Local women outraged after cab driver insinuates one of them was too big for back seat

Two Calgary women say they’ll never take another Associated Cab again after an incident Friday night with a driver in the Southland area.

Mya McDonald first shared her outrage over Facebook after she wrote the man told her group that her friend “Brit” was too large to sit in the back seat.

“He told my friend to sit in the back because she was smaller and the other bigger girl should sit in the front so that we could all fit in the back because (hand movements) she’s… y’know, fatter than all of you,” McDonald wrote.

She called for the driver to be fired and the post has already been shared and commented on hundreds of times.

McDonald estimates there has been probably a 50/50 split in both positive and negative comments to their story.

The group had been travelling to her home after a night out at a restaurant.

“I was furious, furious,” she told 660 NEWS. “I was devastated for my friend and I just couldn’t believe that someone had the audacity to say that.”

McDonald says she didn’t know what to say at first and tried to keep her calm, all she could manage to do was tell him to leave.

“Brit” hadn’t heard the comments until her friends told her, after the driver had left.

She admits she found them hurtful.

“I was a little bit in shock, I was just surprised that someone would come out and say that and then I started within five to ten minutes to become mad and then upset, just starting to process it all,” she said.

“Everyone was so supportive after it happened, it just sucks that it takes this to bring people together,” she said.

She says she’s never experienced anything like this and tried herself to not judge a person by their appearance because you never know what a person might be dealing with behind the scenes.

Both women say they have yet to hear from Associated and they add if anything comes out of this, they’re hoping people will learn “body shaming” in this day and age is not acceptable.

Associated Cabs immediately issued 660 NEWS the following statement after our phone call with manager Jeff Garland.

“With regards to the Facebook post of Mya McDonald on July 22, 2017, we at Associated regret and apologize for any misunderstanding on behalf of our driver and it was certainly not his intention of insulting anyone.

As Mya certainly would know, this driver was just trying to accommodate her and her friends being there was five of them trying to get into the taxi, the driver originally tried to tell them that he could not take five passengers and they insisted as they indicated they were only going a short distance which meant four of them would have to sit in the back of a Toyota Prius V.

We have spoken with this driver concerning this incident to which he himself is very sorry for the misunderstanding. Further to this we would like to inform everyone this driver is a new Canadian and has only been in Canada for two years now and does not have a full command of the English language and is still taking English as a second language classes.

We believe that tolerance is an important part of being Canadian and with the amount of refugees that have come to Canadian in the past few years from various parts of the world, we as Canadians need to be tolerant of the fact that the command of the English language is not necessarily going to happen overnight.

At Associated it is our number one concern for the safety of the passengers in all matters, and all taxi are required not to take more passengers on board then they have seat belts for under any circumstances.”