FILE - Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition, March 9, 2020, in Washington. After nine days of being locked out of his Twitter work computer, Haraldur Thorleifsson tweeted at owner Elon Musk, Monday, March 6, 2023, to find out whether or not he’d been fired. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you’re not told you are fired, are you really fired? At Twitter, probably. And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently was employed at Twitter, logged in to his computer last Sunday to do some work — only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.
He might have figured, as others before him have in the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days of no answer from Twitter as to whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could catch the billionaire’s attention and get an answer to his Schrödinger’s job situation.
“Maybe if enough people retweet you’ll answer me here?” he wrote on Monday.
Eventually, he got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, question his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “prominent, active Twitter account and is wealthy” and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout.” While the exchange was going on, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.
Late Tuesday afternoon, however, Musk had a change of heart.
“I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he tweeted. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message for comment following Musk’s tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal.”
“You had every right to lay me off. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted to Musk.
Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has about 151,000 Twitter followers (Musk has over 130 million). He joined Twitter in 2021, when the company, under the prior management, acquired his startup Ueno.
He was lauded in Icelandic media for choosing to receive the purchase price in wages rather than a lump sum payout. That’s because this way, he would pay higher taxes to Iceland in support of its social services and safety net.
Thorleifsson’s next move: “I’m opening a restaurant in downtown Reykjavik very soon,” he tweeted. “It’s named after my mom.”
Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment.
Due-Reading6335 on March 8th, 2023 at 16:04 UTC »
TLDR: Elon finds out he not only mocked a disabled employee, but that the same employee sold his company to Twitter for $100,000,000 usd and had a binding agreement to receive this amount if ever let go from Twitter
pegothejerk on March 8th, 2023 at 15:36 UTC »
I’ve never seen someone set more idiot traps and fall into their own idiot traps more publicly and more often than this narcissistic bag of corrupted emotions. I’ve read a lot of criticisms about him and all of them have turned out to be true, every single one, and he’s made sure the evidence is documented so well they’ll stand up in court.
I used to really like what he was doing, then I grew super skeptical, then I knew he was a piece of shit so I began to have disdain for him, and now I’m coming back to a place where if he’s the reason mega rich people get held to the fire for paying their fair share and not being held up as untouchable geniuses that can’t be questioned, I’ll actually enjoy what he’s doing again - losing more wealth than any rich person ever and forcing others to have to hoard slightly less of theirs.
Jfox8 on March 8th, 2023 at 15:35 UTC »
This will be one hell of a lawsuit. Shooting from the hip on HR issues is a recipe for disaster.