Musk offers ‘another chance’ to respond to productivity email, but warns failure again means termination

Billionaire Elon Musk, who’s slashing wasteful government spending with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said federal workers who fail to respond to his productivity email may be given another chance, but warned if they fail to respond a second time, they’ll be terminated.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an email titled, “What did you do last week?” to federal employees, calling on them to submit five bullet points detailing their accomplishments over the past week, or face possible termination.

Several agencies, including the Department of Defense (DOD) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), responded to the request, telling their employees to ignore the OPM email.

Musk appeared to be fired up by the lack of response to the request, turning to X to express his frustration just hours before the 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline.

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“The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” he wrote. “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.”

Musk responded to a post by Matt Walsh, host of “The Matt Walsh Show,” saying the government should fire any federal worker who did not answer the email, complained publicly or privately about the email or did anything other than answer it promptly.

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“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” Musk responded. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he called on the social media giant’s former CEO Parag Agrawal to detail what he accomplished during the work week — years before he employed the same tactic on federal employees while serving in his capacity as chair of DOGE under the Trump administration.

“What did you get done this week,” Musk texted Agrawal in April 2022.

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tasked Elon Musk with making cuts in wasteful government spending by leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Musk helped resurrect the text exchange over the weekend on X, when he responded to an account that shared a “how it started, how it’s going” post that showed a screenshot of Musk’s text to Agrawal, accompanied by a screenshot of a post on X from Musk on Saturday, directed at federal employees.

In the post, Musk wrote, “Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired.”

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“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” 

“To be clear, the bar is very low here,” Musk wrote. “An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable! Should take less than 5 mins to write.” 

Musk’s DOGE is in the midst of auditing various federal agencies in search of wasteful spending, corruption and mismanagement. 

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DOGE’s work comes as President Donald Trump ordered the federal workforce to return to the office after five years of remote work stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and has vowed to clean house of bad actors within the government and axe overspending.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.