Halli Thorleifsson tweeted Musk directly after being locked out of his work account for nine days (along with 200 other staff) with no communication from Twitter’s HR department to confirm whether he had been fired or not.
An exchange followed during which Musk tweeted: “The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.” Musk also tweeted to his 130.8 million followers that Thorleifsson was “the worst”. During the exchange, Thorleifsson received an email confirming that he had indeed been fired.
Musk eventually apologised after speaking to Thorleifsson, tweeting: "I would like to apologise 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." He also confirmed that Thorleifsson would remain at Twitter.
DR UK’s Media and Communications Manager Anna Morell said: “It is astonishing and completely unacceptable that the CEO of a major international company would seek to discuss an employee’s disabilities so publicly and on the hoof. It’s incredible that he would then seek to dismiss those disabilities, and blame them for an employee’s poor working practice with no evidence that either there has been poor working practice, or that the employee is incapable of work with adjustments and adaptations put in place. Musk is at the cutting edge of adaptive science and technology. To write, out loud, that someone can’t type when technologies exist to allow people to type, speak and write without putting fingers to keyboard is breathtakingly ignorant and dismissive.
“Given the size of Musk’s following on Twitter, such comments have the potential to damage the progress that working Disabled people seek to make every day to prove that we are valid, capable and valuable employees. There is no reason why Disabled people cannot work in any number of professions with the right reasonable adjustments. Musk needs to understand this and model it in action, beyond apologies.”