Plough pub Twitter account posts rogue tweets about head chef who was fired

The Twitter account of the Plough Pub posted the rogue tweets (Twitter)

In this great digital age, it is a truth that should be universally acknowledged. Before sacking an employee, make sure they do not have access to the company's official Twitter account.

The Plough Pub in Oxfordshire may be about to learn this the hard way, after tweets started appearing on their Twitter account about the head chef being fired.

The tweets appeared harmless enough at first, with @ploughpub posting: “We'd like to inform you that we've just fired our head chef.”

The tweets soon took a darker turn, with the next update reading: “ Unfortunately he wanted to have a weekend off this month and Christmas Day this year for family commitments so we thought we'd sack him”.

The rogue tweeter continued: “Yeah a week before Christmas! We don't care that he has a 7 1/2 month old baby daughter. So anyway come on down and continue to pay a premium for Australian sirloins, New Zealand lamb and everything else that is bought from asda.”

After this last damning update the poster finished: “Happy Christmas everyone!”

The tweets were posted late last night and despite being tweeted thousands of times, have still not been removed from the account.

As a result of the tweets, the country pub has enjoyed a record number of visitors to its site, enjoying three quarters of last month’s traffic in the last 24 hours.

They appear to have been posted by Chef Jim Knight (@chefjimknight) who made clear on his personal Twitter handle that he had created the account and therefore not hacked it.

He later said he had been offered another job as a result of his tweeting, posting an hour ago: "I have very kindly been offered a serious job offer directly off the back of this twitter storm. More info to follow x."

Despite Mr Knight not hacking the handle, The Plough Pub would not be the first business to suffer a disgruntled employee hijacking its Twitter account.

HMV faced a social media mutiny in January as disgruntled staff took over the struggling retailer’s Twitter account to express their anger at being fired.

Workers at the entertainment store “live blogged” their own sacking on the micro-blogging site as the administrators who took over the business confirmed news of 190 firings.

HMV moved to delete the posts from the @hmvtweets account, which broadcast news of a “mass execution of loyal employees” to 61,500 followers.

However the tweets had already been widely shared.

Neither the Plough Pub nor the head chef was available for comment