Having worked in both the private and public sectors, I still can’t believe how badly federal bureaucrats melted down over Elon Musk requesting that they send him and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) an email listing five things they accomplished while at work.
At the time of the Musk email edict, bureaucrats were told they would be given the boot if they didn’t respond.
Here is the email, word for word:
Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.
Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments.
Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.
Musk then took to the platform he bought, X/Twitter, and wrote “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
You would have thought federal workers had to give up a kidney, their firstborn child, and one of the family pets rather than provide a short email listing five things they did at work.
Folks, the point of the email wasn’t for Musk and his AI-driven programs to go over each email with a fine toothed comb, scrutinizing every job, every task, and every nut and bolt that was or wasn’t screwed in while federal employees worked on the taxpayers’ dime.
The real task was to determine whether or not a large group of federal employees were so checked out from doing their jobs that they didn’t even respond to the email itself.
There are so many federal employees working from home that the actual cafeteria inside the Department of Interior (DOI) was basically abandoned, according to reports in both the New York Post and Daily Mail.
Let that sink in: so many federal buildings were closed with bureaucrats “working” from home that a massive office cafeteria was abandoned. No workers equals no need for a place to eat.
That ends over the next four years with Donald J. Trump as Commander in Chief.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to a hybrid model where government workers spend a majority of time in the office with one flex day working from home. Managers must then ensure work is getting done when federal employees are remote.
Accountability in the private sector is measured multiple times per day concerning productivity and profitability. If you don’t produce, you’re fired. Pretty simple.
Private sector employees are given work related performance reviews regularly. Remember the business saying as it pertains to efficiency: “if you can’t measure ‘it,’ you can’t manage ‘it.’” It’s about time that the same private sector standard is used within the walls of government.
The visceral reaction to the Musk email request tells me that many federal employees were not held accountable over the past four years, and I’m only talking about those who actually worked for their government supported paycheck.
Less than one month after the election, United States Senator Joni Ernst worked on a report that showed only six-percent of federal employees showed up to the office on a full-time basis, that’s it, six-percent.
Her findings, released in December of 2024, also stated that a whopping one-third of federal employees were fully remote workers.
Federal employees sucking their thumbs in the fetal position over an email asking them to list five things they did the week before tells me they’re fortunate to have a government job.
Their whiny antics wouldn’t last in the private sector, where the free market determines who stays, and who goes.
These federal folks wouldn’t last one week in the private sector, and therefore wouldn’t have lasted long enough to even need to write an email listing five work related accomplishments.
There are two new bosses in town, Elon Musk and President Trump, and they’re thankfully bringing private sector principles to the bloated bureaucracy known as the federal government.
Besides, there’s a support group for private sector employees who are held accountable by their bosses. It’s called “everybody."