YES, I know it’s National Cat Day. YES, I wholeheartedly support the Oregon Humane Society. And YES, I adore me some cuddly, snuggly kittens—and yet? SAY NO TO UBER’S KITTEN DAY. In case you haven’t heard, the ride-for-hire system Uber is hosting a “kitten delivery on demand” day today in over 50 cities, including Portland. According to the Uber site, here’s how it works:
1) Open your Uber app between 11am and 3pm.
2) Request the “KITTENS” option in your app. Set a reminder to request at the purrfect time.
3) Once the kittens arrive, you and your friends will get to enjoy 15 minutes of kitten cuteness! PRO TIP: Make sure to have an enclosed space purrrfect for playtime!
4) The best part? In most cities, kittens are eligible for adoption.
Naturally, many in the Mercury office wanted to take advantage of this kitten delivery service—and who could blame them? But I’m not in love with the idea. Again, I adore kittens, and I adore the Humane Society… but for the same reason I don’t walk around town in an Uber T-shirt, I don’t want to assist them in their blatant attempts to rebrand their horrible reputation.
Just last week a former Massachusetts Uber driver was convicted of raping a female passenger, not to mention last December’s rape in India. Uber has a shitty reputation of stomping into markets before regulations have been established all over the world, and also right here in Portland. They have little regard for safety requirements, and even less regard for living up to their promises to provide ADA accessible rides, or paying their employees fairly. (In Oregon they may be forced to recognize their contractors as employees.) And there’s that thing about the Uber exec who suggested digging up dirt on journalists who dare criticize the company. I’ll stop there, though I could go on.
So yeah, Uber is doing anything they can to counteract this onslaught of terrible press—which they’ve clearly brought upon themselves. And they’re using kittens to do it? FUCK THEM. I’ll be damned if I’m going to offer them any assistance.
WANT TO REALLY HELP THESE KITTENS? DONATE DIRECTLY TO THE OREGON HUMANE SOCIETY HERE. (I just did!)
How is UBER responsible for those incidents? These things happen already in normal taxi services.
“their blatant attempts to rebrand their horrible reputation”
1. How would this possibly “rebrand” their reputation?
2. And how do you even know that this is an effort to do so?
Let us not forget that kittens don’t really want to be driven around in cars and manhandled by strangers all day. How this is even a thing is beyond me.
Shut up patrick. (Uber driver/employee)
Companies improve their reputations by doing good things. We want to encourage them to do more good things. How do we do that? By supporting the good things they do. OMG, duh.
OMG, duh, Ann S? Are you saying ‘duh’ ’cause you can’t wrap your head around this? A shitty company doing “good” things as a publicity stunt to distract the public from their shitty lack of adherence to safety regulations, their shitty execs’ sexist bullying, etc. is not “encouraging good behavior.” It’s the opposite! It encourages d-bags to keep on d-bagging.
@Jenn – These kittens are all available for adoption. They’re not just being driven around for no reason.
They came to my work. Dude in a black Uber T-shirt. The kittens were cute, but Uber, you don’t fool me for a second. You are evil. Go away. Take AirBnB with you.
Patrick is right. There are bad apples in all professions (and certainly the cab industry). Writing about people doing bad things in these other professions just isn’t the current “in” thing to do.
I have no dog in the fight either way, and actually use cabs exclusively over uber now that there are more for-hire cars on the road and it is actually possible to get a cab in this town (and the curb app is working nicely now too). But, here are a few things to consider before taking the hard line, bandwagon stand that uber and lyft are horrible and that the cab industry in this town is / was the shit:
– The average wage for PDX cabbies, after they pay the high fees to the cab company, is around $6.00 according to a city study in 2012. See second page here: http://www.portlandmercury.com/images/blog…
– Local cab companies also do not provide retirement or health benefits (according to same study)
-You are saying that their “stomping into” the portland market has been a bad thing? Take a look at the data from a few weeks ago released by the city. They have enabled large amounts of people who previously found the cab system unusable (due to their further out location primarily) to be able to take advantage of for hire rides.
– Cabs have had a horrible track record of providing ADA rides. Many people were waiting hours on end according to recent articles. I bet that wait time is way down now that uber is in town. And, Uber is still contracting with third parties to provide ada service.
– The recent comment by the state on the contractor vs. employee classification was just that…a comment, and had no legal bearing. It was also fraught with flaws in logic.
– FINALLY, taxi drivers are classified as independent contractors! Why don’t you write an article about that!
Fuck Uber. Give money to OHS if you are so inclined, but Silicon Valley slimebags can go eat a dick.
What better way to offset a reputation of profiting from unregulated, unaccountable drivers than to just flat out offer free pussy? Sorry, some one had to say it…
Looooove Uber. I’ve met some awesome people that truly love what they are doing. Radio Cab can shrivel up and die. Fuckers left me for dead in a snowbank, but not until the driver tipped himself and extra $20 for getting me half-way home.
Oh yeah, and two of my Uber drivers were ex Radio Cab drivers. “How do you like Uber” I asked? They fucking LOVE it.
*Cue Radio Cab apologists
*says they person shilling for Uber.