PayPal fires Exec. Rakesh Agrawal for insulting co-workers on twitter

PayPal, the payment processing arm of eBay Inc, said on Saturday that it parted ways with a recently-hired strategy executive after he posted a series of disparaging and at times indecipherable tweets. Rakesh (Rocky) Agrawal, apparently indulged in a Twitter rant that dissed new colleagues and showed his pronounced inability to type with his thumbs.

Earlier, he sent out a number of tweets, slamming his co-workers. The language and (lack of) grammar in the tweets hinted that he was probably drunk when he wrote them. The tweets were later deleted but not before some Twitter users took screenshots.

In one tweet, Agarwal said, "Christina Smedley is a useless. Piece of sh*t." In another he noted, "Duck you Smedley you useless. Middle manager."

Smedley is vice president of global communication at PayPal. In one more tweet, he wanted someone named Don Christmas to be fired. "People who should be fire from Paypal Don Christmas a pool a kick".

This morning, Agrawal explained his tweets with another tweet: "Last night I was using a new phone that I bought because I wanted to test experiences on Android. Those messages were meant for a colleague." He also tweeted: "Note to self: don't test a new phone when sleep deprived after working your ass off for 20 hours a day while on vacation."

Note to self: these tweets didn't look all that convincing. As Re/Code reports, this afternoon PayPal responded with a tweet of its own: "Rakesh Agrawal is no longer with the company. Treat everyone with respect. No excuses. PayPal has zero tolerance."

Agarwal is second NRI executive to be fired this week for improper behaviour. A few days ago Gurbaksh Chahal, who founded RadiumOne, was fired by the company board over allegations that he assaulted his girlfriend.