Twitter owner Elon Musk has backtracked and apologised to a disabled sacked worker, after their exchange on the social media platform went viral.
celandic entrepreneur Halli Thorleifsson tweeted the billionaire after he was locked out of his work’s IT system, asking if he had been fired.
He told Musk he could not get HR to respond to him.
Musk replied with a tweet which appeared to question Mr Thorleifsson’s claim, before saying: “The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.”
In a subsequent tweet, he added: “But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!”
Mr Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, explained in a Twitter thread that prior to Musk’s takeover and the mass layoffs he had been a senior director – and his job at that time did not require much typing, which he said he had difficulty with over long periods.
The entrepreneur, who sold his creative agency Ueno to Twitter in 2021, has also questioned whether Twitter will now “pay me what they owe me per my contract”, adding: “Will Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world, try to avoid paying?”
After the conversation went viral, Musk said he contacted Mr Thorleifsson directly via video call “to figure out what’s real vs what I was told”.
He added: “Better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.”
In a follow-up tweet, the billionaire said: “I would like to apologise 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 is considering remaining at Twitter.”