Usually, when someone wants a tweet to be deleted, they’ll simply dash off a message to the person in question asking them to do so. Richard Grosvenor tried a different approach.
The leader of East Staffordshire Borough Council in the U.K. showed up at a restaurant to ask the owners to remove a tweet linking to a news story. The Burton Mail article in question reported the council had overpaid £725,000 ($1.17 million USD) in housing benefits and that Grosvenor had been questioned by a fellow councillor about the matter.
The act of sharing the story and including a critical reference about his day job with a tech company was enough for Grosvenor to march over to 99 Station Street in Burton upon Trent and demand the tweet be taken down.
“I said it was inappropriate that he asked us to justify why it was on Twitter,” restaurant co-owner Andrea Pilkington told the Burton Mail. “I said I couldn’t deal with it there and then as I was serving, but he wanted us to deal with it straight away.”
Pilkington added that she felt Grosvenor, who discovered the tweet while researching somewhere to eat with his wife, “was trying to intimidate me into doing something about it there and then. He was forceful but I accept he was not yelling and screaming.”
While Pilkington complied with Grosvenor’s demand, the tweet is still viewable on social media search engine Topsy: “Leader quizzed on £725,000 in overpaid benefits https://t.co/mr38WbRq @BurtonMailNews … and this bloke is a systems consultant”
Grosvenor said he was not pleased about the reference to his day job.
“I did want to find out why they thought that was appropriate,” he claimed. “I understand I am in the public eye but when people make personal comments and bring in to question my working arrangements and professional ability then obviously I will be upset and want to resolve the situation.”
So there you have it. If a restaurant ever tweets criticism of you, try dropping by during busy opening hours to complain and demand the tweet be deleted. The entirely appropriate and not-at-all awkward action worked for Grosvenor, at least.
Photo by dannywebs/Flickr
