We’ve all had that moment — you’re in an emotional state, and if you could shout from a rooftop, you probably would. The problem with social media such as Twitter is that it gives you the outlet to speak before you think, especially when you have your cell phone handy.

A few weeks ago, James Andrews was on his way to facilitate a workshop on social media at a large client’s headquarters; he posted on Twitter: True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!” Fairly innocuous, I would have thought, however it drew the attention of one of the client’s employees, who decided to write a lengthy email response and copy their management in on the reaction.

It was quickly picked up on blogs where the situation escalated out of control. It seems FedEx (the client) and most of Memphis were offended, and the attention it gained spiralled towards madness.

James responded shortly after, explaining how it came out differently to what he intended, however the perceived damage was done. The moral we can all learn here is to be acutely aware of how your status messages or tweets may sound, especially when traveling to a client’s office. However, if you’d like to ramp up your followers you may want to consider such a stunt — this graph shows that James had a surge of followers after that infamous tweet.