“Excuse me” asked its head Twitter, Elon Musk in employeeafter a heated debate they had on the platform about whether it has fired.

The incident began when employee Halli Thorleifsson – who has muscular dystrophy and has campaigned in Iceland for better wheelchair access – asked Elon Musk on Twitter if he had been fired. “The head of HR is unable to confirm whether I am an employee or not.”

Elon Musk responded by asking, “What do you do?”

After a Q&A, the employee wrote that he received an email confirming his dismissal.

“The truth is that this guy – who is independently wealthy – didn’t really work, claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, and yet at the same time tweets up a storm. Can’t say I have much respect for it,” Elon Musk wrote in one of his tweets.

The billionaire then wrote a new tweet, saying that Thorleifsson was the “worst”. He then deleted it. However, changing his stance, he returned to the platform a few hours later and apologized to him, appearing to give him his job back as well.

“I would like to apologize to Halli for misunderstanding his situation. I relied on things that I was told were untrue or, in some cases, true, but they didn’t make sense.”

“He’s considering staying on Twitter,” he added.

“I was locked out of my Twitter accounts”

Halli Thorleifsson told the BBC that nine days after his Twitter accounts were frozen he did not know whether he had been fired or not. The 45-year-old was a senior director of product design for Twitter. He told the BBC that the ambiguity surrounding his work was “strange” and “extremely stressful”.

“I turned on my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw that the screen was gray and locked, indicating that I had been locked out of my Twitter accounts,” he said.

“After a few days passed I started reaching out to people, including Elon and the head of HR, to ask about my situation. The head of HR has since emailed me twice and has been unable to answer whether or not I am a Twitter employee.”

Frustrated by the situation, he decided to talk to Elon Musk. “Maybe if enough people retweet you can reply here,” Mr Thorleifsson wrote.

Musk: “Better to talk than tweet”

Some of his former colleagues could not understand why he has come under public criticism. Photographer Daniel Houghton tweeted “As someone who has worked directly with Halli Thorleifsson this is extremely disappointing to see. Not only is his work ethic outstanding, his talent and humility are world class.”

Musk responded: “Based on your comment, I just had a video call with him to find out what’s true about what I’ve been told. It’s a long story. Better to talk to people than to tweet”.

After apologizing, Musk said Thorleifsson was considering returning to Twitter.

It is not known if he will remain with the company, but Torleifsson tweeted that he is preparing to open a restaurant in Reykjavík.

He could not get a response from Twitter’s human resources department to let him know if he had been fired or not

On Monday, Mr Thorleifsson told the BBC that he could not get a response from Twitter’s HR department about whether or not he had been fired. “My theory is that they made a mistake and are now looking for anything they can find to find ’cause’ and avoid fulfilling their contractual obligations,” he said.

Mr. Thorleifsson, who sold Ueno’s company to Twitter in 2021, would not say how much he received for the company. However, there are speculations that Twitter would have to pay him a significant sum upon his departure.

According to local reports, when he sold his company to Twitter, he structured the deal deliberately to pay a high tax rate to the Icelandic government. Last year, he was voted person of the year in Iceland by four media outlets.

With information from BBC NEWS