(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
If you are not aware of Elon Musk’s major HR blunder from yesterday, allow me to give you a quick recap. After discovering that a guy was simply asking if he was still a Twitter employee, Elon mocked the man for not needing his job at Twitter, having muscular dystrophy, and tweeting when he should have been working. After finding out that the guy he bashed for no reason was literally one of the best people, he heeded the advice of his in-house counsel, found a heart, and apologized for the man. Turns out, that apology wasn’t enough to prevent the market from exacting its toll for his trolling.
Again, this is still just the background. Here’s the market response:
Two pieces of advice from this: 1) Despite the justified joy, you probably shouldn’t be out there flipping cars because of this, and 2) Being the person Mr. Rogers knows you could be isn’t only the right thing to do, it is fiscally prudent. Twitter Fingers over here is down billions (with a B) over casual ableism and poor managerial practices.
While I am not legally qualified to determine if the bit about the “I’m a little teapot” thing is actually true, I have two things to add here. I think that Elon would do it without the need for any coercion — he’s just that desperate for attention. Here’s Exhibit A:
And this may really be a subset of the first point, but how often is this guy gonna pull the fire and immediately rehire the same people shtick? If I had a nickel for every time this has happened, and I were to factor in the plummeting price of Tesla stock, then not only would I have at least 15 cents, that would be about two whole shares worth of the company!
In short, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict two multimillion-dollar lawsuits coming down the pike. The first will be a very easy workplace retaliation lawsuit if Elon squeezes his way out of his legal team’s hands long enough to make this situation even worse. The second? When the shareholders sue him for costing him billions over harassing his employees on one one of the world’s most public and screenshottable public squares.
Dirty deletes can only do so much; the internet never forgets.
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
