Esther Crawford, the recently fired Twitter executive who gained notoriety for sleeping on the office floor, appeared to accuse former boss Elon Musk of “cruelty.”
“Cruelty is the worst,” Crawford tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
Crawford posted the cryptic tweet after Musk publicly trolled Haraldur Thorlifsson, an Iceland-based Twitter employee who uses a wheelchair due to a muscle-related disorder.
Musk was later forced to apologize after Thorleifson accused him of using the disability as an “excuse” to avoid work.
Crawford “liked” tweets related to the controversy, including a post from a user who said Thorleifson “Doesn’t deserve this abuse.”
The Post has reached out to Crawford for comment.
He also personally liked Thorleifson’s tweets, including one where he directly responded to Musk’s criticism. Complications that he experiences from muscular dystrophy And another in which he said he would open a restaurant in Iceland.
Thorleifson drew Musk’s ire after claiming in a viral Twitter thread that the company never officially confirmed he had been fired.
Musk raised eyebrows by publicly demanding that Thorleifson list his accomplishments at the company. At one point, Musk trolled Thorleifson with a clip from the 1999 comedy film “Office Space,” where two consultants interview a soon-to-be-fired employee.
“The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) has done no real work, claiming as his excuse that he has a disability that prevents him from typing, yet he tweets up a storm. Had been,” Musk tweeted. “I can’t say I have a lot of respect for it.”
After an avalanche of criticism, Musk apologized for his comments, saying they were based on a “misunderstanding.”
“I would like to apologize to Hali for my misunderstanding of his condition,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday night. “It was based on things that were told to me that were false or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful.”
“He’s considering staying on Twitter,” he added.
Before being fired, both Crawford and Thorleifson were put on the “Dot Fire” list on Twitter because of the hefty expenses required to pay their compensation packages. Platformer reported.
Thorleifsson joined Twitter in 2021 when his design agency, Ueno, was acquired by the company’s previous leadership. Similarly, Crawford became a Twitter employee in December 2020 when she acquired the firm she co-founded, Squad.
Crawford has managed to earn a place in Musk’s inner circle on Twitter by voicing the billionaire’s call for the rest of the workforce to adopt a “hardcore” work culture.
Some Twitter employees reportedly resented his ascension through the management ranks, especially after a photo of him curled up in a sleeping bag at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco went viral in November.
His rapid rise ended in late February, when he and Thorleifson were fired in the firm’s latest round of layoffs. Crawford and others who lost their jobs reportedly learned their fate after being locked out of company systems.
“The worst you can get from watching me go all-in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake,” Crawford tweeted after his firing.
