Oral care company Perfora found itself at the centre of a social media trolling campaign after it praised one of its employees, Sonu, for working through the night to resolve a critical issue.
Perfora’s tweet read, “We’re proud of our team members who work tirelessly to solve problems for our customers. Shoutout to Sonu for working a sleepless night to fix a critical issue!”
However, instead of garnering praise, the tweet was met with an onslaught of sarcastic comments and memes, with some users questioning the company’s work culture and ethics. One user tweeted, “So, Perfora’s work culture is to make employees work sleepless nights? Great going!” while another commented, “Wow, congratulations on exploiting your employees for cheap PR.”
The trolling campaign quickly gained momentum, with several users using the hashtag #PerforaTrolls to share their thoughts on the company’s tweet. The incident even made headlines in several news outlets, further highlighting the negative attention Perfora received.
In response, Perfora replied to Startupnews.fyi We understand the back lash and the audience anger that’s been darted at us. However, our motive to put out Sonu or any of our employees story online has been sheerly out of applauding the team, who has helped us tackle the Shark Tank Wave. The ripple effect created after we aired on Shark Tank has been immense and honestly, we couldn’t have anticipated this. According to us we were fully equipped to handle the surge but in reality, things blew up and we were short-handed. The minute we realised we are facing traffic that is beyond our bandwidth we started hiring. Since 16th February’23 the day we aired on Shark Tank, we have expanded our team and we are still constantly hiring. Anyone who has been following us in the digital space, knows how much we value and celebrate our people. Our team is our family and we have always highlighted and appreciated their efforts. As a growing D2C start-up, we are learning and we completely empathise for every concern raised out there. And we’re deeply apologetic if this indicated toxicity in workplace. Our sole motive was to appreciate people who helped us serve better, in a time when things went bigger than we had anticipated. And also shed some light on our warehouse order fulfilment and operations team.”
The incident serves as a cautionary tale for companies that seek to recognize and appreciate their employees publicly. While Perfora’s intentions were noble, the trolling campaign demonstrates the importance of understanding the nuances of social media and being mindful of how such posts can be perceived by the public.
