Elon Musk Issues Public Apology To Disabled Employee He Mocked Online

“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.”

Initially, Haraldur Thorleifsson, a senior director for Twitter headquartered in Iceland, informed Musk that access to his computer had been disabled nine days before the purported 200-employee layoff.  Thorleifsson tweeted, “your head of HR is not able to clarify if I am an employee or not.”

Musk replied, asking, “what work have you been doing?” Thorleifsson provided a list of his tasks in response; Musk then appeared to cast doubt on several points.  “Pics or it didn’t happen,” he tweeted.

In a follow-up tweet, Musk said Thorleifsson “did no actual work, claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing.”

Thorleifsson explained that he has muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease that left him in a wheelchair over 20 years ago.

“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.”