Elon Musk has become embroiled in a baffling scandal with a disabled Twitter worker who had no idea if he had been fired.
There have been a number of drastic shake-ups since the Tesla CEO bought the social media company for $44billion back in October 2022 - but a recent cull has sparked even more controversy
Musk axed 200 Twitter jobs a few weeks ago, including one employee who logged in to do some work, only to discover he had been locked out.
It's been a common way of letting people know they've been laid off during the Musk reign, but Haraldur Thorleifsson wasn't certain so decided to go to the top.
After nine days of no response from Twitter as to whether he was still an employee, Thorleifsson ironically got Musk's attention by tweeting him.
"9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.
"However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.
"Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?"
This led to a surreal Twitter exchange which began with Musk asking: What work have you been doing?"
Thorleifsson, who lives in Iceland and joined Twitter in 2021 under the previous management, explained what he had been doing in his role.
He has muscular dystrophy, a degenerative disease, and has campaigned in Iceland for better wheelchair access.
Thorleifsson explained that he can't type or use a mouse for extended periods of time without his hands starting to cramp - and this wasn't an issue under the old management.
Questioning this, 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."
He also added: "But was he fired? No, you can’t be fired if you weren’t working in the first place!"
During the exchange, Thorleifsson got an email confirming that he had indeed been axed from his role.
After being criticised on Twitter by a lot of people, including those who worked directly with Thorleifsson, Musk had a video call with the Icelander.
Musk has since had a change of heart and apologised for the strange situation.
"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. "He is considering remaining at Twitter."
Since he took over Twitter in October last year, there have been lots of changes and controversies.
In November, Musk laid off 3,700 Twitter workers after the network experienced a "massive drop in revenue" when advertisers became concerned over the direction of the company.
Musk attempted to woo companies to his site amid fears over content moderation - and claimed he was doing it all for selfless reasons.
Back in October, he said: "The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a health manner without resorting to violence.
"I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love."
In late November, the Twitter boss promised there wouldn't be any more redundancies, but after the recent cuts in the last few weeks there are now just 2,300 workers.
Another victim of the cull was Esther Crawford, a loyal executive who was so dedicated she slept at the company's headquarters.
Crawford, who joined the company in December 2020, was in charge of Musk's flagship plan to get users to pay for a verified "blue tick".
The Head of Twitter Payments uploaded a picture of her sleeping at the office last year in a bid to prove she was dedicated to the company.
She captioned the picture: "Pushing round the clock to make deadlines. 'SleepWhereYouWork'."
However, Crawford was removed from her role along with 200 other employees
In a statement released after her sacking, she said: "The worst take you could have from watching me go all-in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake.
"Those who jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena.
"I'm deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos".
