The issue here isn't that the driver misinterpreted the situation and took off. It's that they apparently behaved poorly, refusing to return the animal and then dumping it somewhere; and that Lyft customer support was equally unhelpful until the story blew up on Twitter.
The tech industry is really plumbing the depths of terrible / non-existent customer service and that's the meta story here, I suppose. Even airlines, insurance, and internet service providers tend to do better - the experience of dealing with them is usually aggravating, but you can generally reach a competent human being after a while.
With tech, we basically have a complete disregard for what our users might be dealing with, and the only way to get real help is to make your story go viral on Twitter or Hackernews.