Elon Musk apologizes for mocking fired Twitter employee

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If you weren’t told you were fired, are you really fired? Probably on Twitter. And then, sometimes, you get your work back – if that’s what you want.

Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently worked at Twitter, logged into his computer last Sunday to work only to find that he was blocked along with 200 other users.

He may have realized, as others have before him, in the months of layoffs and layoffs chaos since Elon Musk took over that he was out of a job.

Instead, after nine days of no response from Twitter about whether he was still working, Thorleifsson decided to tweet Musk to see if he could get the attention of the billionaire and get an answer to the situation with his Schrödinger job.

“Maybe if enough people retweet, you can reply to me here?” he wrote on Monday.

He eventually got his answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who began questioning him about his work, questions about his disability and need for accommodations (Torleifsson, called “Hally”, has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair). armchair) and tweeted that Thorleifsson has a “famous, active Twitter account and is rich” 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 saying he was no longer working.

But late Tuesday evening, Musk changed his mind.

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“I would like to apologize to Halley for misunderstanding his situation. It was based on things I was told that weren’t true or in some cases true but didn’t make sense,” he tweeted. “He’s considering staying on Twitter.”

Thorleifsson did not immediately respond to a message about the comment after Musk’s tweet. In an earlier email, he called the experience “surreal”.

You had every right to fire me. But it would be nice to let me know!” he wrote to Musk.

Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has about 151,000 followers on Twitter (Musk has over 130 million). He joined Twitter in 2021 when the company, under its former management, acquired his startup Ueno.

He was praised by the Icelandic media for choosing to receive the purchase price in the form of wages rather than a lump sum. This is because in this way he will pay higher taxes to Iceland in support of its social services and security system.

Thorleifsson’s next move: “Very soon I’m opening a restaurant in downtown Reykjavik,” he tweeted. – It’s named after my mom.

Twitter did not immediately respond to the message for comment.

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