"I was upset my flight was delayed an hour, then two," Chadd Scott (@ChaddScott) said Wednesday.
It was not the way Scott wanted to end a weekend visit with his twin brother and his family in Saint Louis, Missouri. But there he sat Monday morning, stranded at the airport. "I had an 8:52 a.m. flight, and it was waiting and waiting and waiting," he said.
Scott needed to get back to Atlanta, to his job at 680 The Fan radio station. He helped produce the popular Chuck and Chernoff show and anchored the sports updates several times an hour.
Scott says he watched as other airlines took off the from the airport. Then a Delta employee told him and other passengers why they were delayed. "They were out of de-icing fluid and they were hoping to get a delivery sometime in the next two hours," he said.
Scott was among the 2,000 passengers affected and as the hours ticked by, he began firing off ticked-off tweets.
The first one said, "The bean counter who saved Delta a few bucks in st. lou hoping he wouldn't need more de-icing fluid this year screwed a lot of people today."
The next one said, "Not a big quote tweeter, but #delta should remember 'when you fail 2 prepare, you prepare 2 fail.'"
Another tweet later read, "New #delta strategy on de-icing planes in st. louis: wait 'til it melts. well, the company is based in atlanta."
What Scott didn't know was that while he was tweeting from St. Louis, tempers were flaring in Atlanta.
Before his plane took off Scott says he received a text message from a boss at 680 The Fan that said, "The client, Delta, was causing a big stink over what I had said and to knock it off and be careful," Scott said.
But it was too late. By 6:30 that night, after Scott landed in Atlanta, he was fired, eight hours after the tweets began. Scott says his bosses told him Delta threatened to pull its advertising from the station.
Calls from 11Alive to 680 The Fan were not returned. Calls to Delta were not returned either.
Scott says he's shocked by the airline's sensitivity. "How it got as far up in the Delta boardroom as it did and that they would take their time to involve themselves in this insignificant of a matter, puzzles me still."
Scott will have time to think about it. He's now out of a job.
When asked if he regretted his tweets he replied, "Obviously. They're funny, and they got me a lot of twitter followers but I'd rather be at work, then talking to you right now,no offense," Scott said.
I am obviously not a fan of this move at all. Now, I do not listen to the station so I cannot comment on Scott's talent and contribution to the station, but the fact that Delta airlines in the first place would complain and take it to the point where they would threaten to pull their sponsorship with a station because an employee with just over 1,000 followers posted two negative tweets is ridiculous. It shows that Delta is weak and considers a negative tweet from someone who, in the grand scheme of things, is quite insignificant could make an entire corporation lose their shit. I also think it shows that the station is not a strong station to the fact that they did not back up one of their own. I know it could have cost the station a lot of money but the way in which they handled this was terrible and now a man is out of a job in this terrible economy. Very odd situation all around.
Link
No comments:
Post a Comment