Twitter sued over failure to pay Rs 1.12 crore office rent

Twitter is sued for allegedly failing to pay rent on its San Francisco office. According to CBS News, which has accessed the court documents, Twitter has been unable to pay rent of $136,260 (approximately Rs 1.12 crore), and the owner of the Hartford building, Columbia Reit, 650 California LLC, is suing it. Currently, Twitter occupies the 30th floor of the building. The report also notes that the social media company signed a seven-year lease for the office space in 2017.

It is reported that Twitter has not paid rent on its global offices in weeks. This includes its San Francisco headquarters in the city's Civic Centre area. Interestingly, most of these offices were closed or empty due to Twitter's longstanding work-anywhere policy. Following the acquisition of Elon Musk at the end of October, not only was the work-anywhere policy removed, but the social platform company also introduced strict work rules to increase the platform's user base and revenue.

Twitter is facing another lawsuit from Jet Services Group LLC, which alleges the Musk-owned company failed to pay rent on two charter flights in October. As per reports, the amount is valued at $197,725 (roughly Rs 1.63 crore), and the lawsuit was filed in the New Hampshire District Court last month. Elon Musk has constantly said that Twitter's previous leaders made some bad business decisions and that the company was losing more money than making it. In November, Musk said Twitter served employees a lunch worth Rs 32,000. A former employee alleged that Musk was lying, and the company offered Rs 2,000 worth of lunch to each employee daily. Similarly, a DCD (data centre dynamics) report claims that Twitter shut down its Sacramento data centre on Christmas Eve to cut costs. Fortunately, Twitter did not suffer significant outages, as some feared.

To additionally save costs, Twitter has laid off more than half of its global workforce, which currently employs nearly 2,700 employees. The company had approximately 7,500 employees as of the end of September. The company has also laid off its cleaning staff, forcing employees to bring their bathroom supplies, including toilet paper. A source told the New York Times that the "office is in disarray with dirty bathrooms" due to a lack of janitors. The report adds that the office reeks of "leftover takeout food and body odour."