"Awesome" Police Response to Twitter Plea for Pot Gets Mechanic Fired
A young Toronto-area mechanic learned a valuable lesson Tuesday when he asked his Twitter followers to deliver a “20 sac chop” of marijuana to his workplace. The York Regional Police spotted the request and tweeted “Awesome" in response, setting off a chain of thousands of retweets that eventually led to the young mechanic's firing.
Tuesday morning, Sunith Baheerathan wrote the following message on his Twitter account:
"Any dealers in Vaughan wanna make a 20sac chop? Come to Keele/Langstaff Mr. Lube, need a spliff or two to help me last this open to close."
Someone at the York Regional Police Department saw the Tweet and responded.
Awesome! Can we come too? MT @Sunith_DB8R Any dealers in Vaughan wanna make a 20sac chop? Come to Keele/Langstaff Mr. Lube, need a spliff.
— York Regional Police (@YRP) August 13, 2013
Nearly 4,000 retweets later, Baheerathan was out of a job. Tuesday evening, Mr. Lube sent out a message on their Twitter account thanking the police department.
@YRP Thank you to the York Regional Police for your help and great work. The matter has now been handled.
— Mr. Lube (@mrlube) August 14, 2013
And Wednesday afternoon, CBC News contacted Shivanand Ramsawak, the manager of the Mr. Lube location. Ramsawak said "there was an employee here by that name; he no longer works for us,” though he wouldn't confirm that it was the tweet that led to Baherrathan's firing.
Baherrathan briefly took to social media to defend himself, before deleting his account.