Twitter employees have been surprised by the drastic cost-cutting measures taken by Elon Musk, CEO of their parent company, which has resulted in smelly bathrooms and a lack of toilet paper.
Two people familiar with the issue have reported that the Chelsea office of Twitter has become inundated with odors from uncleaned bathrooms, clogged toilets and a lack of toilet paper.
Despite Musk’s insistence that staff work in the office five days a week, the stinky situation shows no signs of resolving itself soon.
On Thursday, employees of Twitter voiced concern about the state of the company’s bathrooms, with some having gone without cleaning or restocking for weeks. There have been multiple requests on Slack and by email for someone to rectify the situation, but as of Thursday afternoon, there had been no response.
A spokesperson for Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
This comes after Musk reduced expenses in recent weeks, reportedly in an effort to save the company. This has included the cutting of health and wellness benefits, limited free food and office snacks, and the closure of offices.
Additionally, one of Twitter’s three main data servers in the US was shut down last week in an effort to save money.
In the New York office of the company now owned by Elon Musk, the lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper has been described as “just bad,” contributing to low morale.
According to a report, employees may have to bring their own from home if the company doesn’t provide toilet paper by Thursday, as colleagues did in the San Francisco headquarters last month.
Furthermore, since a new facilities team hasn’t been brought into the New York office, unlike San Francisco, the two people familiar with the company said that with the lack of an internal IT support team, employees are left with little to no recourse for common issues.
Nearly all of the employees that could help colleagues on such issues have been laid off, fired, or have resigned in the two months that Musk has owned the company.
Employees of Twitter are increasingly frustrated due to issues they’ve been running into that have caused periods of non-productivity, leading to anxiety. Performance reviews now occur more frequently, and high productivity is the main metric for good performance.