Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to harm people to stoke your ego, too.
Let's say I flip out in my local bank branch. They're perfectly justified in calling the police, because it is a bad idea to yell at people at the bank - but they would not be justified in closing my account and keeping the money to "teach me a lesson", and that is essentially what happened here.
I find it a shocking lapse of professionalism to do anything like this, and I find it incomprehensible that an adult could think it was justified. Seriously. You just don't act like this in the real world and hope to stay in business - sooner or later this attitude will kill you. Customers do flip out and tell you to fuck off, they just do. You either learn to act like an adult about it - maybe step away from Twitter for a while - or you quit, and get a job that doesn't involve interaction with customers. Or co-workers. Or anybody else that might harsh your fragile calm.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify it in any way. Both sides acted completely against their own self-interests.
Anyone working in a professional setting needs to grow a thick skin and deal with situations like this much, much better. Out of self-interest. However, if a customer mistakes this for a license for consequence-free abuse, and is then shocked when someone on the other end snaps and does something stupid, I fail to conjure up too much sympathy or moral outrage, for either party.
Let's say I flip out in my local bank branch. They're perfectly justified in calling the police, because it is a bad idea to yell at people at the bank - but they would not be justified in closing my account and keeping the money to "teach me a lesson", and that is essentially what happened here.
I find it a shocking lapse of professionalism to do anything like this, and I find it incomprehensible that an adult could think it was justified. Seriously. You just don't act like this in the real world and hope to stay in business - sooner or later this attitude will kill you. Customers do flip out and tell you to fuck off, they just do. You either learn to act like an adult about it - maybe step away from Twitter for a while - or you quit, and get a job that doesn't involve interaction with customers. Or co-workers. Or anybody else that might harsh your fragile calm.