Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

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It seems like a lot of people want to excuse Uber in this case, or want to build around it an argument that we should be forgiving and not judge convicted felons overly harshly, lest we make it impossible for them to rebuild their lives. While I have some sympathy for the latter argument in particular, basing such arguments on Hemming's situation strikes me as unwise.

In five minutes or so on the Maryland state district courts' website, we discover that Hemming has considerable form [1], mostly around unlawful possession of controlled substances and prescription forgery, although there is a domestic abuse prosecution which doesn't appear to have gone to trial [2], probably because it was treated as mutual combat [3] and both parties chose to drop charges.

Would you feel safe in a car with this man?

Would you trust this man to drive a car for your hire service?

Would you consider it unreasonable to expect five minutes' due diligence of Uber?

[1] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquirySearc....

[2] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai....

[3] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai....

Drug stuff doesn't concern me and neither does the domestic abuse. Domestic abuse basically means a woman he was living with called the cops on him at some point, unless his record says "chronic wife beater" I don't care.

If the only convictions someone had were the possession and forgery charges, I wouldn't mind. The domestic abuse case, I'm not sure.

The larger point is that it shouldn't be up to the individual consumer to decide which employee criminal records are acceptable and which ones are not.

Brands exist for this very reason: so the consumer can choose to trust / not trust the brand at large based on their past experiences with the brand, which are of course influenced by hiring practices, among other things. It is a trust by proxy if you will, and it is the more critical for unsupervised "employees".

If Uber wants to build a trustworthy brand, it is up to Uber to 1. Define their hiring standards and practices loudly, transparently and clearly (like every other large company does) and 2. Enforce them consistently

As it stands right now, (and you may feel differently) I am not the kind of consumer that would do business with a company that leaves it up to the consumer to figure out whether their employees are violent criminals or not.

You wouldn't mind placing your life in the hands of someone with a documented history of both predilection for consciousness-altering substances, and poor future time orientation and impulse control?

...well, you're braver than I am, that's for sure.

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