Bastian Lehmann swears at customer in email-When the CEO of a start-up mobile app company sent an email to his employee about a customer who had complained, he didn’t think it would land in the customer’s inbox.

But it did.

In the email, Bastian Lehmann, the founder and CEO of San Franciso-based delivery service, Postmates, instructs his employee to tell the unhappy customer, Erin Boudreau, to ‘f*** off’, according to ValleyWag.com.

Unluckily for him, the email thread accidentally was forwarded to Seattle resident Boudreau’s inbox.

A message was sent out from Lehmann the next day to apologise for what he called a ‘bad joke which was very poor in taste’.

‘What I said was a major lapse in judgement on my part. I deeply regret this,’ said the message.

‘I immediately reached out to the customer and offered my full and sincere apology. I would like to extend that same apology to all of our customers and Customer Service team. There is no excuse for this.’
Boudreau took to her Twitter account on Sunday to post the incident, to which Lehmann commented: ‘It really was a stressful moment after a long day. No excuse, i've made a mistake.’


Boudreau said: ‘Biggest mistake here: trusting that he hired people smart enough to delete those portions of emails.’

And again, Lehmann apologised: ‘I can only offer a sincere apology. It's not how we treat our customers. It's my fault.’

Others have offered their opinions on the matter on ValleyWag's website.

One person comments: 'Erin sounds classy, he sounds typical. His apology isn't bad, it wasn't a non-apology apology but to say it was a joke is really silly, but if he wants to be a CEO that can't fully own his mistakes I'm sure he'll still do fine, just not quite as well as he could.'

'I guess if I want a lobster and some dental floss at 4am and I'm in the bath I'll give his company a try. (I won't),' adds the user, calling herself Cheerful_exgirlfriend.

A user called HighFives says: 'Oh, obviously she is not the one in the wrong here. I'd just like to see the correspondence to weigh out just *how awful* the response was.'