A sleep deprived PayPal executive in New Orleans to enjoy Jazz Fest has been fired for letting loose late at night tweets insulting company executives.
Attacks VP of global communications
In the epic meltdown of rambling tweets, Rakesh “Rocky” Agrawal, who had been with the company two short months, called PayPal’s Vice President of Global Communications Christina Smedley a “useless middle manager” and a “piece of shit.”
Another tweet where the target appears to be a misspelling reads: “People who should be fire from paypal Don Christmas a pool a kick.” According to various media reports there is no Don Christmas working at PayPal.
The following morning, when the haze of an altered state may have been breaking, Agrawal rethought his strategy.
Coherent tweets the morning after
The often incoherent tweets and incomplete grammar usage from the late night rant stand in contrast to his coherent and button-upped apologetic tweets from the following morning. Agrawal’s apology strategy took two fronts. First, the technology executive blamed the technology, saying he didn’t know the difference between a private message sent to a colleague and a public message sent through a tweet.
“Last night I was using a new phone that I bought because I wanted to test experiences on android. Those messages were meant for a colleague,” excuse number one said.
When blaming the technology doesn’t work, blame your altered state of mind. His second tweet, sent shortly after the first, said: “Note to self: don’t test a new phone when sleep deprived after working your ass off for 20 hours a day while on vacation.”
The apologies fell on deaf ears, unfortunately for Agrawal. Fighting fire with fire, PayPal’s communications / marketing team fired back on
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) in clear language hours later. “Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance,” the company Tweet said.
For his part Agrawal plans to flip the page and close this chapter in his life. He is starting a new company in Silicon Valley that only hires people over 40 who didn’t work in the exclusive club that is Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and other anointed tech elite domains. He is that company’s first employee.
