Do indignant federal workers who act as if it’s beneath their dignity to account for their work hours have any idea how petulant and entitled they seem to the rest of us?

Apparently not. This woman is griping that she has two days to knock out five bullet points about what she did last week. 

Oh the pressure!

Yet she somehow found time to get her makeup done so she could go on CNN and whine.

Not feeling sorry for you, lady.

Looks like working from home for years and collecting fat paychecks has insulated federal workers from the real world. Remember, the average federal wage right now is $106,462. Meanwhile, the average wage of American workers - according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics - is $65,470.

Government workers would be wise to temper their tantrums.

Now that the Trump administration is on a mission to cut waste and make government more efficient, federal workers have been ordered back to their desks - if they have desk jobs - and to document their productivity. You know, just like workers in the private sector.

So why all the apoplexy?

A story in the Carolina Journal documented the billions of dollars wasted on heating and cooling nearly vacant federal buddies.

The federal government spends billions of dollars annually to lease and maintain office space in Washington, DC, yet just 6% of federal workers report being in-person on a full-time basis, leaving much of the government’s office space empty while taxpayers foot the bill. 

The government owns 7,697 vacant buildings and another 2,265 partially empty buildings. Maintaining and leasing government office buildings costs $8 billion every year, and another $7.7 billion is spent on the energy to keep them running. 

With the federal workforce still largely working from home, not one major government agency or department headquarters in DC is even half full. Nearly one-third of the federal workforce is entirely remote, according to a report from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa. 

“‘Out of the office’ is taking on a whole new meaning in the nation’s capital since most government employees are rarely in the office,” the report reads. “As a result, the nation’s capital is a ghost town, with government buildings averaging an occupancy rate of 12 percent. If federal employees can’t be found at their desks, exactly where are they?”

Good question. And the mass email is attempting to get a handle on the locations of the federal workforce.

An email sent out from DOGE over the weekend made a simple request: Federal workers were asked to provide 5 simple bullet points showing what tasks they performed last week.

Elon Musk posted on X that no response would be interpreted as a resignation. Several departments - theFBI, the Defense Department and those in the intelligence agencies - have been told by their cabinet secretaries not to respond. They are undergoing their own surveys of work habits.

Chances are some workers don’t even check their government email accounts.

For those of us in the private sector, documenting productivity  is second nature. In many cases, our bosses can SEE us working. Because we GO to work.

That’s true for most Americans, by the way.

Again, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most common jobs in America are in retail sales. Second on the list are home health and personal care aides. Third are in fast food and counter work.

Hard to hide from bosses in any of those jobs.

The list goes on: laborers, cashiers, office clerks, RNs. 

I’ve been working since I was 15. I’ve never had a job where my boss didn’t know what I was doing. As a waitress I worked shifts and the owner of the restaurant could see me spilling coffee and dropping plates. I worked in a book bindery one summer and punched a time clock when I arrived and when I left. In every newspaper job I ever held my editors knew what I was working on and when my copy would appear. Now that I’m a radio host It’s pretty obvious where I am every weekday morning.  

The rest of the time I work for this website and I feel guilty if I just sit down and relax.

Everyone I know answers to a boss. Teachers, fire fighters, police officers, nurses and doctors, all work set hours. 

Many federal employees are hardworking and conscientious. No doubt many were able to respond to the DOGE email in seconds.

Last November Americans went to the polls and voted for accountability and smaller government. There’s no way to do that without reducing the size of the bloated federal government.

Layoffs are unfortunate and painful. Ask any worker who’s lost his or her job about the experience. Starbucks announced yesterday that it is laying off 1,000 workers. Sucks for the baristas, but they’ll have to find other jobs.

Where is the public outcry at the coffee chain?

America can no longer afford an untold number of no-show jobs on the taxpayers’ dime. 

Despite the increasingly insane series of Mark Warner car videos in which he fumes at the president and demands the retention of federal workers, the government is not a jobs program, although they are his voters.

Someone should tell him.

American workers are constantly being laid off. From 2008 to 2012 President Obama kept his promise to try to kill the coal industry and an estimated 50,000 miners lost their livelihoods.

During the 2019 presidential campaign in New Hampshire Joe Biden famously - and callously - dismissed concerns about unemployed coal miners.

“Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”

A profession I know a little about has been decimated in recent years. In fact,  2/3 of all newspaper workers have been laid off since 2005. That translates to about 43,000 journalists.

You know what? We survived. We found other work.

Federal workers will too.