The billionaire owner of the social network Twitter, Elon Musk, fired more than 200 of his company's employees on Sunday without telling them, including the disabled Haraldur Throleifsson, who insisted on getting confirmation from his boss. Unusual exchange of tweets ends with Musk apologizing.

Dear @elonmusk 👋

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?

- Halli (@iamharaldur) March 6, 2023

Thorleifsson, who until three days ago was a Twitter employeeHe only had doubts about his employment situation when, last Sunday, he tried to log on to his computer to work and discovered that he no longer had access, which also happened to 200 other workers at the company.

He could have deduced that, like many before him, in the chaotic months of layoffs since Elon Musk took over the company, he had been fired.

But instead, after nine days without a response from Twitter as to whether or not he still had a job, Thorleifsson decided to send Musk a message on the social network itself (a 'tweet'), to see if he could catch the billionaire's attention and get a conclusive answer about his job.

"Maybe if enough people 'retweet' (forward to their contacts) this message, you'll reply to me here?"Thorleifsson wrote on Monday.

After some time, he eventually got his answer, following a surreal Twitter conversation with Musk, in which the latter asked him about what work he did and about his disability and accommodation needs (Thorleifsson has muscular dystrophy and gets around in a wheelchair).

Elon Musk then wrote a tweet stating: "Thorleifsson has an active and well-known Twitter account and is rich [and] the reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout".

Note that in the meantime, several of Musk's answers already include context warnings, inserted by readers.

While the conversation was going on, with Musk questioning various aspects of the former employee's work and expressing clear mistrust, Thorleifsson indicated that he had received an email informing him that he no longer worked for the company.

Resident in Iceland and with around 141,000 followers on Twitter (Musk has over 130 million), Thorleifsson started working there in 2021, when the previous owners acquired his startup, Ueno.

At the time, he was praised in the Icelandic media for choosing to receive the purchase price in the form of monthly salaries - rather than a huge lump sum - because he would then pay higher taxes to Iceland, which would help support the social services and safety net that the country offers.

Thorleifsson also responded to Musk on Twitter, telling him: "The reason I asked you in public [whether you still had a job or not] was because neither you nor anyone else in the company responded to my private messages."

"You had every right to fire me. But it would have been good to warn me!"he added.

Asked on social media what he's going to do now, the Icelandic computer scientist replied: "I'm going to open a restaurant in the center of Reykjavík soon. It will be named after my mother.

However, on Tuesday evening, Musk made a public apology to the employee. "I'd like to apologize to Halli for misunderstanding his situation. I based it on things I was told that weren't true or, in some cases, true but not relevant."