Never Type When Angry

One of the funny things about the internet is that it is often difficult to convey emotions through our emails, posts on social networks, and more. That is why we use funny characters and emoticons to help get our point across :). Except that one emotion is often overly obvious. Anger. It is pretty easy to read anger on the internet.

As business people, owners of companies, and ambassadors of our brands we need to be cautious of our words, especially our written words as they are permanent records. Social Media, blogs, and more can be powerful tools to help build our brands, but they are only amplifications of how our business is perceived in person, and online. If you don’t have something to say, or at the very least something good to say, it is better not to say it online.

In fact how about this as a hard and fast rule as a business person in the digital age. Never type when angry.

Boner’s Barbeque seems to be learning this lesson the hard way. Just do a search for Boner’s Barbeque and you will see what I mean. Maybe from the name alone of this establishment, we could have gleaned that the people behind the business lacked class and refinement, but their epic fail in the social media world is becoming legendary, and may be enough to destroy the reputation of this small business. If you have not heard the story up to now, I will do my best to give you the brief version. You can certainly find many more references to the story with a simple search.

Warning: Some of the posts from Boner’s Barbeque and angry responses to them are not suitable for small children, and some work places. Just offering fair warning if you are faint of heart.

The story begins when Stephanie S. from Atlanta purchased a Scoutmob coupon to Boner’s Barbeque and takes her husband there for a birthday dinner. Not overly impressed with the service, Stephanie S. proceeds to post a review to Yelp. That’s where this story takes a strange and mostly ugly turn.

Boner’s decided that it would be a good idea to post a derogatory post outing Stephanie as a terrible client, and worse, posted a picture of her. Here is a screen shot of the post. Last warning, it gets pretty nasty from here on out.

It appears that this post was in direct retaliation to the Yelp review posted by Stephanie. Talk about typing while angry. This post drips of anger. I can certainly relate to feeling upset when I feel that my staff was in some way mistreated. But wow! This is taking things way too far. And this is just the beginning.

At first the morons jump on the page giving the poster online high 5’s. Then posters begin to post in defense of Stephanie S. and here is where you can really see the anger in full force.

Wow Again! It just goes on to be one big nasty pile of anger and hate. Put down the keyboard. Put down the keyboard and walk away. This whole exchange continues on, and spins out of control. Again I understand wanting to back your staff up, but this is way too much, and way too wrong. In fact this made news across nearly the entire internet. Even sites like the Huffington Post picked up the story. In fact they interview Stephanie S. and got her side of the story.

“On the drive home I discussed my feelings about the restaurant with my husband and decided to write a review on Yelp. We decided to go there because of Yelp so I thought it was an appropriate forum to explain my experience. I honestly didn’t worry too much about it and barely even looked at my computer until the next afternoon when I found two emails from people letting me know what had happened on Facebook.

I did leave a tip and my review was not scathing by any means. The response from Boners BBQ has just been astonishing to me, especially since it came from the owner of the business.”

Huffington Post (among many other sources including ABC News) picked up this story. That says a lot right there. This story took on a life of its own, and has been shared countless ways, and countless times on the internet. The worst part for me was the half hearted apology that the owner eventually posted.

Ok nice start to the apology, but wow again! Reminding us that there is no excuse for not tipping. That does not sound so sincere. I think this story might have died down a bit had this been a sincere apology. But it really spins out of control from here on out. Posts are taken down, but that only infuriates people even more. What was one simple negative review on Yelp turned into a national storm of negative press for this small business. In fact the business had over a 4 star rating on Yelp as of 2 days ago with 32 reviews when I first started watching this story unfold. Now they have 54 review, and that rating has dropped to less than 3.5 stars. Many of the new negative posts are referencing this story.

Yep that’s just a sampling of the social medial backlash that has ensued. I read Stephanie’s Yelp review and it’s tool long to include below, but it was not worth all of the controversy that has ensued over this. It was not that bad, and was in fact pretty well written, descriptive, and fair as far as Yelp reviews go. It certainly was not as bad as these reviews. Do you think the owner of Boners Barbeque thought that initial post through? Do you think he could have imagined the long term damage to his brands that his angry rant would eventually cause. I don’t thinks so. This will probably go down as one of the all time EPIC social media FAILS.

Step away from the keyboard. Step away. And remember.

Never type while angry.

About Better Life Maids
Better Life Maids is a green house cleaning service founded in St. Louis, MO. It has created a unique marketing partnership with Better Life a natural household cleaning products manufacturer. Together they are working to create the first national name brand in natural household cleaning products and green house cleaning services. Better Life Maids is expanding in select markets through a franchise development system. For more information visit https://www.betterlifemaids.com or http://www.cleanhappens.com.