X must pay $600,000 to employee who didn’t click “yes” to work “hard”

A great philosopher once said, “You’re not hardcore if you don’t live hardcore.” Elon Musk learned this the hard way.

If you recall, in November 2022, Elon Musk sent what we here at Mashable called “his weirdest email yet.” The email, titled “A Fork in the Road,” followed a series of odd choices the billionaire made after he bought and began running the platform then known as Twitter. In the email, Musk issued an ultimatum demanding that employees click “yes” to work “extremely hard.” Well, now that little stunt had cost X hundred thousand dollars.

The Irish Employment Relations Commission (WRC) has ruled that a former Twitter executive was wrongfully dismissed for refusing to click the “yes” button in Elon Musk’s email, Irish news outlet RTÉ reported. The WRC ordered X to pay the former employee, Gary Rooney, a record €550,000, or about $605,000.

Elon Musk’s email came just after the self-proclaimed Twitter boss fired about half of Twitter’s employees. He demanded that his employees work indefinite hours under very intense working conditions. Rooney was apparently reluctant to accept these “harsh” demands within a day. Rooney claimed he was fired after refusing to click “yes,” RTE reported. The WRC actually ruled that Rooney was fired for not clicking “yes,” RTE noted, and said it was an unfair dismissal because Twitter did not have serious grounds for firing him.

Michael MacNamee, the WRC’s head of arbitration, wrote in the decision: “No employee, faced with such a situation, could be blamed for refusing to be compelled to give open and unqualified consent to any of the proposals.”

Elon Musk may have gotten the “hard” promises he was looking for, but his company may now have to write a pretty big check.