A great philosopher once said, “You’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore.” Elon Musk is finding that out the hard way.
If you’ll recall, back in Nov. 2022, Musk sent what we here at Mashable called “his weirdest email so far.” The email, titled “A Fork in the Road,” followed a string of odd choices from the billionaire after he bought and began running the platform then known as Twitter. In that email, Musk issued an ultimatum demanding employees click yes to working “extremely hardcore.” Well, now that little stunt had cost X hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) ruled that a former senior executive for Twitter was wrongly terminated when he declined to click the yes button in Musk’s email, reported the Irish news outlet RTÉ. The WRC ordered X to pay the ex-employee, Gary Rooney, a record €550,000 or roughly $605,000.
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The email from Musk came on the heels of the self-crowned chief twit firing roughly half of Twitter’s workforce. He effectively demanded his employees work unspecified hours under high-intensity conditions. Rooney apparently balked at agreeing to those “hardcore” demands on a one-day deadline. Rooney claimed he was let go after not clicking yes, RTE reported. The WRC, in fact, ruled Rooney had been fired for not clicking yes, RTE noted, and said it was an unfair termination because Twitter didn’t have substantial grounds to let him go.
WRC adjudication officer Michael MacNamee wrote in the ruling: “No employee, when faced with such a situation, could possibly be faulted for refusing to be compelled to give an open-ended unqualified assent to any of the proposals.”
Musk might’ve gotten the “hardcore” promises he was looking for, but now his company may have to write a pretty hefty check as a result.
