Twitter lawsuit offers new details about the company culture under Elon Musk

Elon Musk seems to have about the same amount of respect for building codes as he does for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A new lawsuit against Twitter and its new owner alleges he ordered employees to ignore regulations and permitting laws.

The suit was filed Tuesday by six former employees against Musk and Twitter, saying the company owes them severance and “punitive damages.” The suit also details several alleged incidents that offer some insight into how Musk has been running the company.

(Fast Company reached out to Twitter for comment about the accusations, but only received the now-standard poop emoji in reply.)

The toilet

The lawsuit alleges that Boring Company CEO Steve Davis told plaintiff Joseph Killian, a 12-year Twitter veteran who oversaw office design, that Musk wanted to add a bathroom next to his office, so he didn’t need to wake his security team (who escorted him everywhere in the building) when he needed to relieve himself in the middle of the night. Killian says he promised to jump right on that, but warned it would take time to get the permits approved.

Davis, the suit alleges, told him not to get the permits saying, “we don’t have to follow those rules.” When told no licensed plumber would do the job without a permit, Davis allegedly told Killian to hire an unlicensed plumber instead, which would have been a violation of the lease.

“Davis responded that management did not care about any of this, that they weren’t interested in ensuring that the work was performed in accordance with the standards required by the lease, by the City of San Francisco, by the State of California, or any other authority, they just wanted it done,” the suit reads.

The “hotel rooms”

Musk’s installation of beds in Twitter offices “for tired employees” was well documented in the early days of his takeover. Musk sent midnight emails insisting on “long hours at a high intensity” and asking only the most “hard-core” workers to stay at the company, many of whom were later laid off nonetheless.

Initially, the lawsuit alleges, Musk called these “hotel rooms,” but changed the language to fly under the radar of city inspectors. While initial changes were small, mainly consisting of changing furniture in the rooms, the suit says Davis instructed Killian to begin planning for things like en-suite bathrooms.

When Killian wrote an email saying these changes would require permits, he says he was “emphatically instructed” to not put anything in writing about the project again.

“Killian began to understand that his loyalty to Twitter and his desire to protect the company he loved from Musk, and the Transition Team was going to be increasingly challenged by his employer’s expectation that he would lie, defraud, and even break the law at Musk’s direction,” the suit reads.

The electrical work

As part of the work for those sleeping rooms, Killian says he was instructed to circumvent the building’s motion-sensitive lighting control system, which would turn on the lights in rooms where people were sleeping after they made small movements. The landlord denied Twitter’s request to do so and Killian was allegedly instructed to disconnect it himself, a job he says he was not qualified to do.

Killian eventually hired an electrician to disconnect these rooms independently, breaking both the lease agreement and the building code, he claims.

Later, the suit alleges, he was instructed to install space heaters in the rooms, another lease violation, as well as locks on the “hotel room” doors.

“California code requires locks that automatically disengage when the building’s fire suppression systems are triggered,” the suit reads. “Killian was repeatedly told that compliant locks were too expensive and instructed to immediately install cheaper locks that were not compliant with life safety and egress codes. . . . Killian protested that installing these locks would put lives at risk. … Nobody cared.”

Killian quit on December 10, 2022.

The lawsuit comes as Musk turned heads in a CNBC interview this week, saying that working from home is “morally wrong” and that he had no intention of being more thoughtful with his Tweets, regardless of their impact.

“There’s a scene in The Princess Bride—great movie—where [Inigo Montoya] confronts the person who killed his father. And he says, ‘Offer me money. Offer me power. I don’t care,’” Musk said. “I’ll say what I want to say. And if the consequence of that is losing money, then so be it.”