Elon Musk Spams Federal Workers With ‘Justify Your Existence’ Emails
This guy truly has no decent qualities.
Elon Musk is a horrible human-shaped entity, which explains why he’s so bad at managing normal humans.
The Office of Personnel Management, which I guess Musk runs now, sent an email to federal employees on Saturday titled “What did you do last week?” The email requested that employees provide “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager.”
Employees in the State Department, the National Institute of Health, the General Services Administration, Veteran Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies all had until end of day Monday to comply, and Musk warned on his social media platform that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
That’s not actually legal — something we keep saying throughout this horror show but it doesn’t mean we should stop. You can’t expect employees to read emails on their days off, despite Musk’s ketamine-inspired contempt for weekends. You also can’t expect employees to provide what amounts to a high-stakes performance review on such short notice. Kevin Spacey was less odious than Musk in Horrible Bosses … and possibly even his personal life. (Watch below.)
Musk has already unleashed chaos at federal agencies, so it’s especially appalling that he’d send these “hey, whatcha doin’?” notes to staffers who are scrambling to stay afloat.
Predictably, all the right-wingers who thought wearing masks during the pandemic was tyranny rushed to defend Musk’s demands. Matt Walsh ranted, “Fire any federal worker who didn’t answer the email. Fire any who complained publicly about the email. Fire any who complained privately about the email. Fire any who did anything but cheerfully and promptly answer it.”
You can practically smell the jackboots when Walsh suggests terminating employees who “complained privately.” Presumably, their children turned them in for their seditious speech.
Responding to Walsh’s diatribe, Musk posted, “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
This was not really generosity on Trump’s part. The heads of many federal agencies had instructed their staff to ignore the email. This included newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. See, even the worst people in the world don’t appreciate it when random billionaires who’ve neither been elected nor Senate-confirmed to any office start making demands of their staff.
Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to justify the email through some creepy Dear Leader propaganda.
“All federal workers should be working at the same pace as President Trump is working and moving,” she said. “This is to ensure that federal workers are not ripping off American taxpayers, that they are showing up to the office and that they are doing their jobs. And it’s a very simple task to complete.”
Federal employees are also U.S. taxpayers, unlike Trump. Demanding that employees prove that they aren’t shiftless losers is hardly motivational management. It’s incredibly inefficient for federal employees to waste time explaining to people who don’t even go here what they accomplished while Musk razed the federal government. Employees are treated better in organized crime: “Hey guys, I’m the new capo, but I’m not going bust your balls over nonsense. We’re goal oriented.”
Monday, Trump defended the president un-elect. In the Oval Office near French President Emmanuel Macron, who’s normal, Trump said, “I thought [the email] was great, because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government.” (I think the people who don’t show up for work definitely don’t work for the government.)
The crazy old man continued, “What [Musk’s] doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.”
So, apparently the “What did you do last week?” email was some sort of Schrödinger's cat test. This is so insulting and absurd. Republicans have been especially obsessed with federal employees reporting to work in the office, as if it’s a prison and you can’t trust the inmates when they’re out on work release. (Studies have shown that federal telework improves productivity.) Now, Musk has started pushing the conspiracy theory that a non-zero number of federal employees don’t actually exist and are just a scam to siphon money from the government.
“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks,” he posted on his social media site. “In other words, there is outright fraud.”
Maybe Musk is just bonkers or he thinks Trump voters are all idiots. There’s sufficient evidence for both theories. However, if he’s worried that robots are cashing federal paychecks, he could’ve just sent one of those “Are You A Robot?” quizzes. A federal employee could’ve more easily stepped away from their kid’s birthday party last weekend to answer that one.
Managers who aren’t psychopaths take for granted that employees are doing their jobs. The formal review process is when you give constructive feedback and offer guidance as needed. Trump and Musk are treating federal employees as if they’re subhuman. It’s unconscionable.
Musk is an emotionally stunted child with far too much power — Anthony Fremont from The Twilight Zone but less reasonable. Even the mildest pushback caused him to throw a tantrum. He whined the other day:
The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!
Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers.
Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?
Makes old Twitter look good. Didn’t think that was possible.
I’ve worked with my share of terrible people in corporate America, and Musk ranks somewhere in the middle. He insists the email request was “utterly trivial,” yet it was somehow important enough to send to people on a Saturday and demand a less-than-trivial response within 48 hours. Next week, he might go full Joker from The Dark Knight and demand that federal employees fight each other for the remaining jobs.
Musk doesn’t technically report to anyone but if he were asked what he accomplished last week, the only honest answer would be “needlessly tormented people.” Now, that’s a job we can do without.
I have a good friend who is a lawyer at a federal agency and his General Counsel (a Trump appointee) told everyone to not respond to the email because (1) DOGE has no authority to make this request (2) to answer it would implicate attorney client privilege and (3) there are national security concerns with sending such info to DOGE as none of the recipients were vetted. The GC also said he sympathizes with the employees receiving this email because he spends 70 hours a week on work and a big chunk of it is dealing with DOGE requests. I suspect there’s a lot of intraparty turmoil over this.
I’ll also note that if you cared about government employee efficiency the obvious move it to allow full telework for every position where it’s feasible. The savings in office space, plumbing and electricity, security, etc, not to mention how this enhances recruitment (you can literally hire anyone anywhere that has secure internet) makes it a no brainer. So DOGE insisting on in-person work gives away the game. This was never about savings, just destruction of services with a side order of corruption.
Of course it ain't legal. But look at how Murc's Law works here. Do you see all the deference given to this whole "DOGE" thing? IT'S NOT EVEN A DEPARTMENT.
Yet legacy media and just...almost everyone outside of lefty indies responds to this like it's a department established by statute. Even DHS was constituted correctly by Dumbya.
Can you imagine if Democrats did something like this? There'd be stochastic terrorists attacking offices all over the country. A million rightwing media/podcast networks would be wailing in unison.
What a way to run a railroad.