Definitely a surefire way to alienate your future co-workers and employers, a Texas teenage girl was fired over Twitter after complaining about having to start working the following day. Known as Cella on Twitter, the teenager tweeted “Ew I start this f*** a** job tomorrow” prior to the day that she was supposed to start working at a franchise pizza restaurant called Jet’s Pizza in Mansfield, Texas. She also included a line of thumbs down emoji icons to express her dislike of having to work.
An employee of the franchise location showed the boss, Robert Waple, the tweet in question and Waple decided to respond directly to Cella. His tweet, which is now deleted, read “No you don’t start that FA job today! I just fired you! Good luck with your no money, no job life!” Cella responded with “I got fired over Twitter” and, based on her recent tweets, seems to be enjoying the spotlight of social media notoriety. Alternatively, Waple has decided to remove all tweeting activity on his account.
Of course, this isn’t even the first time that a tweet led to a dismissal before someone even started working at a job. During 2009, a woman by the name of Connor Riley thought it would be a brillinat idea to tweet “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” A Cisco employee responded with “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.” Riley’s job offer was pulled soon after the tweet.
It’s also not the first time that someone’s poor decisions related to tweeting have led to a job termination. During late 2013, Alicia Ann Lynch was fired from her job after posting a picture of herself as a Boston Marathon bombing victim, a tragedy that took place just six months prior to that photo.
Around September 2013, the City of Toronto fired two male firefighters over sexist tweets that degraded females. One particular offending tweet from former firefight Matt Bowman read “I’d never let a woman kick my ass. If she tried something I’d be like hey! you get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!” During 2012, former Taco Bell employee Cameron Jankowski tweeted pictures of himself urinating on food at his restaurant and was quickly terminated.
One of the most infamous examples was a racist tweet from former IAC director of corporate communications Justine Sacco. Prior to hopping on a 11-hour flight from London to Cape Town, Sacco tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”
By the time Sacco landed in Cape Town, her original tweet had been retweeted more than 2,000 times and was trending on Buzzfeed as well as many other sites. She was dismissed from her job by the following day, despite attempting damage control by deleting the tweets and her Twitter account.