How to get people to resign

The gut reaction that a manager has when an employee announces his or her resignation is telling. Sometimes it is genuine dismay: The person leaving is a star. Sometimes, disappointment is mixed with irritation at having to recruit and train a replacement. And sometimes, it is relief: the human resources equivalent of a pebble being removed from your shoe.

For Mr Elon Musk and his acolytes at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge),

employees of the federal government in America are pebbles all the way down.

On Jan 28, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an e-mail to roughly two million workers offering them “deferred resignation”, the chance to resign and get paid until the end of September.