HMV staff reveal redundancies live on Twitter
Disgruntled HMV staff hijacked the company’s Twitter feed to reveal the workers at its head office were being fired in what they described as an X Factor-esque turn of events.
The stream of Tweets –which have since been deleted – included “There are over 60 of us being fired at one! Mass execution, of loyal employees who love the brand. #hmvXFactorFiring”, and “Under usual circumstances, we’d never dare do such a thing as this. However, when the company you dearly love is being ruined…”
One Tweet confirmed that the marketing director had no power of the rogue Tweets with the hijackers posting “Just overheard our Marketing Director (he’s staying, folks) ask, “How do I shut down the Twitter?” #hmvXFactorFiring” (sic).
Within 20 minutes of the first Tweet, all had been deleted.
It has since been confirmed that 190 members of staff were made redundant across HMV’s head office and distribution network. At this point no store redundancies have been made, all of which are still open and remaining to trade.
UPDATE: Poppy Rose (@poppy_powers) has since come forward as the person behind the Tweets on the HMV account this afternoon. Over the course of two messages and Tweeting via her personal account she explained: "I would like to apologise fir the #hmvXFactorFiring tweets but I felt like someone had to speak. As someone without a family to support/no mortgage I felt that I was the safest person to do so. Not to mention, I wanted to show the power of Social Media to those who refused to be educated".
Before the explanation she had also Tweeted that it had been "an amazing two and a bit years with hmv" and said "We've all been fired, in a group, of 50+ people! And those who ruined the business are safe...hooray! #hmvXFactor" (sic).