As a recent college grad who isn’t a huge fan of my first job this article definitely made me take a 2nd look at me past tweets and to put some extra caution on future tweets even though my account it private.

Free speech comes with consequences…that’s just a fact of life.

No one said this guy could not speak his mind.
This guy spoke his mind and someone (whose identity is unimportant as that is not the issue here) whose job it is to be somewhat familiar with people their company brings in for PR and other things saw what this guy posted.

Did FedEX overreact?
Not when you consider what Mr. Andrews’s job was.

What this should teach Mr. Andrews, and others like him who use Twitter as their diary, is that you should choose your 140 characters wisely, especially if they speak ill of your host’s home. Not saying ‘Memphis’ in his tweet does not make much difference if it is apparent that he is in Memphis. He could have taken a direct flight there; he could have already seen a FedEx official/representative in Memphis that can vouch that he was in Memphis when he tweeted his message, etc.

A Memphian figuring out that Andrews was talking about their city is not that difficult to wrap one’s brain around.

Some comments miss the point of speech freedom when they ask if no one is allowed to hold an opinion anymore. I suppose it should be stated that an opinion is a belief or thought one holds, and that everyone is free to EXPRESS their opinions.

What happened with Mr. Andrews is merely a (negative) consequence of speaking your mind. Yes, you CAN get in trouble for speaking your mind.
Shocking, right?

Mr. Andrews and many people who commented here seem to believe that one should be able speak their mind and escape any negative consequeces that result from doing so. Let me ask a question: if someone is being interviewed to be part of the President’s (country irrelevant) Secret Service, would the Secret Service let that person join if they found out that that person has said that they wish they could just kill the President because the President is, like, a total fricken moron who deserves to die the slowest death possible?

I doubt it, in fact, they might just try and get that person as far away from the President as legally possible or (depending on where one lives) they might just get rid of that person.

Would you let someone who insults you constantly stay in a room you are renting out in your home? Or would you just let the insults slide because that is just their opinion?
Probably not, depending on how much money they fork over.

Also, how many people can honestly say they want EVERYONE to be honest with them? I am not just talking about kind honesty; I am also talking about BRUTAL honesty. One should not expect everyone’s honesty to be kind and/or constructive; that is naive.

Keeping one’s opinion to themselves is NOT dishonest unless those opinions differ from what they DON’T keep to themselves.

P.S.: For those saying that people are too “overly sensitive” these days and should just shut up and take insults like their skin is iron, isn’t it funny that you’re getting really sensitive over people’s sensitivity? Why don’t you just “shut up” and let people be “overly sensitive?”

So Ketchum did stick his foot in his mouth and didn’t make the wisest decision by making that statement about Memphis; however I don’t think he meant anything malicious. I am a city girl at heart and love big cities like Los Angeles; I would probably “think” something along the lines of “Wow, I would die if if I lived in (insert small town here) but would think twice before I twittered if I represented a major company which may have associates there. However, I think we all know of tons of places where we would never ever want to live and find depressing. It can be hard to censor yourself because we are all used to being so candid on sites like Facebook etc.

if that was honesty, it surely wasnt the best policy

I don’t get this

They were probably pissed that they had to sit through this guy’s presentation, especially after this rookie faux pas. Who wants to be lectured by someone who isn’t practicing what they preach? And keep in mind, Memphis is not a big metropolitan city like New York or Chicago. And in Memphis, FedEx pretty much employs and owns the entire city. At least the parts that Autozone and St. Jude’s Hospital don’t own. The city gets quite a bit of negative press already from having multiple COPS shows in its honor, among other things (Hustle and Flow anyone?), so they are probably understandably twitchy about getting ragged by someone they’re paying to rep them in advertising.

Freedom of Speech doesn’t give you Freedom from Consequences. We’ve all experienced that. Why should this guy be any different? And he didn’t lose his job or whatever, so why all the ying yang? He survived his minor misstep and is doing fine now!

The problem was–he didn’t “blow the whistle on such treatment.” He didn’t specify that at all. And he did this publicly, while representing his company. Not a good idea. He should have two separate accounts (personal and professional). If you’re going to use Twitter as your diary, be ready to roll with the punches.

Andrews was actually tweeting about a bad (racist) experience he had at a Marriott hotel in COLLIERVILLE, Tn (the Memphis white-flight suburb). His company later asked him not to discuss the incident as racist, which he complied with to try to support Ketchum. He discusses the twitter post in more detail here: http://grindandthrive.com/jame.....al-people/