WTF?! It's a fairly common practice to check for one's belongings when getting off public transport, a taxi or an Uber. However, rushing towards an appointment or catching the next flight in time can make people a tad forgetful about the stuff they've brought along. While leaving behind keys, headphones, and wallets can be expected in such situations, Uber has revealed that last year, its customers also forgot other 'unique' items including mice for a pet snake, Guinea pig slippers, and an unwanted hard-boiled egg.
There was a time when using taxis was all the rage and people would often recall instances when a noble cab driver bothered to return their belongings after somehow managing to trace back the owner.
While the occasional habit of forgetting things hasn't changed since the arrival of services like Uber and Lyft, it does have become easier to recover belongings by virtue of how these services operate. Another thing made possible, as demonstrated by Uber's 2020 Lost & Found Index, is the ability to record which items people are most likely to forget, in which cities (US) and at what time of day.
As it turns out, people in 2019 were mostly forgetful about pocketable items like phones, wallets, keys, headphones, IDs, and glasses. However, there were also plenty of weird items left behind, 50 of which have made it to Uber's 'unique' list.
These include a specimen cup that someone forgot from their doctor's visit, while another customer probably regretted leaving behind their *much* needed six-pack of toilet paper. A careless rider also brought along a boulder for some reason and elsewhere, an elf collector seemed to have forgotten their bag of three stuffed examples. There's plenty of other interesting items making up the full list, with Uber observing a majority of these incidents taking place on Fridays, Saturdays and during late-night commutes.
In terms of most forgetful cities in the US, Lubbock, Texas came out on top, followed by Oxford, Mississippi and College Station, Texas. The company also marked January 1 as the most forgetful day of the year, along with the Halloween weekend of October 27 (which probably makes up for most of the weird lost items) and St. Partick's Day of March 17.
Uber also notes that in terms of car owners who've used the service, BMW drivers tend to leave behind their keys the most, followed by Honda, Jeep, and Toyota owners. While such people would probably have been frustrated with themselves, it's hard to imagine how one would have felt (or fainted) after accidentally leaving behind $9,000 in cash in their Uber ride.
