Lately, it hasn’t been a fun time for driving service Uber. The latest news, courtesy of Newsweek, doesn’t make the company’s life any easier as a sleazy driver was fired for sexual harassment.
According to the report, in March, a London woman was asked by the Uber driver whether he could perform oral sex on her. “Toward the end of the journey he was asking if I liked blow jobs, saying that he was very good at going down on girls or giving ‘sucky sucky’ to girls and did I want him to do it to me,” wrote the woman to the outlet. “He even suggested that he could pull over into a side street and do it now if I wanted, which was I think the scariest part of the drive.”
The woman brought the issue of his misconduct up to Uber, and a marketing manager replied to the woman. The manager told her that the company’s driver operations manager was already looking into the driver and assured the woman that “the necessary actions will be taken to avoid a similar incident in the future.”
She was unsatisfied with the answer and wrote to the company about the incident again, albeit in a more specific manner. A different Uber marketing manager replied, apologizing to her and assuring her that “while things like this should definitely not happen in the first place, in the unlikely event that they do occur we have the full details of the driver, trip, and rider on our systems so that we can immediately investigate any concerns raised.”
The woman was given £20 (roughly $31) worth of Uber credit, though the woman apparently never heard back from the company about what happened to the driver. Uber did not confirm to Newsweek that the driver was fired, but said he is “no longer on the Uber platform.” Shockingly, the spokesman confirmed to the outlet that Uber has no official way on dealing with such incidents because “incidences of this nature are so rare that an official policy is not needed.”
This is particularly shocking, given the nature of Uber’s business. According to Newsweek, it’s received numerous complaints from London women about experiencing unwanted advances in Uber cabs, and coupled with the alleged rape of a passenger in Delhi by an Uber driver and another Uber driver chastising a New York woman who is suffering from cancer, you’d think there would be some kind of official policy in place.
