Government Employee Compares Replying to an Email to ‘What I Imagine Living in North Korea To Be Like’

UNKNOWN FEMALE: “Today I responded to the email that we received as federal employees asking us to report five things that we accomplished last week. I’m not worried about my five things. I have plenty of things to report. I did plenty of work last week. But the feeling of just like absolute existential dread that I felt typing out a response to that email is something that I wish I could convey to everyone, because it felt like such a glimpse into the reality that they are trying to create and it was terrifying. It felt like you will do what I say or else. The email that we received did not say that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation. But the post on X did say that, and leadership at my agency is pretty much like the email is authentic but we don’t know if the threat is or is not. We are going to respond, but kind of left it up to each of us to decide what to do. We have received more emails about all of the f***ing bulls*it going on with DOGE and Elon and all of this federal employee stuff that like I’ve spent more time in the last couple of weeks navigating these emails, going to these town hall meetings, going to these other meetings, making sure that so that the leadership can break down what’s happening and tell us how we need to respond and tell us what the f**k is going on and tell us, ‘Oh you might lose your job because when your FTE runs like there’s so many things that they’re having to convey to us and so nothing that actually should normally be getting done and accomplished is being done or accomplished because we’re all so busy f***ing trying to navigate this hellscape that is happening.

That is waste. That and the fact that the studies we work on if we are worried that they might be considered you know something that that will lose funding what’s the point in working on it now, and has the last year two three years of work we’ve done on it been for nothing? Like that’s wasteful. Like this whole thing is — is an exercise for them to show us how much power they have and how little we have and how we must do what they say. And it’s — it’s so insane because again who the f**k is Elon, like and how does he get to decide that he is king of the federal employees king of HR at the office of personal management and he gets to tell us, send this email or you’re fired, like you lose your job. There’s no Rationale here that makes it make any sense outside of look how much power I have and you better f***ing listen or your livelihood is gone. The — the two million people that are going to have to respond to this email, if they choose to, are they going to go through two million emails to make sure that they were honest, to make sure that they were um authentic, to make sure that the items listed out were relevant to the people’s jobs, to make sure that the person — like there’s so many things that would have to happen for them to like actually legitimately go through these emails and that’s not going to happen. Because it just — like it can’t happen.

You know, and — and again like it’s just a flex. It’s just you — you need to know who’s in charge and this is one of the ways we’re making you aware. And the feeling that I felt responding to that email was such a glimpse into a possible future here, a probable future here if we don’t f***ing do something about it. It felt so scary and so heartbreaking. It felt much like I would imagine living in a place like what I always imagined North Korea to be like would be like, where the energy is, ‘Yes master, your wish is my command.’ And again these people that we’re reporting to are people that have no expertise outside of like tech. They don’t know anything about the health services that are operated through the federal system or about anything really. And now half of the CDC workforce is gone and the National Park rangers are like largely gone. These are people who have worked their lives to have the careers they have, who have gone to school for this, who have built a career over years, years, decades, and now some man and his very ridiculously young tech bros are taking away the careers of life-long federal employees, people who have devoted their lives to this country, to the government, who have taken the oath — we all take an oath — to the Constitution.

That’s not just for military and for people in politics, that’s for all federal employees. And people take it really seriously. Things get done. Things continue on and things are happening because people are doing their jobs. There are people all over the place that are not doing their jobs everywhere, all the time, that is — that is certain, and that does not — that extends surely into people that work for the federal system, but — but everything that’s happening is not because they don’t think we do work. It’s because they want to say, ‘We have power over you.’ And that is a feeling that everybody should fear feeling. When the people in charge of the place you live start to exercise that power in a way that there’s no like real reason for outside of, ‘You will know who’s in charge here.’ Like, ‘I am the captain now,’ is the energy. That’s terrifying. Like I said, this is a glimpse into a future that is really scary and everything that’s happening this isn’t again looking for fraud and waste.”