For true stories that are so mind-blowingly ridiculous, that you could have sworn it was an Onion story.
Maryland school district employee fired over tweet
Maryland school district employee fired over tweet
A social media manager for a Maryland school district was fired over a light-hearted tweet she sent to a student about his spelling. When the student asked @FCPSMaryland over Twitter on Jan. 5 for school to be closed "tammarow," Katie Nash, 33, replied, "but then how would you learn how to spell 'tomorrow'?
nydailynews.com




The teacher is teaching, and doing something I bet she would have said in-class. It's not even mean. Good lord.
I don't think she was a teacher, just a district employee. But it still wasn't a malicious thing, and certainly didn't represent the district in a bad way.
ohhhh I missed that Very Obvious Detail. Without a well-known rapport with the student, then yeah maybe a slap on the wrist (especially if they didn't know each other), but still no firing, that's ridiculous.
I just showed my eleven-year-old the tweet and the response. And she cracked up. She said she'd have laughed if she tweeted at the school district where she knows absolutely no one and gotten that response.
I mean, if it had been something actually mean or harassing I could understand, but that's just a silly tweet, and as a parent, I'd have laughed at it.
This is a lesson for the next occupant of that twitter account. They might as well just put a bot in place with canned keyword scan and responses and be done with it. I'd suggest dumping Twitter, but a lot of people still find value there, so that may not work. If nothing else, this sort of thing is definitely a chilling effect on any human exchanges, at some point even people will always think about what a chat-bot would say and just go with that. Save the drudgery, install a bot.
Until the chat bot becomes completely inappropriate because it pulls words and phrases from the internet. (snickers)
Yes, Microsoft's foray into this space ended up with a fake teenage girl bot turning into a nazi. So, well, perhaps just a FAQ then? ;)
That was exactly what I was thinking of. Hahaha.
Yeah FAQ... Or ya know... People could just stop sucking.
All this really required was an apology if the student felt wronged. I mean I remember being a teenager and getting singled out like that could be really crappy.
I probably would have laughed though and been all "damn you autocorrect! Guess I better go to school tomorrow so I can invent better spell checkers for future apps!?"
Only in America could this get you fired. It should have been a closed door conversation with the boss at most.