Elon Musk tried to sell Twitter office plants to boost revenue, claims employee

Former Twitter employees have made several claims about Elon Musk since the latter took over Twitter last year. Now, a current employee has claimed 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 behaviour," he said. Recently, Musk himself said that he has not been making any money from Twitter and that he bought the "world's largest non-profit for $44 billion."

Musk made the revelation in a Twitter post, which has now gone viral on the internet. "Say what you want about me, but I acquired the world's largest non-profit for $44B lol," he wrote.

He bought Twitter last year for $44 billion. Though the billionaire tried to back out of his impulsive bid that reportedly stemmed from a "420" weed joke, he could not back out of their agreement, and Musk was forced to offload more than $15 billion in Tesla shares to raise enough cash to fund the purchase.

In October last year, Musk closed the deal for Twitter with $13 billion in loans and a $33.5 billion equity commitment. Tesla stock also took a big hit when the company's investors started dumping their shares after witnessing Elon Musk's problematic business choices as Twitter's CEO.

He has introduced several changes since taking over the platform to make it more profitable. He scrapped the work-from-home policy, implemented longer working hours, and fired half of the company's 7,500 staff. He received severe backlash from social media users after announcing the decision.

Twitter launched a subscription feature wherein users could pay a certain amount for a blue tick on their profile. The feature was earlier free for prominent personalities such as journalists, activists, and politicians.

Before Musk's takeover of Twitter, a blue tick was used as a verification tool and was perceived as a badge of authenticity. The move was welcomed by most, as it gave everyone the opportunity to acquire the coveted blue tick.

He also recently fired Esther Crawford, the director of product development at Twitter. However, she was not the only one fired in the company's latest round of layoffs. According to a New York Times report, as many as 200 people have been let go in the latest round of job cuts. The move was one of several steps taken by Musk to cut costs.

Meanwhile, he is looking for a new Twitter head and hopes to find someone suited for the job by the end of this year.

"I think I need to stabilise the organisation and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out," said Musk, speaking virtually at the World Government Summit in Dubai, when asked if he had identified a new Twitter CEO and when that person would be hired.

"I don't know, I'm guessing probably towards the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company, because I think it should be in a stable position around, you know, at the end of this year," he said during the conference organised in February.

Last year in December, Musk said that he would resign as its chief executive "as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" He added that he would "just run the software & servers teams." Musk ran a poll on the social media platform days earlier on whether he should step down as Twitter CEO, in which a majority of respondents said he should.