Jerry Seinfeld had a bit that I think he used in the opening credits of an episode of “Seinfeld” (I know it appeared in his books) in which he referred to the office environment as a “stationary store with Danish.” The idea of this joke, of course, is that office drones come in to work, grab breakfast, do as little work as possible, maybe steal some supplies, and go home.
We know the truth: the vast majority of the American workforce shows up and puts in the work. Plumbers, roofers, computer technicians, accountants — you name it. Even people who don’t necessarily enjoy their jobs get the work done. The reason for that is employers who hold their employees accountable.
And then there are federal employees. The cliché of the lazy federal worker is so entrenched that the jokes never end. I had a friend who worked for the Department of Agriculture years ago, and she took offense at someone making the “close enough for government work” joke.
I don’t doubt that there are hardworking federal employees, but those aren't the people who are freaking out about the Trump administration and the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to trim the fat and save the taxpayers some money and bureaucracy. There’s still a large contingent of federal employees who see their jobs as a taxpayer-subsidized “stationary store with Danish,” and they showed up in force for a recent protest.
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Journalist Kyle Becker posted a video on X of a woman wearing one of those paper masks five years after COVID. (I had hoped to embed the video, but X embeds aren’t working. I’m assuming it’s the ripple effect of the attack on the platform yesterday. My apologies.) This harridan shrieked about the nerve of Elon Musk and DOGE to hold federal employees accountable for doing their jobs:
When you wake up or when you're on your weekend and you get the “fork in the road” message, or you get the subsequent five bullets. “Hey, what the hell did you do, you lazy federal worker, this week?”
How frightening is it that someone on X, the owner of X, speaks to you directly to say, “What did you do last week at work? And if you don't answer, I am going to fire you.”
But even more egregious, the president comes out, the most powerful person in the land, and endorses that message.
How do you think that makes federal workers feel?
Cry me a river, lady! As a taxpayer, I don’t care one iota about how it makes you feel when someone asks you if you’re doing your job.
In the bottom right corner of the video, someone holds a sign that reads, “Trump, keep your tiny hands off our freedom.” These people see collecting a cushy paycheck on the taxpayers’ dime without accountability as freedom. That’s a level of entitlement that’s worse than any of us might have imagined.
If these federal employees are doing what they’re supposed to do, they should be able to tell the DOGE folks what they do in a workweek. If they have nothing to hide, then they shouldn’t be raising such a fuss over accountability. This harpy shared more than she probably realized, and in doing so, she demonstrated why DOGE is so important.
Keep up the good work, Elon & Co. You’re shining the light on so much.
What a time to be alive! Elon Musk and DOGE are doing the yeoman's work of showing just how entrenched, wasteful, and entitled our federal bureaucracy is.
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