This is one classic example of a tweet gone bad and of how we should all be tweeting, err, treating everyone with utmost respect and fairness even on social media.
Recently hired PayPal director of strategy, Rakesh "Rocky" Agrawal, is no longer part of the company, blame the insulting-and possibly drunk-tweets against fellow employee he posted on Twitter in the wee hours of Saturday, while he was at a Jazz Festival in New Orleans.
Apparently, the booze may have gotten too much hold of him, as he couldn't even compose a decipherable tweet. His tweets were captured by Business Insider before they were taken down.
"Oh. I quit pay a tonight because of self at son and aortic and ahour and hill e a s th," he writes.
Yet the said offensive tweets that took his crown down were targeting Christina Smedley, PayPal's vice president of communications.
"Duck you Smedley you useless middle. manager," one of his tweet says.
To twist the saying, a tweet begets a tweet. Agrawal and PayPal took to Twitter their official statements about the issue.
In the morning of May 3, Agrawal posted on Twitter to explain his previous tweets. He said he was testing an Android phone and that the tweets were meant for a colleague. Another tweet, which he said was a note to self, seemingly meant to save himself was posted, saying not to test a new phone when sleep deprived. He also tweeted his apologies to two other PayPal executives.
"My sincere apologies to @davidmarcus @stan_chudnovsky you guys are among the two smartest guys I know. And I know brilliant people," it says.
Marcus is CEO of PayPal, while Chudnovsly is VP of Growth, Global Strategy and Special Ops.
PayPal confirmed of its decision to let Agrawal go, also in a tweet on May 4.
"Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance," the company tweets. It wasn't clear if Agrawal was fired or he resigned.
Agrawal became part of PayPal in March this year. However, research reveals that he similarly made disapproving comments earlier about the point-of-sale system of the company, but he was still hired despite of that.
Twitter is full of many things -- daily rants, personal attacks, political tirades from ordinary people to popular figures in all industries. Though there's also the good side to it -- public dissemination of helpful information -- that makes the micro-blogging site not such a bad Internet tool after all, that is if only people, and that include this former PayPal director, would think twice before they tweet.
