We’ve all had that boss at one point. They’re the perpetual hiss in your ear, the utter bane of your existence. At the estuary point of free will and a high paycheck comes a power trip so stupendous that they simply must flaunt their position over others at even the smallest opportunities, for the most negligible of reasons. Working for them, you’re able to learn just how deep your loathing goes — because you know they haven’t ever experienced the grunt work or have grown so far past it that they’ve lost all recollection. Now take this faceless tyrant and give it a name: Elon Musk.
On Feb. 22, Musk wrote on his social media platform, X, “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
An NPR confirmed source relayed that the emails detailed the specific requirements of “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager” with a deadline of the following Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.
As the appointed head of the White House’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE for short, Musk is in charge of all things productive. This all-call is just another way that Musk is really turning the country around, such as weeding out the corrupt billionaires who buy their way into political offices seated at the right hand of the most powerful representative of the U.S… oh, wait.
Of course, on Feb. 25, Fox News reported that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that “More than one million federal workers participated in the Elon Musk and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directive to provide a bullet-point list of their work accomplishments from the previous week.” More than one million! Well, certainly, if this were a bad thing, the White House employees wouldn’t have responded! It’s not like anyone who’s ever been scared of losing their job has done something they complained about or felt strongly against.
Despite Musk’s scare tactics, it seems that not even the self-proclaimed “coolest guy in the universe” can get his own government buddies on board. CBS published on Feb. 25 that the very same Office of Personnel Management (OPM) held a follow-up call and clarified “that individual agencies can decide how to respond, despite a threat from Elon Musk that employees who refused could lose their jobs.” As if that wasn’t enough, Musk himself posted on Feb. 24, “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.” At this point, one has to wonder if he’ll make good on his promise or if he’ll hold his hands up and stammer, “No, I really mean it this time, guys! For real!“
It’s unfortunate that the White House employees, and America in general, are forced to take Musk so seriously. He could very much have a real impact on hard-working, intelligent, dutiful public servants and destroy the very little the country has left. It is with the utmost privilege of not having to work for the federal government, as well as not yet living in complete authoritarianism, that I lay out my intentions for this article: to make as much fun of him as I possibly can.
If Musk wishes to validate his orders and hold himself to the same standards to avoid perceived hypocrisy, then he, too, should send his boss an email. To help out, I’ve written a series of productive bullet points that he may copy and paste at his own convenience.
- Absolutely embarrassed myself at a conference by referencing outdated internet lingo (I’m old as dirt, if you couldn’t tell)
- Ignored my baby mama’s public pleas to get my child medical attention (shadow-banned her on my own social media site)
As you can tell, our dutiful doge of DOGE has quite the busy schedule — so much so that there simply isn’t enough time for him to pour over the employees’ responses himself. Instead, he’s decided to make AI do it for him. How efficient! Now, we don’t need people to deem if other people and their jobs are necessary. We can make robots do that!
To those struggling under Musk’s new “meme regime,” I am truly sorry. Futile as the future looks, my unsolicited advice is this: hold on to your lunch money. He’ll probably try to take it and fail. And if somehow it falls on the floor for him to scramble to, he’ll just turn it into Dogecoin.