'Have I been fired?': Twitter employee asks Elon Musk

A Twitter employee has asked social media platform's boss Elon Musk if he is still employed at the firm.

Halli Thorleifsson, 45, took to Twitter where he told the billionaire that HR was not able to confirm his employment status.

 "Your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am employed or not," he said in the tweet.

"What work have you been doing?" Musk casually responded.

The BBC reported that Halli's Twitter accounts were frozen nine days ago. Since then, the man is confused about whether he has been fired or not.

Halli and the chief executive had an interview-like conversation on Twitter in a thread of follow-up questions and answers after which the man finally received an email informing him he had been sacked.

Senior director in product design for Twitter, the 45-year-old told the BBC that the confusion around his employment status had been "extremely stressful". He also called the whole scenario "strange".

"I opened my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw that the screen was grey and locked, indicating that I had been locked out of my Twitter accounts", the outlet quoted him as saying.

When a few days passed, Halli began to reach out to relevant people including "Elon and the head of HR". However, the head of HR was not able to answer Halli's questions, despite emailing him twice.

Annoyed, he took to Twitter and reached out to him online.

"Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here", Halli wrote.

Musk asked for evidence. "Pics or it did not happen," he wrote, to which Halli said he could not do that since his account had been blocked.

Halli provided a list of the things he had accomplished at the company in response to various follow-up queries. Musk finished the conversation by sharing two laughing emojis.

Halli claimed that shortly after that conversation, Twitter's human resources division called him and informed him that he had been fired.

The Iceland-based businessman, who founded Ueno in Reykjavik in 2014, sold the creative design agency to Twitter in early 2021.

He joined Twitter as a full-time employee as a result of the acquisition.

"I decided to sell for a few reasons but one of them is that I have muscular dystrophy and my body is slowly but surely failing me," he told the BBC.

Halli said he was concerned that the billionaire would not honour the contract he had signed with the social media firm when he sold his company.

The whole situation is very stressful for the man because this was his retirement fund, "a way to take care of my family as my disease progresses". For Halli, it is hard to believe that the richest man on the planet would refuse to stand by contracts.

Last month, Musk reportedly sacked another 200 Twitter employees which means the company now has a little over 2,000 staff members, compared to 7,500 in October.

Halli said that while it was any company's right to let go of employees, "they usually tell people about it."