BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Tom Bodett, Alonzo Bodden and Paula Poundstone. And here again is your host at the Buell Theater in Denver, Colo., Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Right now...
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SAGAL: Thank you, guys. Right now it's time for the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAITWAIT to play our game on the air.
Hi, you are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
BRILEE O’CONNOR: Hi. It's Brilee O’Connor in Minneapolis, Minn.
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SAGAL: Hey, Minneapolis, one of my many old homes. How are you, Brilee?
O’CONNOR: I am excellent.
SAGAL: I am glad to hear you have the typical cheer of a Minnesotan.
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O’CONNOR: Well, I'm not from here, so I'm not as passive-aggressive as the natives.
SAGAL: I - oh, yeah.
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SAGAL: Brilee, it's nice to have you with us. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Brilee's topic?
KURTIS: Uber and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
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SAGAL: Uber passengers have bad days all the time - your driver's late, you're kidnapped, never to be heard from again, or even worse, your driver wants to have a conversation.
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SAGAL: This week, though, we heard about a driver having a pretty bad day. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the one who's telling the truth and you'll win our prize, Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Ready to play?
O’CONNOR: Yes.
SAGAL: All right then. Let's hear first from Alonzo Bodden.
ALONZO BODDEN: Freddy Lewis (ph) was born a San Francisco Giants fan. His father was such a New York Giants fan that when the team moved west so did he. So Freddy was raised in San Francisco by a dad constantly telling him stories about Willie Mays, the Say Hey Kid, the greatest of all time.
Freddy is now known around San Francisco by the Giants logo on the back window of his Uber car. And friends say his vintage Willie Mays official jersey, number 24, must be surgically attached because he never takes it off. The worst and greatest day of Freddy's life was the day his app told him to pick up a Mr. Mays at the Fairmont Hotel. Imagine his shock and amazement when Mr. Mays was the Say Hey Kid himself - Willie Mays. If only his father could have been there. And then the drive started - slow down, don't turn there, watch the bumps, look at the road. It was a nonstop barrage of backseat driving.
Every comment made Freddy more nervous. He forgot his way down streets he'd been on all his life. What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you even have a license? Freddy was beginning to get upset, so he tried to talk baseball to the legend and he was shut down with, if you watch traffic the way you watch baseball we wouldn't be sitting in it. Now at the end of his rope, Freddy started talking back. He mentioned Hank Aaron's homerun numbers, which were better, and even said, without steroids, Barry Bonds is still a better hitter than you.
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BODDEN: Pretty soon they were shouting at each other, and he dropped the furious Mays off. And Freddy figured he'd celebrate his inevitable one star rating with a uniform shirt-burning party. Well, Freddy did get a call from Uber headquarters the next day. They had a package for him, which turned out to be an autographed baseball by way of apology from Willie Mays.
Willie had had a bad day and felt he shouldn't have taken it out on Freddy, and that he appreciated Freddy's love of the game. But then he looked at the ball and it was signed to Freddy, a true fan. Willie Mays. P.S. learn to drive.
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SAGAL: A Willie Mays fan picks up an Uber passenger and it's Willie Mays. Your next story of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for a driver comes from Paula Poundstone.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Uber driver Corone Walsh (ph) picked up his fare, Farhat Facrildine (ph), in downtown Hillsboro, N.H., five minutes after he got the request. Off they headed to an address somewhere in the White Mountains. Unfortunately, as the night began to fall and the car sped along a windy part of the road framed by a precipice, Corone Walsh accidentally dropped his phone out of the window.
He slammed on the brakes instinctively, not realizing that his passenger, Mr. Facrildine, held his own phone out the window while taking a picture. And that phone, too, skittered irretrievably down the ravine. Now neither man knew where they were.
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POUNDSTONE: They could not call for help. They drove around until they had only teaspoons in the gas tank. They parked and couldn't even put on a radio station while they waited for help. Neither one knew what music they liked, as Spotify usually chose it for them.
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POUNDSTONE: They couldn't make eye contact. I think we were scared and unhappy, says Corone Walsh, which he discovered through a trauma counseling after their rescue. But without emojis, we had no way to express it.
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SAGAL: An Uber trip goes bad when both driver and passenger lose their phones. That's from Paula Poundstone. Your last story of a depressed driver comes from Tom Bodett.
TOM BODETT: Of all the things that can go wrong in an Uber driver's day, getting deported, one-starred or stabbed are not even in Florida driver Bree's (ph) top five. Before starting the second day of her job, Bree had spent the night before at her boyfriend's apartment. As she related on her Twitter account later, my man told me he was going to New York to see his mom. She's in the hospital. He had luggage packed and everything. I picked a girl up at the airport. She puts his apartment complex in the GPS and says she's here to visit her boyfriend. She's so excited. She hasn't seen him in forever. I'm relating, like, yeah, my man just left town.
Well, as they cruise through the apartment complex, counting down the buildings, Bree says, my stomach starts to drop as we get closer to a familiar building and I see his car outside. I was burning up inside when she said, I think this is it right here. This is his car. Then things got awkward.
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BODETT: After Bree was done beating up her boyfriend and left him with his confused mistress, who had no idea what had come over her driver, Bree drove away with the woman's things still in the car. Anyways, she tweeted, looking on the bright side, this is the reason I have new luggage.
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SAGAL: All right, so one of these things happened to an Uber driver.
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SAGAL: Was it from Alonzo Bodden, the biggest Willie Mays fan in San Francisco picks up Willie Mays and gets surprised by what happens then; from Paula Poundstone, the driver loses his phone, the passenger loses the phone and they become helpless as babies; or from Tom Bodett, Uber driver picks up her own boyfriend's girlfriend? Which of these was the real story of a bad day in Uber?
O’CONNOR: You know, I want to pick Paula because she's my favorite...
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O’CONNOR: ...But I think it's Tom's.
SAGAL: You think it's Tom's. All right.
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O’CONNOR: Yeah.
SAGAL: The audience here seems to agree. To bring you the real story, we spoke to a reporter familiar with it.
KHAL: The woman literally drove her boyfriend's side chick to his house, unbeknownst to her.
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SAGAL: That was Khal, a senior editor at Complex, confirming the tragic tale of a Florida Uber driver and the ironic meeting at the boyfriend's apartment. Congratulations, Brilee, you got it right. You earned a point for Tom just for telling the truth.
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SAGAL: You've won our prize, Carl Kasell's voice in your voicemail. Congratulations, Brilee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELVIS COSTELLO SONG, "LESS THAN ZERO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.