(CNN) — (February,28 2014) — When you’re a city’s “Communicator of the Year” and have hailed yourself as a “passionate advocate” for job-seekers, you probably ought not blast one of those job-seekers in a snide, dismissive e-mail.
Because the Internet hates that sort of thing.
But that’s what’s happened to Kelly Blazek, who runs a popular online job bank for marketing professionals in Cleveland.
Blazek’s response to an e-mail and LinkedIn request from Diana Mekota, a 26-year-old planning to move to Cleveland this summer, has made the rounds on Reddit, Buzzfeed and other viral hotspots after Mekota posted it to her Imgur account.
And the resulting backlash is yet another cautionary tale about how posting something mean-spirited online can come back to haunt you in the social media age.
“Your invite to connect is inappropriate, beneficial only to you, and tacky,” Blazek wrote,according to Mekota’s post. “Wow, I cannot wait to let every 26-year-old jobseeker mine my top-tier marketing connections to help them land a job.”
And she was just getting warmed up.
“I love the sense of entitlement in your generation,” she wrote, then continued. “You’re welcome for your humility lesson for the year. Don’t ever reach out to senior practitioners again and assume their carefully curated list of connections is available to you, just because you want to build your network.”
She wrapped up with: “Don’t ever write me again.”
