Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
McDonald's Advertiser
Get the Angel REEF special at McDonald's. Now, let's break it down. My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy bacon, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun, of course. And don't forget the fries and a drink. Sound good?
- [00:13]
Sam Stein
I participate in restaurants for a limited time.
- [00:15]
BetterHelp Advertiser
This is an ad by BetterHelp. Online therapy when it comes to relationships, we often hear about the red flags we should avoid. But it's just as important to focus on the green flags. Think about how you want a relationship to feel, one where your boundaries are respected and you're encouraged to be your best self. If you're not sure what that looks like, therapy can help you identify those qualities. So you can embody the green Flag energy yourself and find it in others. Because whether you're dating, married, building a friendship, or working on yourself, it's time to form relationships that love you back. BetterHelp connects you to a diverse network of over 30,000 therapists worldwide with expertise in a wide range of issues from depression and anxiety to work and relationships. It's 100% online, and sign up only takes a few minutes. Find your green flag energy with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.com hey guys, it's.
- [01:16]
Sam Stein
Me, Sam Stein, here on Saturday night. I don't know why I do this to myself, but I couldn't pull myself away from the YouTube because some crazy shit's happening as usual on a weekend. Before we get into it, subscribe to the feed as always. So basically what's happened tonight is that Elon Musk has taken it up a notch. I didn't think it was possible, but Elon Musk has announced. Actually, this occurred about 2:45 this afternoon. He announced that he was going to be sending all federal employees an email and that in that email he was going to be asking them to list what they have done at work over the last week, which. Okay, but then it contained this line. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation, which is a lot like that. That seems extraordinary. And in fact, already we're seeing legal scholars question whether that' actually allowable. There are certain laws dictating how federal employees can resign or be fired, and seems like this might be in violation of that. Minor points. You know, you probably would want to think about that before sending the email, but, you know. Or before sending the tweet, but whatever. So I was kind of waiting around trying to figure out what was going to happen and Then this evening at like, I don't know, 5:00, the emails came out and the subject line was, what did you do last week? Like, literally, that's the subject line. What did you do last week? It came from the HR, opm.gov that's the office of Personal Management. And the body of the email says, hey. Please reply to this email with approximately five bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links or attachments. Deadline is Monday at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time. This is nuts. I just want to be clear. It's. It's nuts for a variety of reasons. Let's start with, like, the least offensive reason. It's a Saturday afternoon. I know Elon likes to work on the weekends. Hey, I'm here working on the weekends, too. But, like, legitimately, this is not an email to send on a Saturday afternoon. Just not. And then to give people a Monday deadline is, whatever, that's a day and a half, two days. But what if they're not working on Monday? What if someone is on vacation? What if they have extenuating circumstances, they don't check their email. That seems problematic if you're going to say, hey, failure to respond will result in your resignation or be considered, you know, resignation. I'm sure there's a fair number of the 2.2, whatever million federal employees who are not going to see the email. It just happens. Not everyone's going to catch it. People have lives that interfere. Okay, so that's 1, 2. And the most important one is you might have seen a small distinction between what Elon's tweet said and what the email said. His tweet said that if you don't respond, they would consider it resignation. The email said nothing. Nothing to that effect. Right. Like, there's nothing in the email that says, hey, if you don't respond, we're going to consider this your resignation. Now, obviously that's a problem because not everyone's on Twitter checking Elon's Twitter feedback. Which one is the policy? Honestly, which one is the policy here? Because if you didn't see Elon's Twitter feed and you just saw this email, you may say, ah, you know what, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to respond. What are they going to do? And they might consider an act of resignation. Now, I've emailed the White House to get a sense of which one actually is true, the email or the tweet. And as of 6:10pm on Saturday, I have not heard Anything back. I think at some point they're gonna have to, like, specify this for federal employees. This seems problematic, not just on a human level, but on a legal level. Like, probably need to have clear instructions to employees. I will note that the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. ed Martin, huge Doge Elon dude. He sent an email to his staff after Elon's email. It says, folks, Doge and Elon are doing great work. He actually said, we are happy to be participate. Idiot. Please respond to the HR email carefully with regard to confidentiality and other duties. Be general if you need to. If anyone gives you problems, I've got your back. You're good. See you Monday, Ed. Again, nothing in that email From Ed Martin, U.S. attorney for D.C. tells the employees that if they don't respond, it will be considered an act of resignation. That seems like not a minor detail. It seems like an important detail. Right, like, kind of matters, but maybe it doesn't.
- [06:34]
BetterHelp Advertiser
Right.
- [06:34]
Sam Stein
Like, what authority does Elon actually have here? He, according to the government's own legal filings, is not the head of Doge. Is this a direct order? If so, from who? Shouldn't the direct supervisor have a say in who gets hired or resigns and who gets fired? Like, what are we doing here? And didn't we just go through a week of totally random cuts that Doge pursued that then had to be reversed? Are we really going to call our federal workforce based on who actually read Elon's tweets and realizes that they need to respond or else they're going to potentially resign? I mean, it just seems insane now. I've gotten a lot of feedback already from federal workers, and it's only been an hour. Some of them are just like this, like, I'm not going to respond. Some of them are getting instructions not to respond, which, I don't know. That seems kind of risky. But, I mean, I guess if no one responds, then they can fire everybody. I've gotten people who have said they are, like, just apoplectic. I've gotten people who say they're incredibly depressed. Notably, I got people who had signed up for Elon's deferred resignation program, the off ramp that was supposed to give them peace of mind until September, who got this email. So Elon's already given them a resignation, but now he's bugging them to say, what are the five things you've done? And threatening them with another resignation, which. I'm having trouble figuring out how this works. I had one person who said, I stared at the computer and Wondered about the future of my country. You know, it's. This is a lot. And look, I don't know how I would respond in the circumstance, right? Like, I suppose I probably just put down five totally benign bullet points and say, here, this is what I did and move on with my life. And if I got fired or forced to resign, I think that would be ridiculous. And I fight that. But this is the issue is that it's sort of a psychological terror for workers. It's putting them in a very difficult spot where they have to figure out, you know, is this legitimate? Is this not? Like, do I have to respond to Elon? Do I have other things going on like, that I need to respond to other people. My direct supervisor. This is Saturday again, 5pm I'm assuming everyone in a federal office is frantically trying to figure out what the hell this is probably going to the supervisors. The supervisors, like, Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on here? I need guidance. And look, like, I will just say this. This doesn't make Elon particularly creative or thoughtful or efficient. This is the old playbook he did at all his companies. There's nothing like revolutionary or insightful about it. He's just terrorizing his workers. And he gets to pretend like this is some sort of, like, incredible managerial ingenuity that he, like, terrorizes his workforce. Like, oh, you made them say what they did in the past week. Brilliant. You know, like, no, it's. It's stupid. This isn't going to make government more efficient. It's just going to make government less efficient. It's going to make the workplace culture less efficient. It's going to make people hate working there. And maybe that's what you want. But don't say that's in the name of efficiency. It's not. It's dumb and it's unoriginal. You've done it before at every company. Everyone knew this was coming. It's stupid. Also, it's not particularly well designed. It doesn't take much, honestly, to imagine that the email that they sent out@hropm.gov is going to be completely inundated with Internet. You know, people sending the script to the B movie and, like, a bunch of probably gay porn and stuff like that. I don't know how they're gonna. The Doge boys are gonna, like, go through 2.3 million emails. If they get that many. They'll probably put through some AI generator and figure something out and then, you know, pretend like they fired a bunch of people, maybe actually try to fire a bunch of people and then that will get into lawsuits and then we'll have to go through this whole rigmarole all over again. And all the while real world shit's happening and a government that's supposed to help people through real world shit won't do it. I will say the irony is noted by more than one person to me, more than one federal worker to me is that Elon is asking people to respond to these emails at the same time that Elon cannot return emails from two women with whom he's had children. They've had to go on Twitter to beg him to return emails. Can't be bothered for that, but is demanding workers give him five bullet points or potentially risk resignation. All right, so here's where we get to our ask if you are responding to this email that Elon Musk has sent out, send us your best response. Send us what you're sending. We're kind of curious. We have our tip line. It's the bulwark.com tips. Hit us up. Kind of curious to see what they're gonna get. Kind of curious to hear what your reactions are. We will be monitoring it, maybe do a written piece about it, maybe read some of the best responses on YouTube. Till then, thanks for tuning in. Have a good one.
- [12:03]
Chumba Casino Advertiser
How to have fun anytime, anywhere Step 1 Go to chumbacasino.com chumbacasino.com Got it. Step 2 Collect your welcome bonus.
- [12:11]
Sam Stein
Come to papa.
- [12:12]
BetterHelp Advertiser
Welcome bonus.
- [12:13]
Chumba Casino Advertiser
Step 3 Play hundreds of casino style games for free.
- [12:16]
Sam Stein
That's a lot of games all for free.
- [12:18]
Chumba Casino Advertiser
Step 4 Unleash your excitement. Chumba Casino has been delivering thrills for over a decade. So claim your free welcome bonus now and live the chumba life. Visit chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary vgw group.
- [12:30]
Sam Stein
Void where prohibited by law 21 +.
- [12:32]
McDonald's Advertiser
Terms and conditions apply.