Elon Musk is defending his late Saturday night message to all federal employees requiring them to send five tasks they accomplished at work last week.
Government workers began sharing images of an email they received from the federal Office of Personnel Management’s human resources department reading: ‘Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.’
It gave a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST to send back their explanation of work.
Musk said in a post to X that if workers fail or refuse to respond it would be ‘taken as a resignation.’
But some federal employees tell DailyMail.com that their colleagues have still not even received the email amid outrage from some within the government claiming they do not answer to OPM, which Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been working under ever since President Donald Trump got back into office last month.
‘This is the ultimate d**k boss move from Musk – except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a d**k,’ Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) posted in response to the directive from Trump’s ‘first buddy.’
There are some government employees who claim the emails are ‘harassment’ and say the requirement to justify their weekly tasks amounts to a ‘hostile work environment.’
Musk is pushing back on criticism, posting a series of Xes to his social media account on Sunday defending the message as some question why government employees are held to a lower standard than that of their private sector counterparts.
‘This is a trivial task,’ the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss wrote on X.
Musk also said that his DOGE workers at OPM have already received a ‘large number of good responses.’
‘These are the people who should be considered for promotion,’ he insisted.
It appears that in response to the conflicting pushback and defense, Musk wants to gauge how his millions of followers feel about the email.
‘Should all federal employees be required to send a short email with some basic bullet points about what they accomplished last week?’ he wrote in a poll posted to X on Sunday morning.
As of 10:00 a.m. and with 167,598 responses, nearly 84 percent say ‘yes’ while the rest say ‘no.’
A former Energy Department nuclear scientist wrote on social media: ‘Responding to this email would take less than 2 minutes for any truly productive person. Why is this in any way controversial?’
Musk reposted that sentiment to his own account.
Nonprofit President of Brownstone Institute Jeffrey Tucker said the email from DOGE ‘is completely conventional in the service industry when there’s new management.’
‘It is only causing screams and panics because it is government,’ he added.
Another post Musk highlighted on his X account detailed how the task to detail their accomplishments from the week is common in the ‘private sector.’
‘It’s standard practice to report what you’ve accomplished to your manager,’ Ana Mostarac posted. ‘And if you’ve been a manager, you know how crucial it is to clarify expectations and priorities on a regular cadence.’
‘Now, government sector employees are being asked to do the same,’ she continued. ‘The request is being labeled ‘harassment’ and described as creating a ‘hostile work environment,’ with some even suggesting a class action lawsuit for ‘undue stress and financial harm.’
‘Why should government sector employees be held to a different standard? If anything, shouldn’t they be held to a higher standard, given the importance of their work?’ she questioned.