If they don’t tell you you’re fired, are you really fired? On Twitter, probably.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, who until recently worked at Twitter, logged into his computer last Sunday for work, only to find himself locked out, along with 200 other people.
He might have thought, like others before him in the chaotic months of layoffs and layoffs since Elon Musk took over the company, that he was out of a job.
Instead, after nine days with no response from Twitter on whether or not he was still employed, Thorleifsson decided to tweet Musk to see if he could get the billionaire’s attention and get a response to his employment situation from Schrödinger.
“Maybe if enough people retweet, you’ll reply to me here?” she wrote on Monday.
Dear @Elon Musk 👋
9 days ago my work computer was cut off, along with 200 other Twitter employees.
However, your HR manager cannot confirm if I am an employee or not. You have not responded to my emails.
Maybe if enough people retweet, you’ll reply to me here?
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023
He finally got his answer after a surreal exchange on Twitter with Musk, who proceeded to grill him about his job, questioning his disability and need for accommodations (Thorleifsson has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair) and tweeted that Thorleifsson has a ” prominent, active.” Twitter account and he is rich” and the “reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payment”.
The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did not do any real work, he claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, but at the same time he was tweeting up a storm.
I can’t say I have much respect for that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
As the trade was taking place, Thorleifsson said he received an email that he was no longer employed.
On Tuesday night, Musk tweeted an apology to Thorleifsson, saying their misunderstanding was “based on things that were told to me that weren’t true.”
I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of her situation. She relied on things that I was told were false, or in some cases true, but not significant.
He is considering staying on Twitter.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland, has almost 160,000 followers on Twitter (Musk has more than 130 million). He joined Twitter in 2021, when the company, under previous management, acquired his startup Ueno.
He was praised in the Icelandic media for choosing to receive the purchase price in the form of salaries rather than a lump sum payment. That’s because in this way, it would pay higher taxes to Iceland in support of its social services and safety net.
Thorleifsson tweeted to Musk that “the reason I asked you in public is because you (or anyone else on Twitter) didn’t reply to my private messages.”
“You had every right to fire me. But it would have been nice to let me know! she added.
Thorleifsson’s next move: “I’m opening a restaurant in downtown Reykjavik very soon,” he tweeted. “It’s named after my mom.”
