Federal Workers Unsure If They Should Email Elon Musk Their Weekly Wins or Just Die Quietly

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the federal government continues its spiraling descent into whatever Elon Musk thinks “efficiency” means, thousands of civil servants spent Monday frozen at their desks, unsure whether to compile a list of weekly accomplishments for the tech billionaire—or simply give up and disintegrate under the flickering fluorescent lights.

The confusion stems from a mass email Musk sent Saturday evening, demanding all federal employees submit “at least five meaningful outputs” by Monday night, or face immediate termination. The subject line read simply: What Did You Do This Week?

Musk later doubled down in a post on X, writing: “If you can’t name five useful things you did this week, why are you being paid with taxpayer money? Produce or perish.”

Inside agencies, the mood ranged from quietly apocalyptic to full-blown existential. One staffer at the Department of Commerce submitted a PowerPoint containing only the phrase “I showed up” repeated across 12 slides. At the FAA, a panicked employee reportedly tried to log into NASA’s rover telemetry feed in a desperate bid to claim credit for Martian soil analysis.

“I finally sharpened my pencil,” one anonymous EPA employee wrote. “I stopped crying long enough to open a PDF. I watched my coworker stare at a wall for six hours and honestly? He might be onto something…”