Social media pro talks only to WXYZ about Chrysler tweet that cost him his job

(WXYZ) - Scott Bartosiewicz is young, energetic, smart and he loves Detroit. When people talk about what the Motor City needs right now, Scott fits the mold.

The 28-year-old has been enjoying a successful career in new media marketing, but last week everything changed.

Scott posted the tweet read around the world.

“I was late for a meeting (last Wednesday morning) and traffic was a little challenging that day. I ended up sending out a tweet and didn’t think another thing about it,” Scott told Action News in an exclusive interview.

The tweet read:
“I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the motor city and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive.”

Scott meant to post it on his personal account, but somehow the tweet ended up on @ChryslerAutos. Within seconds thousands of people saw the tweet and were already re-tweeting it.

“Just thought it would be a positive way to blow off some steam, and release some road rage but it certainly had more consequences than that,” Scott said.

Within hours Scott was told he no longer had a job.

“This brought a large amount of visibility to (Chrysler’s) brand and to their company that they didn’t want or ask for. And unfortunately somebody has to pay for that and I don’t think they can be blamed for that. (New Media Strategies) acted accordingly in doing what they did,” Scott said.

Losing his job wasn’t easy – but the real heartbreak came when Chrysler announced a day later they were not renewing the contract for Scott’s now former agency “New Media Strategies.”

Even through this incredibly difficult time Scott says his former bosses and co-workers were very supportive.

“People with whom I worked closely and those I didn’t even see everyday were texting me and checking on me.”

Scott is convinced a software glitch on a program called Tweetdeck led to the tweet being sent out on the wrong account. He says he deleted the Chrysler account from the program, but somehow it still went out.

His attorney, Michael Dezsi, says Scott has a case.

“A simple web search shows a number of other users have encountered the same issues,” Dezsi said.

Action News made contact with a Tweetdeck spokesman via email about the claim.

"We are not familiar with the error you describe--tweets sent from a deleted account--but we normally would try to replicate it to make sure there is no problem on our end (although it sounds very unlikely that this is a TweetDeck issue). If you know the type of hardware, platform and TweetDeck version we could check further," said Sam Mandel, Tweetdeck executive vice president of business operations.

Scott says he loves the Motor City and he’ll get through this.

“It’s unfortunate that it’s been taken by some people as a slam on Detroit. But being a Detroiter and being born and raised here I think that’s helping me get through this,” Scott said.

Scott is already entertaining job offers, but he hasn’t settled on anything. Here’s his linkedin profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbartosiewicz