Elon Musk Tried to Sell Twitter Office Plants to Employees to Raise Money
Former Twitter employees have made several claims about Elon Musk since he took over Twitter last year. Now, a current employee has revealed that Musk tried to sell office plants to staff in a bid to "boost revenue." The claims were made by an anonymous Twitter employee during an interview with the BBC. He still works as an engineer at the firm, and he went on to add that Musk even fired the company's cleaning and catering staff.
"There are so many things broken, and there's nobody taking care of it, that you see this inconsistent behavior," the engineer said. "For someone on the inside, it's like a building where all the pieces are on fire. Looking at it from the outside, the façade looks fine, but I can see nothing working. All the plumbing is broken, all the faucets, everything."
In January, Twitter held a year-end auction and sold surplus furniture items in its San Francisco office. The company laid off thousands of workers across the company, a move justified by Musk. Business Insider also reported that cockroaches had been spotted at Twitter's New York office, which workers said began to smell after Musk decided not to renegotiate the contracts of facilities maintenance workers responsible for cleaning the space. Last month, one of the laid-off employees, Amir Shevat, said that Musk had "failed" in leading the company. "We wanted to make people's lives more pleasant and productive," Shevat said. "And all of that went to garbage when Elon bought the company."
The tech mogul bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October of 2022 but said in early November that Twitter was losing more than $4 million a day. Since then he has been taking many measures to cut back costs and apparently save the company from bankruptcy. They include laying off thousands of staff – he chopped Twitter's workforce roughly in half shortly after taking control of the company – and cutting back on free food. Twitter was sued for failing to pay some bills, including millions of dollars in rent for its San Francisco headquarters, according to a lawsuit. Another company sued Twitter claiming that the company owed it more than $390,000 for branded merchandise, including T-shirts, socks, stickers, and a "swag gift box" for Musk himself.
Alongside reducing costs, Musk has tried to boost the company's income. He said that after taking over the site, Twitter had a "massive drop in revenue" as some advertisers cut ties. In 2021, advertising accounted for nearly 90% of the company's total revenue, financial filings show. The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter's revenues fell about 40% in December compared to the same month in 2021. Only time will tell if the issues that Twitter will be resolved or if the lawsuits and poor management will continue to impact employees and users.
