Elon Musk apologizes after mocking, questioning disability of Twitter employee who wanted to know job status

If they don’t say they were fired, are they really fired? On Twitter, probably. Then, sometimes, you get a job again – if you want it.

Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently worked at Twitter, logged into his computer last Sunday to do his work – only to find himself locked out, along with 200 others.

He probably thought, like everyone else before him in the months of layoffs and layoffs since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job. However, after nine days of no answer from Twitter about whether he was still working, Thorleifsson decided to tweet at Musk to see if he could get the billionaire’s attention and get an answer about Schrodinger’s employment status.

“Your head of HR can’t confirm if I’m working or not,” he wrote Monday. “Maybe if enough people retweet, you’ll reply to me here?”

In the end, he got an answer after a surreal Twitter exchange with Musk, who kept asking about his job and asking about his disability and need for accommodations.

Thorleifsson, who goes by “Halli,” has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair. Musk went on to tweet that Thorleifsson has a “famous, active and rich Twitter account” noting that “the reason he’s facing me in public is because he’s getting paid big time.”

While the exchange was taking place, Thorleifsson said he received an email informing him that he was no longer working for Twitter.

By late Tuesday afternoon, Musk had a change of heart.

Musk apologizes for ‘misunderstanding’

“I want to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of her situation. It was based on things I said that were not true or, in some cases, true, but made no sense,” he tweeted. “He’s considering staying on Twitter.”

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

“You have the right to fire me. But it would have been nice to let me know!” he tweeted for Musk.

Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has around 151,000 Twitter followers. He joined Twitter in 2021, when the company, under his previous management, acquired the startup, Ueno.

He was praised in the Icelandic media for choosing to accept the purchase price in wages instead of a lump sum payment. This is because in this way, they will pay higher taxes to Iceland to support social services and safety nets.

Thorleifsson’s next step: “I’m opening a restaurant in downtown Reykjavik very soon,” he tweeted. “That’s my mother’s name.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment.