Just call me "butterfingers."

I move fast, it's part of my job. I wear a few different hats: Web content admin, project manager, social media person. There is never a part of my day where I am only working on just one thing… and then the phone rings. It's a constant juggling act.

In fact, I always felt this position was perfect for my personality as I'm a bit hyperactive and usually thinking about 20 things at once anyway.

This multi-tasking thing might have to change. I screwed up. It happens. But this particular screw up was broadcast to the university's 5,000 or so Twitter followers.

One word: ass. Yeeaaah.

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How it happened

This was around 8 in the morning. I had just sat down at my desk and was going through emails and tweets. I launched TweetDeck and then continued typing an email, signed in to another program and typed some notes in another window.

Next thing I know my boss says, "Hey, Jenn, you might want to delete that tweet."

I look over at TweetDeck and there it was staring at me, moving down the column in what seemed like slow motion: ass. Somehow my cursor unknowingly wound up in TweetDeck and picked up a portion of word but it came out as "ass." I mean, could it have been another word at least? Geez.

Within seconds people were tweeting us asking if we got hacked or is the Twitter person had been fired. I deleted it immediately and responded with, "Sorry folks! #socialmediafail" and then shook my head the rest of the day. Who knows what people were thinking when they read that.

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Lesson learned

I make it a point to not post things from TweetDeck because there is no confirmation before anything goes out. All it takes is one strike of the return key. I use an application that was developed in house and I actually have to click "save" and select a time before it goes out to the world.

This started a conversation among my coworkers about some well-known Twitter screw ups. Someone working for Chrylser mistakenly sent out a tweet (opens new window) from the official account, rather than his own: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive."

So, at least I didn't drop an F bomb.

There was a similar incident with a Red Cross employee (opens new window) who tweeted "Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head's Midas Touch beer… when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd." She also thought she was tweeting from her personal account. The Red Cross responded with humor: "We've deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we've confiscated the keys."

One thing I do not do is combine my personal and work Twitter accounts in any application. I figured one day I would accidentally tweet something from my work account. I just didn't want to take this chance.

So go figure, I was trying to be careful. Lesson learned here is simply: slow down.