The Potomac Avenue Metro station.

yesy belajar memotrek / Flickr

A D.C.-based author and World Bank employee is facing fierce backlash after tweeting a photo of a black Metro employee eating on a train Friday morning, tagging her employer and apparently trying to get her in trouble. The woman, Natasha Tynes, is also facing the cancellation of her upcoming book release over the incident.

On Friday morning, Tynes, a Jordanian-American author who has called herself a “minority writer” according to multiple news outlets, tweeted the photo and caption: “When you’re on your morning commute and see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train. I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope @wmata responds. When I asked the employee about this, her response was ‘worry about yourself.'”

Natasha Tynes’ initial tweet, which also included a photo. She ultimately deleted it. Screenshot via Twitter

Shortly after, WMATA did respond, asking Tynes for more information about the train line, direction, and time she snapped the photo, ostensibly in an effort to identify the employee. “Good morning Natasha. Thank you for catching this and helping us to make sure all Metro employees are held accountable. Can you confirm what time you were on the train, the direction you were headed, and what line you were on?” the agency tweeted.

Metro rules technically do not allow eating and drinking on the train, though one need ride Metro only once to see the number of daily commuters who flout that rule regularly.

Tynes quickly responded with the information (after the uproar, Tynes deleted her tweets, and eventually her entire Twitter account).

The backlash was swift, and extended far beyond the District.

https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1126930389598007296

https://twitter.com/Femmefeministe/status/1126875189415952384

The Goodreads page for Tynes’ upcoming novel, They Called Me Wyatt, also began receiving a bevy of terrible reviews. “Would you still go ahead and buy a book if you know it was written by a bigot who went out of her way to get an African American lady fired for eating on her way to work?” one reviewer wrote. “I asked myself this question, then decided I’d rather give my money to someone more deserving.”

Later in the day, Tynes tweeted a vague apology. “I apologize for a tweet I posted earlier today, which I have since deleted,” she wrote. “I am truly sorry.”

Twitter users were not satisfied—and apparently neither were Tynes’ book publisher and distributor.

By the evening, Rare Bird, the distributor for Tynes’ book, announced it would no longer distribute the novel, and encouraged her publisher, California Coldblood, to “consider other appropriate actions.” By Saturday, California Coldblood announced that it was “halting all shipments from the warehouse and postponing the book’s publication date” as it looked to “officially cancel the book’s publication.”

The Twitter account Unsuck DC Metro also inserted itself into the brouhaha over the weekend, but it came to Tynes’ defense. Tynes tagged the account, which tweets regularly—and often caustically—about issues on trains and buses, in her original tweet. Even after she’d deleted the tweet, Unsuck DC Metro kept a screenshot of it pinned to the top of its account.

The anonymous account tweeted about the controversy all weekend, defending Tynes and chastising the Metro employee for breaking the rules. “Rude, entitled, uniformed Metro worker FLOUTS Metro rules, annoys paying customers,” the account wrote in a mock headline at one point.

Barry Hobson, the chief of staff for Metro employees’ union, told the Washington Post that the Metro worker in the photo was on her way from one assignment to another, and was making time to eat in between. Hobson told the Post that Metro operators have “an average of 20 minutes to consume a meal and get to their next access point to ensure all buses and trains are on time, safe, and ready to serve the riding public.”

Metro has not responded to a request for comment on whether the employee will face disciplinary action. Hobson tells DCist that union representatives spoke with Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld about the matter. Wiedefeld said the agency “was not looking to issue any discipline to the employee,” Hobson says.

Hobson says he had a meeting with the employee in question on Monday morning. She told him that the train was running late that day, Hobson says, and the employee knew she wouldn’t have time to eat her breakfast when she got to the station, “so she decided to take a couple of bites of her food on the train.”

The employee “is very disappointed that the young lady that reported it did not take the opportunity to email WMATA discreetly instead of trying to publicly humiliate her,” Hobson says.

This post has been updated with comment from Barry Hobson.

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