Texas Rangers fire social media staffer over “Fire Charlie” tweet

The Texas Longhorns have been experiencing a tough season thus far. Two recent losses due to special teams then one on Saturday to TCU where the Horned Frog laid a 50 burger on Texas have led fans to call for the firing of coach Charlie Strong.

And the passions over the Longhorns even reached the Texas Rangers’ Twitter account when a “Fire Charlie” tweet slipped through on Saturday while the team was in the midst of an 11-10 barnburner against the Angels. Even though the tweet was quickly deleted, those who saw it quickly made screenshots:

https://twitter.com/Charlie_Burris/status/650391227205058560/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

Whoever sent that tweet obviously meant to do that from his/her own personal account and it went out instead on the official Rangers account. Oops. The Rangers took immediate action and fired the person responsible for the offending tweet. And the Rangers issued this statement which included an apology to the University of Texas and Strong late Saturday afternoon:

The Rangers statement apologizing to Charlie Strong: pic.twitter.com/U7jJxNqcoA

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) October 3, 2015

This isn’t the first time a personal tweet was mistakenly sent from a business account and it won’t be the last. Perhaps there should be a safeguard for those who tweet on behalf of a team by using different apps for each account or maybe two different phones if the organization provides one for him/her.

It’s too bad someone had to lose their job over this, but teams take their social media accounts seriously and try to avoid these pitfalls.

[SI.com]