An Uber driver claims he went to one of the company’s service centers in Utah to deal with a rider complaint, and wound up getting assaulted.
To make matters worse, Uber then tried offering the man $400 to keep the entire ordeal under wraps — but he refused.
“Let me get this straight,” Aaron Johnson told a company rep, according to phone recordings obtained by Quartz.
“You want to make a $400 payment to me after one of your employees assaulted me?”
The ride-hailing giant wanted Johnson, 53, to sign a contract — saying he wouldn’t tell anyone what happened to him on Jan. 31 at their Greenlight Hub in Salt Lake City, when he was allegedly roughed up by one of their employees.
He had been trying to follow up on the rider complaint when the rep, identified only as Levi, got agitated and started berating him.
“You don’t have to drive for Uber if you don’t like Uber,” Levi allegedly told him. “We don’t need you.”
Johnson, who is a disabled veteran, told Quartz that he took out his cellphone and tried to take a photo of the employee, prompting Levi to wrestle the phone away.
Uber, however, tried to downplay the incident.
“We regret to hear that Mr. Johnson was unhappy with his support experience. That was not our intent,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We always aim to do right by our customers, and we know there is always room for improvement.”
The fact that Uber tried paying him hush money was enough for Johnson to quit driving, he said.
“You’re assisting me with a coverup of one of your employees, who violated me as a disabled veteran?” Johnson asked during his phone conversation with the Uber rep.
“They’ve made such a big deal about veterans and cleaning up their image. I’m in that demographic,” he told Quartz. “And their response to me was, you don’t matter, sorry.”