Legally an actual service animal must be trained. Emotional support, for a variety of reasons including things like PTSD and anxiety attacks, is a completely valid use of service animals. How do you know they were not trained?
If they were misbehaving, that's reason for them to be rejected, training or not. If not, legally allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access or refusing service to people using service animals. Though Uber should certainly attempt to pair the rider with a different driver first, if they have registered that allergy / fear ahead of time.
I am not taking a stance on the law itself, but it is what the current law is. And has been in place for at least a decade in its current form. If it is a serious issue, then people should definitely work to change the law.
But, unless they are the only one available or something, there is nothing in the law saying that specific employee has to keep providing service. The company should make a best effort to remove that employee from contact, without impacting the service of the customer.
If a small business owner happened to be that unlucky, how would you propose it be dealt with? If I were such a business owner, I would honestly attempt to arrange the customer be handled by a competitor, if it was legit a situation where everyone at my company happened to be seriously allergic to dogs.
I think that business owner should realize by employee 12 or 13 they probably need to diversify a bit in order to stay legally compliant. It is not a complicated or difficult thing to handle.
> Legally an actual service animal must be trained
There's a distinction between trained service animals and emotional support animals. Both are support animals but the latter are largely untrained which is why airlines have moved to ban them. I have no issue whatsoever with trained service animals!
I think there's a conversation to be had about dogs as vicious in nature but I have been laughed out of the room when I mention this to an in-person audience. But many USPS/UPS/FedEx and now Amazon delivery people are aware of this: untrained dogs are a danger
If they were misbehaving, that's reason for them to be rejected, training or not. If not, legally allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access or refusing service to people using service animals. Though Uber should certainly attempt to pair the rider with a different driver first, if they have registered that allergy / fear ahead of time.