When Haraldur Thorleifsson, a director at Twitter suddenly lost access to his systems, he had no clue what was happening. When he did not get any explanation or clarification for a week or so from the HR department either, he decided to ask Elon Musk, CEO, Twitter, himself whether he was still an employee of the company or not. He tagged Musk in a series of tweets expecting some explanation or clarification.
Musk not only failed to give any concrete answer, but also commented rudely implying that people who did not do any work at all anyway cannot be fired!
Musk’s response shook Thorleifsson, who happens to suffer from muscular dystrophy. After all, he had only sought to know whether he was fired or still on the rolls. Instead, Musk proceeded to enquire about his role and what he actually did at work.
In a series of tweets, he went on to state that he had been informed that Thorleifsson “had done almost no work for the past four months, middle-management or otherwise”. He also said that he had heard that Thorleifsson had “told HR that he couldn’t work because he couldn’t type, but was, over the same period, typing up a storm on Twitter”!
Musk expressed his disappointment at so many people defending Thorleifsson on Twitter and that it “hurts my faith in humanity”. As if that wasn’t enough, Musk accused Thorleifsson of trying to reach out to him on Twitter with the sole purpose of getting “a big payout”.
Later on, Musk apologised to Thorleifsson, saying he had been misled and misinformed about Thorleifsson. He admitted that he had misunderstood Thorleifsson’s role and responsibilities.
