Elon Musk has apologized after publicly scoffing at a Twitter employee’s uncertainty about whether he had been laid off in a recent round of cuts and speaking dismissively of the employees disability in a series of tweets Monday night.
“I would like to apologize 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,” Musk tweeted Tuesday. “He is considering remaining at Twitter.”
Earlier, Haraldur Thorleifsson, an Iceland-based Twitter senior director, tweeted at Musk that access to his computer had been cut off nine days earlier, whentwitter reportedly laid off some 200 employees.
But, Thorleifsson said in his tweet, “your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not.”
Musk responded in a tweet asking, “what work have you been doing?” When Thorleifsson provided a list of his tasks in response, Musk appeared to cast doubt on several points. “Pics or it didn’t happen,” he tweeted. In a separate tweet, the billionaire said Thorleifsson “did no actual work, claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing.”
Thorleifsson clarified in a tweet that he has muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that he says put him in a wheelchair more than 20 years ago.
Thorleifsson, who founded a digital branding company acquired by Twitter in 2021, has been recognized by the United Nations and the President of Iceland for spearheading a charitable effort to build 1,000 wheelchair ramps around Reykjavik to increase the city’s accessibility.
“I’m not able to do manual work (which in this case means typing or using a mouse) for extended periods of time without my hands starting to cramp,” he said. “I can however write for an hour or two at a time.
This wasn’t a problem in Twitter 1.0 since I was a senior director and my job was mostly to help teams move forward, give them strategic and tactical advice.”
SOURCE: ALJAZEERA