Roman Szkaradek watched the U.S. Open tennis match between the Polish player Kamil Majchrzak and Karen Khachanov of Russia on Thursday without thinking much of it.
The next day, he woke up to a message from a stranger on social media: “Give back the hat, you thief.”
Mr. Szkaradek, a business owner in Rawicz, Poland, ignored the message. “I thought it was some kind of mistake,” he said.
But as angry phone calls and hateful comments from all over the world overwhelmed his social media accounts and those of his office, Mr. Szkaradek made a horrifying realization: He had been inadvertently dragged into an internet furor over a viral moment at the tennis tournament in Queens.
Videos of a man appearing to lean in front of an excited child to snatch a hat being handed out by Mr. Majchrzak, the tennis player, led to widespread criticism online. Soon, the hat-grabbing man was identified as Piotr Szczerek, the chief executive of Drogbruk, a paving company based in Blaszki, Poland.
Mr. Szkaradek, the business owner harassed online, is a different man. He leads a different Polish paving company, named Drog-Bruk — with a hyphen — based in Zgorzelec, more than 100 miles from Blaszki. (“Drogbruk” roughly translates to “paving stones for roads” in Polish.)
Mr. Szczerek is a tennis enthusiast who founded Drogbruk — no hyphen — with his wife, Anna Szczerek, in 1999, and sponsors young athletes in the region.
That distinction, however, was lost on the angry commenters who mistakenly flooded Mr. Szkaradek and his company with righteous condemnation of an incident he had no part in.
“This hate is so intense that it simply can’t be stopped,” Mr. Szkaradek said in an interview on Tuesday, adding that he had received a constant barrage of calls since the match. “The company’s operations has been floundering since yesterday because I can’t cope.”
Mr. Szczerek, the chief executive who was at the U.S. Open, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. He addressed his behavior at the match in an apology shared to his company site and to Facebook on Monday, saying he had thought Mr. Majchrzak was handing him the game-worn hat for his sons.
“I take full responsibility for my extremely poor judgment and hurtful actions,” he said, adding that he had since given the hat to the child in the video. Mr. Majchrzak also later met the child and gave him some gifts.
But it was too late to prevent the rage directed at Mr. Szkaradek’s company, which tried to clarify the situation on its Facebook page on Sunday. “We have no connection with the man in the photo,” it said, sharing a photo of Mr. Szczerek, the chief executive of the other Drogbruk, at the U.S. Open.
A wave of angry Google reviews has dropped Drog-Bruk’s ratings average to 1.2 stars out of 5. The feedback, Mr. Szkaradek said, was upsetting even if it was not intended for him.
“I am an honest entrepreneur who has been building his image for so many years, and in two days it was crushed to dust,” said Mr. Szkaradek, who owned his business for 13 years. “It takes a toll on your psyche.”
The episode underscored how little control some brands and individuals have over the conversation around them in the era of social media, said Felipe Thomaz, an associate professor of marketing at Oxford University.
“The internet does like a little chaos,” Dr. Thomaz said. “The other thing the internet loves is consumer activism — people voting with their wallets or review bombing or punishing a misbehavior.”
He likened the U.S. Open situation to the video of a chief executive romantically embracing the chief people officer of his company at a Coldplay concert this summer. That video, also widely shared, led to the resignation of both individuals after they were identified by online observers.
Mr. Szkaradek’s ordeal showed how even innocent bystanders can get caught up in online rage. “Somebody in another universe does something stupid, and you get punished for it,” Dr. Thomaz said. “That is a very real risk in business.”
Mr. Szkaradek said that he had consulted a lawyer who told him there was nothing he could do to help. He also contacted a representative at the other Drogbruk to discuss the situation, hoping for a public apology, but none has been offered so far, he said.
Drog-Bruk has posted a plea on social media for people to stop harassing the company, but many commenters continued to accuse the company of evading responsibility — even though it was not involved.
“When you respond to these comments like, ‘I’m not Piotr Szczerek, I’m someone else,’” Mr. Szkaradek said, “no one understands, and there’s even more hate.”
But he said he would keep defending Drog-Bruk, the company that he had spent more a decade building, and had no plans to change the name, as some had suggested. “I’ve been working hard to build my brand,” he said, “and I’m very much attached to it.”
Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends.
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