Human beings are far from perfect. We lose our car keys, we forget to deliver messages. But most of us can safely say we've never made the "mistake" of murdering somebody.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took some heat after an interview he did for Axios recently in which he called the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi a "serious mistake." Other folks who've had friends or relatives murdered considered his phrase poor form.
"It's a serious mistake," Khosrowshahi said on the show. "We've made mistakes too, right? With self-driving, and we stopped driving and we're recovering from that mistake."
Ouch. That's like comparing apples and rocking chairs.
Murder isn't a serious mistake. It's murder. Death. Killing. Taking them off the menu, 86'd, no more history, color them gone. And that's exactly what happened to Mr. Khashoggi. He was brutally murdered (and dismembered) in a Saudi embassy in Turkey.
To compare the heinous act to a technology glitch or bad business decision is beyond a poor choice of words. It's cold. But Yahoo Finance reported Saudi Arabia is Uber's fifth-largest shareholder. Thus, mistakes were made.
After all the heat caught up with him, the tech CEO said, "When it comes to Jamal Khashoggi, his murder was reprehensible and should not be forgotten or excused." He also apologized to his staff.
That's how you handle a mistake. A murder requires much more.
Editorial on 11/16/2019