Guess What These Food Items All Have In Common
No, you buzzkill, the answer is not that they’re all edible.
Walking out of a restaurant and actually remembering to bring the leftovers home is a genuine accomplishment for many of us. No matter how good the food is, our brains don't always register that we should be leaving with more items than we walked in with. But you know what's an even bigger feat? Getting out of an Uber with your takeout box still in hand. According to Uber's annual Lost & Found Index report, that's a skill many of us still need to work on. Side note: Someone's missing a crab.
The Uber report is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of the most unique items left behind in ride share vehicles across the previous year. There were some pretty surprising foods and beverages abandoned in the backseat from April 2022 to April 2023; the Lost & Found Index determines the "most unique" items to be whatever fell outside of the most frequently lost stuff.
The 10 most commonly forgotten items might sound familiar:
- Clothing
- Phones
- Backpacks and purses
- Wallets
- Headphones
- Jewelry
- Keys
- Books
- Laptops
- Watches
- A crab
- Saltine crackers
- Packet of honey
- Chicken fettuccine alfredo
- Leftovers from dinner
- Charcuterie board
- 4 jars of alfredo sauce
- Roma tomatoes
- Calculator and tacos
- 24 fresh organic eggs
- 6 cheesecakes
- Fresh pack of Newport 100s a 42-oz. bottle of Olde English 800
- Package of beef jerky
- Frying pan
- Chicken wings
- Instant Pot and griddle
- 6 packages of frozen fries
- 10 lbs. of sugar
- A pack of meat and a pack of lobster
- Apples, yogurt drink, expensive bacon, onion, mints, candy bar
Uber declined to share whether or not any of the forgotten items found their way back home.
However, beyond those top abandoned items, the even more surprising standouts are the edibles we somehow managed to leave behind. The top 20 foods are as follows:
The general "leftovers from dinner" category is somehow the most striking. Don't get me wrong, I value my leftovers as much as the next person, but is it really worth contacting Uber to track down my half-eaten torta?
We do have sympathy for anyone who left behind more precious cargo: their booze. Among the most uniquely reported drinks to be left behind in Uber cars were: a half gallon of Fireball, "My happy sauce," "my 40 lol," half pint of peach Amsterdam, and a pint of Smirnoff vodka. Other drink-related items also included a Super MarioLuigi kids' drinking straw, a 12-pack of Pepsi with real sugar, and a brand-new espresso machine.
Why are some food and beverage items left behind in Uber rides so often? There could be a multitude of reasons, including Mercury being in the microwave (or whatever people say about Mercury). But the report did note some trends in passenger forgetfulness. For example, Sunday is the most common day for people to forget their groceries. And although you might think that the rise in egg prices would lead to people guarding their cartons like gold, Uber actually noted an uptick in reports of people leaving behind their eggs and wanting them back last year.
Now, what have we learned here today? That people leave a lot of weird shit in Uber vehicles? Well, yes. But also, you don't know how important something is until it's gone. I hope you got your calculator and tacos back, my fellow Uber passenger.