New York (CNN) Elon Musk has apologized after publicly mocking a Twitter employee’s uncertainty about whether he was fired in the latest round of cuts. of the employee Disability in a series of tweets on Monday night.
“I want to apologize to Hallie for my misunderstanding of the situation, which was based on things I was told that were either untrue or sometimes true but didn’t make sense,” Musk said. Tweeted tuesday “He’s considering staying on Twitter.”
Earlier, Haraldur Thorleifsson, a Twitter senior director based in Iceland, tweeted at Musk that access to his computer had been cut nine days ago. Twitter has reportedly been fired About 200 employees. But Thorleifsson tweeted, “Your head of HR could not confirm whether I am an employee or not.”
Musk responded in a tweet, “What are you working on?” When Thorleifson responded with a list of his tasks, Musk raised doubts on several points. “Pictures or it didn’t happen,” he tweeted. In a separate tweet, billionaire Thorleifson “doesn’t do any real work, using his disability as an excuse to stop him from typing.”
In a tweet, Thorleifson clarified that he has muscular dystrophy, which he says put him in a wheelchair 20 years ago. Thorleifson is credited with founding a digital branding company that was acquired by Twitter in 2021. United Nations And this President of Iceland For spearheading the charity’s initiative to build 1,000 wheelchair ramps around Reykjavík to increase the accessibility of the city.
“I can’t do manual work (in this case typing or using a mouse) for long periods of time without my hands starting to cramp,” he said. “However I can write for an hour or two at a time. This wasn’t a problem in Twitter 1.0 as I was a senior director and my job was mostly to help teams move forward, giving them strategy and tactical advice.”
Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment. Twitter, which has cut most of its public relations department, also did not respond.
This isn’t the first time Musk, one of the world’s richest men, has publicly mocked employees at Twitter, the company he bought last year for $44 billion. He has sparred on stage with former Twitter executives, fired employees who criticized him and on one occasion publicly called out a former employee’s tweets about him, saying they were a “sad case of adult Tourette’s.”
The sight of a company owner publicly mocking an employee highlights the unique corporate circus that Twitter employees have experienced over the past year. Musk threatened to bail on the deal, then completed the acquisition only to be followed by several rounds of layoffs. Hundreds of former Twitter employees are now taking legal action against the company, alleging broken severance promises and, in some cases, discrimination against disabled employees.
Meanwhile, It looks like the platform is struggling to stay online. Monday, Twitter Experience In one of its biggest outages since Musk’s takeover, many users were unable to fully access the site, and others experienced hours of problems clicking links or viewing photos. It’s the third major technology disruption Twitter has faced in less than a month, as Musk has cut 7,500 employees to fewer than 2,000.
Following the exchange with Musk, Twitter’s head of human resources confirmed that he no longer works for the company, Thorleifson said in a tweet.
“It’s absolutely fine and it happens all the time … they usually tell people about it but it’s now a favorite part of Twitter,” he said. “The next thing though is finding out if Twitter will pay me what they owe me under my contract.”
