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news
The ill-advised Twitter joke that cost Rayhan Qadar his jobDriver sacked after Twitter 'joke' about hitting a cyclist
A young stockbroker has been sacked this afternoon after joking on Twitter earlier today about hitting a cyclist.
Rayhan Qadar, a graduate at Hargreaves Lansdown posted this to Twitter at 8:05 this morning:
That tweet elicited a storm of criticism from other Twitter users. Qadar later apologised and claimed it had been "a bad joke on my part".
But that doesn't seem to have been enough for his employers.
A spokesman for the investment company told the Bristol Post: "One of our employees has failed to conduct themselves to the standards we expect of our staff.
"We find these online comments totally unacceptable.
"Upon becoming aware of this issue we have terminated this person's employment with immediate effect."
Qadar's initial tweet caused a swift and angry reaction from other Twitter users.
David Stewart posted: "You really are a #cockwomble, enjoy your visit from the plod"
Adam Whittaker said: "You know what's dumber than leaving the scene? Tweeting it for the world to see. I'll be following your case."
Annabel Staff said: "Dear oh dear, you ignorant prick, hopefully you won't have a job to get to by the end of the day, enjoy going to court #Scum"
Germain Burton said: "That's not funny you clown!"
And Greater Manchester Police had this advice: "If you hit a cyclist, you are obliged to stop. I suggest you call 101 as soon as possible, I will forward the details on."
A few hours after his initial post, Qadar claimed it was all a bad joke.
He tweeted: "My previous tweet about the cyclist was obviously not true. I did not hit cyclist. Not today. Not ever. A bad joke on my part it seems."
Followed by: "Sorry if anyone thought i actually hit a cyclist. Anyone who follows me on Twitter know 99% of the things I tweet is nonsense."
Mr Qadar told the Bristol Post: "“I am 100 per cent sorry. It was a joke gone bad. I didn’t think that would happen. I understand now that I can’t say things like that.
“If I did have an accident I would not drive away.”
Police are reported to be investigating.
The #bloodycyclists effect
Another driver who landed in hot water after boasting of hitting a rider on Twitter was trainee accountant Emma Way. On May 19 2013 Ms Way posted: "Definitely knocked a cyclist off earlier - I have right of way he doesn't even pay road tax! #bloodycyclists".
Norwich police investigated Ms Way even though she deleted her Twitter account. After the rider she hit, Toby Hockley, came forward she was charged with careless driving, failing to stop after an accident and failing to report an accident.
She was eventually found guilty of failing to stop and failure to report but was cleared of the careless driving charge. Ms Way was fined £300, had her driving licence endorsed with seven penalty points and had to pay £337 in costs.
In between the tweet and the court case, she was fired from her job as a result of the adverse publicity the incident attracted.
Her lasting legacy has been the hashtag #bloodycyclists, which was appropriated by Twitter's cycling community as in this comment on the Qadar case:
Ooh. He's been dismissed from his job. Don't mess with #bloodycyclists!
— Borghert Borghmans (@StripyMoggie) January 6, 2015
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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48 comments
Would you want to employ someone who has to go out and represent your company who repeatedly makes offensive and distasteful comments in public?
Would you want your wife/daughter/sister to come in to contact, potentially on their own, with a person who thinks that having a publicly accessible representation of themselves under the title of 'Rape You' is a good thing?
Let's be honest, if this fella was a solid, hard working, conscientious asset to the company a one off comment on twitter probably wouldn't be the final nail in his career coffin. I'm wagering, based on the shite that he had previously posted on his twitter, that the company are secretly pleased to say good riddance to bad rubbish.
No, but I don't get to fire people because I don't like them, or because they're twats in their private lives.
If we were all held to professional standards of conduct 24x7 then nightclubs would only be frequented by the unemployed.
They don't have a such a right unless you sign the employment contract that says they do. Don't like it? Go work somewhere else.
Wrong. No matter what a contract says, you cannot sign legal rights away. This is not the problem here however. The problem is acceptance that an employer can do this in the first place, as there is no 'right' protecting you from it.
Go work somewhere else? If everyone else is allowed to do the same thing there won't be anywhere else any different will there? But then, you sound like the sort of person who thinks someone should be able to fire any employee for any reason they want as its 'their company'.
How was he representing his company? Just by the fact he was employed by them? Was he in a PR role? I don't think so.
I'll leave it at that for now. It always gets on my tits a bit when stuff on here goes way off the topic of cycling itself.
Was his name linked to his employer? The moment that happens then you are in a PR role.
Never write anything on social media that you wouldn't say to someone's face is the starting point. Whether you like it or not everyone does represent their employer and acting like a tit may well have repercussions.
Well, he wasn't a freelance was he? I'll admit I'm not fully immersed in the day to day activities of a stockbroker but I would imagine he has a case load of clients, so he therefore represents the company when he comes in to contact with those clients or indeed with any potential clients.
If he had been out in a pub at the weekend making these bollocks statements and a client (or potential client) of the company had clocked him and gone to his gaffer with a complaint he'd still have been in the mither. This isn't a social media issue, it's a 'Don't be a dick' issue.
What a muppet. So who is the injured cyclist? Please step forward if you can.
Feel a bit uneasy about this causing cyclists even more grief in future.
If he really did not hit a cyclist - as he claims - or even come near to then a bit of a telling off would have been sufficient. Unlikely to do it again though by the sound of things.
His employment is subject to his employment terms and conditions. If they are harsh, then he should behave better.
The police are welcome to give him a telling-off and just stop there. Just so long as they point out that glorying in driving into, and possibly maiming or killing someone (where the offender doesn't stop to find out whether they did any of those things), encourages others to do so too; I call this the "Clarkson effect" in honour of the amount of road-twattery Mr C has encouraged over the years.
As for causing cyclists more grief in the future, making the act of using a car as a killing machine and then not caring is the thing that would have caused cyclists more grief in the future.
My worry is that in future, anyone squishing a cyclist will keep very quiet about it and not be found out.
Greater Manchester Police had this advice: "If you hit a cyclist, you are obliged to stop. I suggest you call 101 as soon as possible, I will forward the details on."
Nice of GMPlod to stick their oar in regarding a possible incident in Bristol.
Keep up the good work.
Now, if only you keep a look out for me on the streets in Manchester.
I followed this on twitter and GMP were contacted after being informed that the chap in question also spends a lot of time in Manchester and the incident may have happened there.
So they weren't 'sticking their oar in', they were responding to a request from another twitter user who tipped them off.
Nice One.
Twitter is now safe thanks to GMP whilst Rusholme is now also free of Double Parking U turners.
I've watch this unfold today on Twitter? I'm truly amazed that people still make the mistake of saying stuff like this.
Very swift 'justice' administered by his employers, I guess they must have considered it gross misconduct.
I don't know... Seems a bit of a harsh reaction to a stupid joke.
Harsh, but given the industry he works in, entirely fair.
You don't honestly think that it was actually a joke, and not him just making that up to diminish the seriousness of what he said?
I do think it's harsh, though it does depend on what actually took place.
Ummm let's think this one through.
He tweeted to the world that he thought he'd knocked a cyclist off his/her bike (which can kill a cyclist BTW). He thought this was a) funny and b) worth tweeting. No one initially knew whether or not it was true. He works for a law firm which it seems has moral and ethical standards to uphold. He didn't consider the implications of the tweet not the ramifications. Neither did he consider how the vulnerable road users i.e. cyclists may not find it funny nor consider it a joke.
What are the words I'm searching for? End. Bell.
Well yeah, but being an End. Bell. shouldn't NECESSARILY lose you your job. In this case (providing the incident didn't actually take place), I'd say it was completely up to the employer's discretion whether to fire him or not. They chose to, which is completely fair enough if they find this sort of joke unacceptable (as they might given the nature of the company).
I guess all I'm saying is that I'm quite glad there's no LEGAL precedent against this kind of bad taste, idiotic 'joke', providing nothing actually happened. Whether my employer would want me or not afterwards is another matter...
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