I had a customer that was just a real peach to work with. We could never make him happy and no matter how good the solution was he always wanted to find fault. Unfortunately, they are also one of the largest private health care insurers in the country so we didn't have a choice.
Anyways, he had a need for this unique display connector RS-232 and he didn't really know what it was other than what he needed to do with it.
We got him a sample and sent it to him to test. He ended up replying back to myself and another account manager about how we were idiots and it was not the correct solution and how we were just wasting his time ect. I don't think he even tested it. I think he opened it up looked at the connector and said nope not what I wanted. He wasn't aware that this specific connector was what he needed.
Anyways, I ended up meaning to reply just to the other account manager and instead in haste hit reply all 🙁 I didn't say anything derogatory and didn't use foul language but I did give an inside sarcastic reply. It didn't go over well with him (obviously). He made it his job to have me fired and basically went to every person he could at my company to do so.
Luckily most knew what type of person he was and kind of laughed it off.
Manager ended up pulling me aside and saying if you ever get in this scenario again write the email in word and leave it there for a couple hours. If you come back after some time away and see that it still makes senses then send it but my bet is cooler heads will prevail and you'll realize even if internal it's probably not the best thing to say.
I think social media could use the same thing. Joe Rogan talked about a que where the message goes out but sits for a bit to make sure the person really wants to send it first before it goes live. For some reason I feel for the guy. He is obviously a complete tool and has a history of saying pretty stupid stuff but man it's going to really end up costing him so much more.