2/25/25

FIVE (5) BULLETS
TO SAVE MY JOB –
EVEN IN RETIREMENT

BEN, Acting Manager for purposes of our version of the Five-bullet Memo ordered by the Musk Administration from federal workers

IN SOLIDARITY WITH FEDERAL WORKERS targeted for intimidation, humiliation and firing by the Musk Administration, I began on what is now yesterday with a vow to justify my existence.
     My plan: write a memo, cc'd to my “manager,” similar to that demanded of government employees in two directives that surfaced over the weekend and that amounted to asking the workers to dig their own career graves.
     One was a posting by Elon “Chainsaw” Musk on his social media platform known as X, but if Chainsaw knows what's good for him, might sometime be renamed “T”. The other was an email from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
     Workers were ordered to highlight what they had done on the job during the past week.
     The OPM email said workers should detail in "approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to NPR. Replies were due 1 minute before midnight, Monday Feb. 24.
     Confusion abounded. The OPM email omitted Chainsaw’s threat on X that "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”  Thus, the OPM version sounded a tad kinder; or was it a trick, lulling a procrastinating worker into thinking his or her job was not in jeopardy, while unwittingly providing clear grounds for immediate dismissal?
     There was further uncertainty after some workers were told not to respond to the directive at all, with outfits like the FBI  apparently worried about  security breeches. Other agencies took a middle of the road approach, advising workers to draft replies – but not send them, pending further instructions.

MY FIRST HURDLE in drafting a personal version of  a work worthiness memo was the matter of the “5 bullets.”
      What, I asked, was the meaning of “bullets?”
     A survival-minded federal worker might turn to an official manual for guidance.  Finding, of course, no guidance,  he or she might take the next logical step, consulting  the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

     As you can see, this turns out not to be that simple, with the dictionary  giving multiple definitions of  “bullet. To wit:
     1:  a round or elongated missile (as of lead) to be fired from a firearm
     2-a : something resembling a bullet (as in curved form);
     2: b : a large dot placed in printed matter to call attention to a particular passage
     Common sense (a virtue promoted by the Assistant to the President) argues that you consider using the first definition first, bcause it's first. So, in this case, we should go with the "elongated missile."
     But how to obtain five (5) elongated missiles in a hurry?  I’m pretty sure there aren’t any ammo shops in my neighborhood. And even if I’m able to obtain said elongated missiles, how to deliver them to my manager before midnight?
      Worse, what if the OPM email, defying common sense, intended that the respondent  use Merriam-Webster's definition 2-b, “a large dot,” and a total of five (5)  large dots?
      In which case, sending sending five (5) elongated missiles, instead of five (5) large dots, might reasonably cause the manager to conclude that the worker was making some sort of melodramatic warning, or worse, a terrorist threat, warranting immediate transport to Guantanamo.
      Arresting the worker would serve the Musk Administration's twin goals by a) reducing the workforce and b) supporting the renewed mission of the notorious Cuban prison, soon to be named Camp Musk, or Camp Trump, or Camp Musk-Trump or Camp Trump-Musk.

THEN THERE WAS A SECOND PITFALL, finding a “manager” to whom I would cc my five (5) arguments for continued employment.
     Being retired, I not only have no job, but I have no manager.
     With our "children" grown and moved out of the family homestead,  there’s just me and my wife. She is highly organized and mission-driven, but not inclined to manage her husband unless in emergencies, such as reminding him that this is the week to move the compost bin to the curbside for pickup, or that with February coming to an end, maybe it's time to consider taking down some of the Christmas decorations. And  I’m pretty sure that she would turn down the managerial job even on a one-time basis, because anything to do with the Musk Administration, in her judgment,  certainly would be loathsome, but hardly urgent.
      Which leaves Ben.    

     Ben is our Bengal-like cat, who, along with several litter-mates, spent his early kittenhood under a porch in Florida, before being whisked off to a shelter in Rhode Island.  Through no fault of his own, his next assignment was to “keep up with the Joneses.”  This was not a particularly exciting move in a  young cat's life, but neither was it exceptionally difficult.
      At 17-pounds, Ben  devotes most of his daily activity to deciding which couch, unmade bed, pile of blankets or collection of pillows offers the softest, warmest, sunniest coziest radiator-adjacent place to get his obligatory 23.6 hours of daily sleep.
      So, for this one day, Ben would be The Man.

TO: Ben, Acting Manager
FROM: Brian C. Jones, Acting Worker
SUBJECT: Career-ending memo
DATE: Feb. 24, 2025.

Sir: Herewith and as instructed, my five (5) bullets detailing my accomplishments during the past day. Or maybe the past week. Hard when you are (hopefully) more than halfway through one's early 80s to tell the difference.

• TO-(2)-DO LIST. I find it useful to organize my day with a daily To-(2)-Do list of things I’m determined to accomplish on any given day/week/month/year. Today, however, given the massive assignment of listing five (5) job accomplishments, I never did get around to completing the To-(2)-Do list, on which my work accomplishments would take the Number One (1) placeholder.  In my defense, I thought about this a lot.
• MORNING NAP. Given the furious pace of the day’s events, not only was I unable to complete the To-(2)-Do list, I could not arrange  my usual pre-lunch nap.
  
• AFTERNOON NAP. See the preceding Number Two (2) bullet, which describes the same circumstances, just in a different time period, this being the post-lunch work-nap slot. Busy as I was, I noticed that you, Mr. Acting Manager, were able to squeeze in a “cat nap” or two (2).
  
• DOOM-SCROLLING. Continued to scour five (5) online legacy news sites to track the latest outrages and betrayals of our democracy by the Musk Administration and its Assistant to the President, while searching for signs that the forces of democracy will come to life and find ways to save an imperiled nation. Silly me.
• BEDTIME. What a hectic day! Had to stay up late to finish this memo in case the Assistant President gave the thumbs up to the Actual President to automatically fire workers who failed to (2) file the memo by 1 (one) minute before midnight.

ADDENDUM. It is now 12:02 a.m. Feb. 25, 2025, meaning what? I missed the deadline.
     My only excuse is that I was working so gosh darn hard all day on the memo, along with my regular duties, that I just worked too (2) gosh darn hard, which the President and his Assistant might do well to factor into their assessment, presuming that my Acting Manager  performed HIS duties in presumably analyzing the five (5) bullets, although, in his defense, the Manager's duties were not explained in the OPM email.
     I would like to add - and I realize that I'm risking my own non-job in providing excess perspective - that no cat, just like no federal worker, deserves to be part of in a degrading, punitive and humiliating make-work debacle.
     As for the rest of us, it remains my hope that, as unlikely as it seems at the moment, we will all get through this. Somehow.
     -- bcj