Ride-hailing app Uber has fired nearly 3,700 employees (14 percent of its workforce) via multiple Zoom calls and each call lasted less than three-minutes, with a common message: "Today will be your last working day with Uber".

Last week, Uber Technologies announced to lay off some 3,700 full-time employees, in a move to reduce operating expenses in response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the company's business.

In video footage obtained by Daily Mail, a company manager said: "Today will be your last working day with Uber," as he informed some of the axed customer-support employees.

Ruffin Chaveleau, Head of Uber's Phoenix Center of Excellence, told the employees, "Right now, the rides business is down by more than half due to COVID-19. The difficult and unfortunate reality is there is not enough work for many front-line customer-support employees," 

In a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Uber said due to lower trip volumes in its rides segment and the company's current hiring freeze, it is reducing its customer support and recruiting teams by approximately 3,700 full-time employee roles.

"With the reality of our rides trips volumes being down significantly, our need for communication operations, as well as in-person support, is down substantially. And with our hiring freeze, there simply isn't enough work for recruiters," the company's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a letter to staff.

Khosrowshahi also reached an agreement with Uber's Board of Directors, effective May 2, to waive his base salary for the remainder of the year ending December 31, 2020.

Earlier, due to the coronavirus impact, Bird's leadership team and board of directors felt the need to let go of 30 percent of its staff to 'extend its runway'. 406 employees received a vague invitation to a Zoom conference call on "COVID-19 Update".

When the call started at 10:30 a.m., employees were greeted with a 5-minute silence and a slide saying “COVID-19”. Some thought they were experiencing technical difficulties and left the call. They were unable to get back in.

They missed what goes down as one of the coldest, most unsympathetic company announcements ever.