On Saturday federal employees received an email which I presume came from my favorite emailee hr@opm.gov (see “News From a Federal Employee“) (that’s actually Amanda Scales) entitled “What did you do last week?” I say “presumed” because I am in Japan and I am not authorized to take my government-issued laptop out of the country. But from what I understand the email asked for bullet points of five “accomplishments” from the past week. Elon Musk posted on X that a failure to do so by Monday would be counted as a resignation. This is what he did at X as well. There’s been a backlash with most federal agencies saying the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) does not have the authority to evaluate performance of employees across all agencies of the federal government, especially those working with classified information. The spokesperson for OPM, McLaurine Pinover, a recent implant of Elon Musk, however, said it would be up to the individual agencies to decide what to do if employees did not respond.
One of the agency heads said employees could decide how to respond. Which could entail either responding or deciding not to respond, which would be in itself be a response.
Sounds a little Kafkaesque to me.
Since I am not able to respond to the email directly and cognizant of the looming deadline I decided to post my response here on the BYTTP blog. So here goes.
What I Did Last Week
- Worked as a VA psychiatrist where I saw patients with PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and various other mental disorders, dealing with crises in veterans lives from dealing with family issues, medication adjustments, suicidal ideation and getting service dogs to help them cope with daily life
- Packed my suitcase to travel to Kobe, Japan, to attend the International Brain Stimulation Conference, where I was scheduled to present “Effects of Vagus Nerve Stimulation on PTSD, Opioid Withdrawal, and Memory”
- Received a call while packing that my trip was “cancelled” because it had not received the necessary approvals for international travel from the VA even though I had initiated the approval process four months prior.
- Travelled to the Atlanta airport in the hope that an approval would come through at the last minute which in fact occurred due to the persistence of the International Travel Office of the VA. Considered myself lucky that none of them had been on a “probation” list and lost their jobs.
- This list is going over five bullet points. Sorry, Elon. Guess I’m just really busy
- Spent 30 hours travelling to Kobe, Japan, including sitting overnight in the Tokyo airport where I was kicked out of one terminal and had to go to another. This is because the more direct flight would have put the total cost over $5,000 which would have required special approval from the VA, even though the VA doesn’t pay for the travel. My own funding from my university does.
- Attended multiple lectures once I got to the conference, including by our collaborator Marom Bikson from CUNY who developed a method of transcranial electrical stimulation that can be disposed of after use like a band-aid. Here he is below.
Since Elon Musk, the author of the email asking me about my week (thanks, Elon!) has been so busy, I figured he wouldn’t have time to outline his accomplishments for the past week, so I thought I would do it for him. See below.
- Appeared before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) wielding a chain saw as a symbol of how is cutting down the federal government and carrying a painting of himself with rays coming out of his forehead while apparently walking around on Mars with various extra-terrestrial beings.
- Walked off with said painting in spite of the fact that the artist, Seth Leibowitz, said he wanted it back because he wasn’t finished with the painting.
- Said artist Leibowitz when asked about the painting said it was one of his “hero cards” but also it was “wolf in sheep’s clothing” whatever that means.
- Created an email with the title “What did you do last week” asking for five bullet points from all 2 million federal employees of their accomplishments the week and then went on the social media site X and said that failure to respond would be considered a resignation
- Caused to be issued emails and letters telling thousands of employees they were being fired because their performance was inadequate as an apparent form letter in spite of the fact that many of them had recent exceptional performance reviews.
