Elon Musk mocks laid-off Twitter employee with disability

SAN FRANCISCO — In case you’re not informed you’re fired, are you actually fired? At Twitter, most likely.

Haraldur Thorleifsson, who till just lately was employed at Twitter, logged in to his laptop final Sunday to do some work — solely to search out himself locked out, together with 200 others.

He might need figured, as others earlier than him have within the chaotic months of layoffs and firings since Elon Musk took over the corporate, that he was out of a job.

As a substitute, after 9 days of no reply from Twitter as as to if or not he was nonetheless employed, Thorleifsson determined to tweet at Musk to see if he might catch the billionaire’s consideration and get a solution to his Schrödinger’s job scenario.

“Perhaps if sufficient folks retweet you’ll reply me right here?” he wrote on Monday.

Finally, he bought his reply after a surreal Twitter alternate with Musk, who proceeded to quiz him about his work, query his incapacity and want for lodging (Thorleifsson has muscular dystrophy and makes use of a wheelchair) and tweet that Thorleifsson has a “outstanding, energetic Twitter account and is rich” and the “motive he confronted me in public was to get a giant payout.” Whereas the alternate was occurring, Thorleifsson stated acquired an electronic mail that he was now not employed.

Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has about 141,000 Twitter followers (Musk has over 130 million). He joined Twitter in 2021, when the corporate, below the prior administration, acquired his startup Ueno.

He was lauded in Icelandic media for selecting to obtain the acquisition value in wages quite than a lump sum payout. That is as a result of this fashion, he would pay larger taxes to Iceland in assist of its social providers and security web.

Thorleifsson tweeted to Musk that “The rationale I requested you in public is since you (or anybody else at Twitter) didn’t reply to my non-public messages.”

“You had each proper to put me off. However it will have been good to let me know!” he added.

Thorleifsson’s subsequent transfer: “I’m opening a restaurant in downtown Reykjavik very quickly,” he tweeted. “It’s named after my mother.”