A 15-year-old student was apparently allowed to run the Twitter account of Southern Rail this week, fielding questions and often taking part in quite surreal exchanges.
Brands interacting with their customers – and responding to thousands of complaints – on Twitter is nothing new, but asking a young intern to take over seems to have been a PR win for Britain’s worst performing rail company, most often in the news for infrastructure problems and staff strikes.
Guess who's back?! #AskEddie pic.twitter.com/sbbxgBAyU2
— Southern (@SouthernRailUK) July 12, 2017
While most users seem to have responded well to the teenager, Twitter is not always a positive experience – and potentially putting him in the line of fire for often irate customers has brought some criticism.
Have you ever had a similar experience to “Eddie”? Maybe you felt things spiralled out of control but even so you were able to rise to the challenge? Perhaps you were asked do do something that made you feel uncomfortable. Were you glad of the experience – or did things go too far?
Share your experiences
You can share your stories of work experience days that turned a little surreal with us using the form below – anonymously if you wish. Let us know what happened to you and we’ll feature some of your stories on the Guardian site. Please share as much detail as you can, be careful about naming a specific company, particularly if you wish to remain anonymous. Only the Guardian has access to your submissions.
