After sparking an international media firestorm for her tweet about AIDS, chief communications officer, Justine Sacco was fired Saturday by New York-based media conglomerate, IAC.
Sacco, 30, tweeted on Friday, “Going To Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding, I’m white!” One would think that after the recent controversy that Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson sparked due to his recent comments in GQ Magazine, that someone as smart and more media-savvy in Sacco would have known better.
Guess not.
Sometimes it is so easy to confuse one’s professional feelings with their personal, Sacco should have followed the simple saying of “look before you leap”, or in her case, think before you tweet. Some of us work in a professional office environment, where it is so easy to send long chain emails as jokes among friends, or tweet something that you feel might be funny.
Unfortunately, all the Justine Sacco’s of our world inadvertently may send the wrong email to the wrong person—say a supervisor or team lead—and before you can sit log back in from your one-hour lunch, are called into a conference room with an HR representative lying in wait.
Perhaps if Ms. Sacco followed this simple advice, she would still be gainfully employed instead of being the new walking punchline on Twitter with her on hashtag of #HasJustineLandedYet instead.