Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: The Salami Biologist

Episode 58 in a series of true rideshare stories

I pick them up from the discount grocery store. They get in, each carrying a grocery bag, and he starts digging through hers.

“Salami,” he remarks. “Have you ever looked at salami under a microscope?”

I immediately catalogue this question for a future ice breaker. Hi, I’m Greg. Have you ever looked at salami under a microscope?

“No,” she answers, which is probably the second-most appropriate reply right behind What the fuck did you just ask me?

“You would never eat it again,” he explains. “Any raw meat. It’s crazy. You’re like, how can this many bugs fit on, like, a noodle?”

I try to drive, but it’s getting hard to focus on the road given the amount of bandwidth it takes to wonder what would possess a person to look at salami under a microscope and whether he believes that a noodle is a form of raw meat.

“Ew,” she says.

“Yep, legs and tails and wings, just squirming all around. And that’s just the ones a microscope can see. Then there are all the ones that are even smaller. You eat that stuff, and then they get into your brain. That’s why everybody’s in a brain fog now.”

“Wow,” she says, but I don’t think she means it.

“Yeah, I’ve been on, like, a cleanse, and now I’m, like, a genius. You keep that stuff out of your brain and it just goes back into, like, high-performance mode.”

“Hm,” she answers.

“I think you need to cleanse your brain,” he tells her.

I’m sort of guessing that these two are already a couple, but if they’re not, I think you need to cleanse your brain might be the single worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.

It’s a short ride, and this is about all I get to hear of this man’s riveting discoveries. I pull up to their apartment building and put the car in park.

“It’s those stairs up there,” he tells me.

“Oh. Okay…”

I pull forward about eight feet, to the staircase he is pointing at, saving him four steps.

Low stamina, I think to myself. You know what might be good for that? Salami.

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Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories from my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post new stories every month in 2026. (June was a hectic month and I missed it. Maybe I’ll do two in August to make up for it. We’ll see.)