‘I was fired for saying Brexit is good’

Brexit is Britain leaving the EU

Andres Georgi had been earning a living as a bicycle courier for Deliveroo in Berlin. But earlier this month, he made the mistake of making smalltalk with a British customer, Redfern Jon Barrett, a writer, activist and Remainer. Georgi said that Brexit was a good thing.

After the exchange, Barrett sent a tweet complaining to Deliveroo and branding Georgi a Nazi. The accusation cost him his job. ‘The Deliveroo delivery guy just went on an aggressive nationalist rant when he saw the EU flag in our hallway. We are gay immigrants who live in Berlin. Deliveroo: please don’t send Nazis to our door!’, read the tweet.

I caught up with Georgi after his story was reported on in Ruhrbarone, a German-language blog.

For him, the tweet came as a shock. ‘I was having a great weekend doing lots of deliveries. Then I got this email from the coordinator asking whether the tweet’s accusations were true’, he tells me.

Georgi is 41 years old and had been working for Deliveroo for 13 months. When we meet, there is nothing visibly Nazi about him: no questionable tattoos, no big black boots, no insignias that might arouse suspicion.

From what Georgi remembers, the conversation with Barrett lasted only a few minutes. Barrett came to the door, and spoke in English. Georgi saw two flags in the hallway: a rainbow flag and an EU flag. ‘Are you from England?’, he asked Barrett. ‘I like the rainbow flag, but not the EU flag. I think Brexit is good’, he said.

Barrett asked him why, and he replied that Germany had too much influence in the EU. In other words, ‘nothing nationalistic at all’, Georgi says. ‘I was in a good mood as I was about to meet my girlfriend and I was definitely not being unfriendly’, he insists.

When I contacted Deliveroo, it told me that it had terminated Georgi’s contract not because of this specific incident, but because of ‘other unprofessional behaviour’. But Georgi showed me an email conversation with his Deliveroo coordinator which suggests otherwise.

The exchange focuses almost entirely on the conversation about Brexit. One email says that he had behaved irresponsibly by speaking about touchy political issues with customers. ‘It was especially inappropriate to tell an obviously pro-EU Brit living in Germany that Brexit was a good thing’, it reads.

Although another case was also mentioned – a female customer had complained about an unwarranted remark – it was clearly the tweet that triggered the sacking. (An accusation, however spurious, that a company employs Nazis is no small matter in Germany.)

SOURCE