Typically, when a negative story about an airline surfaces, people are quick to pin the blame on the airline.

After all, just about everyone flies from time to time. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, if you need to travel a great distance, there are few options better than a plane.

Conversely, there are only a few major airlines. They wield all the power and resources.

So it’s natural to want to blame the big guy (the airline) and seldom blame the little guy (the passenger.)

That’s typically what happens — unless, apparently, you’re Anthony Bass of the Toronto Blue Jays.

On Sunday, the 35-year-old pitcher expressed his frustration with United Airlines over an incident involving his pregnant wife and children.

“The flight attendant @united just made my 22 week pregnant wife traveling with a 5 year old and a 2 year old get on her hands and knees to pick up the popcorn mess by my youngest daughter,” Bass tweeted. “Are you kidding me?!?!”

In the accompanying image, you see Bass’ young children with a mess of popcorn on the floor under their seats.

It’s easy to see what Bass was getting at here: How dare United make my pregnant wife clean up the popcorn mess! Please sympathize with me and my family against this evil airline, as you typically do!

Only that message appears to not have gotten across very well, according to the Twitter responses.

One tweet, which generated 25,000 likes to about 4,200 for Bass’ tweet, asked: “Genuinely curious who should clean up the mess your 2 year old made? As a parent of three kids I am the one responsible for them.”

The pitcher responded: “The cleaning crew they hire!”

In response to the “cleaning crew” comment, another Twitter user told Bass: “It’s called being considerate and we all know planes don’t get thoroughly cleaned during a day of flying.”

A large number of the responses took the side of United rather than the Bass family.

Again, that’s not normal for these kinds of stories.

The airline itself did respond to Bass, though that was the normal customer service platitudes you’ve come to expect to see on Corporate Twitter.

One of the responses to United’s tweet perfectly encapsulates just how badly this backfired on Bass:

“Won’t lie, the fact that the flight attendant had the guts to make the passenger clean up their own MESS kinda makes me wanna fly United more,” it said.

So not only did Bass’s tweet not drum up the sympathy and outrage he was likely looking for, he might’ve actually helped buttress United’s bottom line with new prospective customers.

That’s probably not what Bass had in mind when he sent that initial tweet out.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.