🚗My Uber driver said my home address before I told him. Two days later he was outside my building.

It was 11:47pm. I had two glasses of wine. The driver said "414, right?" before I touched my seatbelt. That's my apartment number. I never typed it. I never said it. I checked the app and the destination wasn't my home. It was the bar I was standing outside of.

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The ride I almost didn't book

My friend wanted to stay one more drink. I said no, I had a meeting at 9am. I opened the app outside the bar, watched a Toyota Camry creep up the block, three minutes away. Black plates. Driver named Marc, 4.91 stars, 3,200 trips. Normal. Boring. The kind of stat line that makes you stop scanning the car for warning signs. I waved him down through the window. He nodded once, slow, like he already knew it was me. I told myself he probably matched my face to the app photo. I told myself a lot of things that night.

"414, right?"

I shut the door. I was still putting my bag down on the floor mat when he said it. Not loud. Almost mumbled, like he was confirming an order at a drive-thru. "414, right?" I froze with one hand on the seatbelt. I said, "Sorry, what?" He didn't repeat it. He just pulled away from the curb. I opened the Uber app to check what I'd typed in. The destination wasn't my apartment. The destination was "Lou's Tavern" — the bar I had literally just walked out of. The address I never set was the address he just said.

I tried to make it make sense

My brain did the thing brains do at midnight. Maybe I autofilled my home address into a different field once and forgot. Maybe Uber shows the driver your "home" saved location for some reason. Maybe he overheard the door buzzer the last time he dropped someone at my building. I scrolled my ride history. He had never picked me up before. Not once. I had ordered eleven Ubers from Lou's in the last year and not a single one was a black Camry. I looked at the back of his head in the rearview. He was already watching me in the mirror.

The wrong turn

He didn't ask where I was going. He just drove. Three blocks east, then a left I wouldn't have taken, then a right onto a side street that doesn't go anywhere near my building or the bar. The app's blue route line was still routing back to Lou's. He was going the opposite direction. I said, very calmly, "Hey, I think I need to update the address." He said, without looking back, "You live above the dry cleaner. The one with the green sign." I do. I do live above a dry cleaner with a green sign. I felt every hair on my arms stand up at the same time.

How I got out

I said the only thing I could think of. I said, "Actually can you pull over here, my friend just texted, she's right on the corner." He didn't slow down for two more blocks. Then he stopped at a red light and I opened the door at the light and got out. I didn't close it. I walked into a 24-hour bodega and stood by the counter pretending to look at gum until I saw the Camry crawl past the window twice. Then I called a different Uber. I went to my friend's apartment, not mine. I deleted the trip from my history like that would unsee it.

Two days later, the buzzer

Wednesday night, around the same time. My buzzer rang. I wasn't expecting anyone. I went to the window because my building has a street-facing apartment and I can see who's at the door without speaking. Black Camry. Engine on. Hazards blinking. A man in the driver's seat looking up at my window — at my window specifically, not the building generally. I couldn't tell if it was him. I didn't want to tell if it was him. I turned off every light in the apartment and sat on the floor of my kitchen until the car drove away around 1am.

What the support email said

I emailed Uber. Screenshots, timestamps, the whole thing. They wrote back in 36 hours and said "the trip in question was completed and rated normally" and "the driver in question is no longer active on the platform." That was the whole reply. No reason. No "we investigated." No "here's what happened." Just past tense. "No longer active." I asked twice what that meant. They didn't answer. My friend says it means they fired him. My sister says it means he quit before they could. I keep my blinds shut now. I haven't taken an Uber alone since.

The part I haven't told anyone

When I was getting out of the car at the red light, I looked at the passenger seat. There was a notebook open on it. A real paper notebook, the cheap spiral kind. The top of the page had three things written on it in pen. A first name. A street name. And four digits. I didn't read them long enough to be sure. But I'm pretty sure the first name was mine. I keep telling myself I'm pretty sure it wasn't. I haven't decided which version I believe yet.

Ready-to-launch poll prompts

1
Would you have gotten out of the car when he said your apartment number?
Out at the next lightPlayed it cool, ridden homeConfronted him directlyFrozen, done nothing
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2
Most likely explanation?
He stalked her before the rideUber app data leakSomeone hired himCoincidence (be serious)
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3
What does "no longer active on the platform" actually mean?
They fired himHe quit firstHe got arrestedUber is covering it up
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4
Would you keep living in that apartment?
Moving tomorrowStaying, new locksStaying, getting a dogStaying, doing nothing
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5
The notebook on the passenger seat — what was it?
A list of targetsHis own grocery list (coincidence)Notes from another riderShe imagined it
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Frequently asked

Q.Is this real?+

Yes. It happened to me on a Monday night in early spring. I have the ride receipt, the screenshots of the destination set to the bar instead of my home, and the support email saying the driver is no longer active. I'm not naming the city because he might still be in it.

Q.Did you go to the police?+

I filed a non-emergency report the day after the buzzer incident. They took my statement and said without a license plate from the second sighting there wasn't much they could do. I didn't get the plate. I was sitting on the kitchen floor in the dark.

Q.Are you safe now?+

I think so. I moved six weeks later to a building with a doorman and a side entrance. I haven't seen a black Camry on my new street. I still flinch every time a rideshare pulls up to a curb near me. I take cabs now. The yellow kind. With a partition.

Q.How could he have known your address before you said it?+

I don't know. Three theories: he had followed me from my apartment to the bar earlier and was waiting for me to order a ride out, someone fed him my info, or the app showed him my saved home location for a reason Uber won't explain. I've never gotten a real answer.

Q.Why didn't you scream or call 911 in the car?+

Because part of you doesn't want to believe it's happening. You keep waiting for the moment where it stops being weird and starts being normal. By the time I accepted it was real, I was already at the red light and the door was already open.

Q.What's the one thing you'd tell other girls after this?+

Check the destination the second you sit down. Not when you remember. Not when you've buckled in. The second. And if a driver says one thing — one single thing — you didn't tell him, get out at the next light. Don't be polite. Polite is how this story almost ended differently.