ASB staffer left red faced after tweet

In the exchange of tweets the bank asked "Netflix and chill 4eva? Or are we moving to fast ?" Photo / Dean Purcell

An ASB Bank staffer has been left red faced after inadvertently propositioning one of its customers on social media.

Auckland legal services worker Grace Hall sent a tweet to ASB in January saying, "you have some of the loveliest staff ever".

However, in the exchange of friendly tweets that followed, the bank asked "Netflix and chill 4eva? Or are we moving to fast ?"

"Netflix and chill" is widely understood to mean watching TV while having sex, but an ASB spokesman told Fairfax the social media staffer operating the Twitter account didn't realise the phrase had a sexual double-meaning.

The bank later deleted its tweets, but not before they had been screen-grabbed and reposted by a Twitter account that collects examples of corporate social-media embarrassments.

The staffer, Alex Spence, declined to comment on Saturday.

But Hall, 24, told Fairfax she found the exchange "pretty hilarious".

She hasn't made a complaint to the bank: "It didn't bring me any offence. It didn't hurt me in any way."

She said she had felt embarrassed on the bank's behalf for having tried to be cool and failed, and at first assumed the tweet had been written by an older staff member who didn't realise what they were saying.

"Whoever manages them wouldn't have been too happy about it. I felt they would have copped enough flak from the people who'd seen it."

ASB spokesman Christian May said on Friday that there had been no change in policy or guidelines for staff, as this was "a genuine mistake".

"We encourage healthy dialogue between people on our social media accounts, and it's just a timely reminder to be conscious of what you're writing. These are humans manning the Twitter account, and occasionally these things happen. There was no malice."

He said no apology had been sought by, or made to, Hall. "We just took it down and left it at that."