Tommy Mason is a product designer from Birmingham, England. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, he has built a career while winning awards including the Top 10 Young Designers of the Year from The Drum Awards, a global awards program that recognizes the best companies and people from across the marketing and communications industry.

Mason told Newsweek: “I’ve been tweeting about the industry off and on for a while now—it’s much easier to joke about it openly when you’re not working for a brand. I also share a lot of resources such as workshop Figma community files that I’ve created and use myself.”

It was Mason’s Twitter activity that has captured online attention this time. Sharing jokes and memes about the design industry, his account has over 10,000 followers who relate to his content.

On Tuesday, Mason shared a tweet featuring two message screenshots with the caption: “A story of two parts. Recruiter edition.” With over 400,000 likes and thousands of retweets, the contents of the messages have delighted internet users.

In the first screenshot of a Twitter DM, the message says: “Does your boss know you joke about design industry on Twitter?” To which Mason replied: “Yeh he does. If you’d like to contact him however please feel free,” and shared a cell phone number.

The next picture shows a screenshot of a text message conversation, in which the same person wrote: “I was wondering if you knew about your employer Tommy Mason and his Twitter material?”

But the phone number Mason provided was his own, as he works for himself. In a swift reply, Mason wrote: “I am my own boss, you wet wipe. Tommy”

According to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of February 2022, the number of self-employed people in the U.S. was 9.98 million. The benefits are clear, from managing your own workload and increased flexibility to choosing the work you do and when. But over the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted self-employed workers, with the BLS reporting that self-employed workers were more likely than salary workers and government workers to be unable to work because of pandemic-related closures or lost business.

Twitter users were left in stitches by Mason’s takedown of the recruiter. One Twitter user said: “I’ve never seen this tactic from a recruiter before. What was the plan, to get you fired so he could backfill your role?! Does his employer know he’s doing this?”

Another reply said: “This is the adult equivalent of children in the playground telling the teacher on you because you ‘said a naughty word.’”

“The design community is great, designers and industry professionals always have each others backs and we can joke about the good and also the challenges we come up against,” said Mason. “As per the tweet, I work alone. But I’ll definitely be giving myself employee of the month award for this one!”

“Quality,” wrote one Twitter user: “Love the word wet wipe. It adds the cherry on the cake,” and another simply wrote: “F****** legend.”

“Well that’s gotta feel good,” said one reply, to which Mason responded that it “felt great.”

Update 04/07/22, 2:01 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include photos and comment from Tommy Mason.