Uber driver Christopher J. Ortiz was fired today for what the company called "hateful statements" on social media. So what did he say? "Fuck Uber?" "Lyft is so much better LOL?" "Surge pricing: ruining late nights since 2009?"
Nope.
He just tweeted, "Driving for Uber, not much safer than driving a taxi" along with an article arguing just that.
Driving for Uber, not much safer than driving a taxi http://t.co/rEJhvYlK4G
— Christopher J. Ortiz (@ChrisJOrtiz) August 25, 2014Ortiz drove for Uber in May and June as research for his startup Newscastic. He was trying to start driving again, and when he sent an email asking how to reactivate his account he got this response:
If you want to be an Uber driver, don’t say mean things about them on Twitter cc @mcarney @nathanielmott pic.twitter.com/A4GVa75A9u
— Christopher J. Ortiz (@ChrisJOrtiz) October 16, 2014A bit of a stretch, right?
Ortiz's Twitter account has several other tweets linking to articles about Uber, and he says 90 percent of the time he doesn't write anything other than the headline. In other words, he lives tweets by the mantra #factsonly. Hateful he is not, although he would be justified in having that attitude. The company jerked Ortiz around after a drunk passenger smashed his rear-view mirrors. Eventually Uber threw him $180 for damages and another $250 for time lost, but that was only after denying him initially.
We'd tell Ortiz not to tweet this article out, but it doesn't really matter now. He doesn't even need to use our headline!
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[via Gawker]
