Federal workers spent Monday trying to figure out how – or even whether – to respond to Elon Musk’s weekend email blast telling them to explain their work last week or risk losing their job.

A day of confusing and often contradictory guidance, left many federal workers still unclear ultimately how to handle Musk’s request. Some were told to comply, others were advised not to, and still others were awaiting instructions from their agency’s leaders until late in the day.

Speaking from the Oval Office Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump called Musk’s email demand “ingenious” and said that anyone who didn’t respond is “semi-fired or fired.”

Then, a couple hours later, Trump’s own administration directly contradicted him, when the Office of Personnel Management formally notified agencies that response was voluntary and that any failure to respond would “not equate to a resignation.”

While some agencies conveyed that message in their guidance to employees, not all did, leaving many federal workers in the dark just hours before Musk’s deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday.

“Our chief said it was mandatory. Then OPM said it became voluntary. Then I guess Trump just told us it was mandatory again,” said one career employee with the Department of Veterans Affairs. “No one knows who is in charge and who to listen to.”

“It’s bedlam,” added one current IRS employee.

CNN spoke to federal employees across multiple agencies on Monday. All but one asked not to use their names for fear of retribution.

Some of the most high-profile federal agencies ended up bucking Musk’s demands, with the Justice Department, State Department, Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy all telling staff not to respond to the email.

While the Commerce and Transportation departments all instructed their staffs on Monday to comply, Commerce asked employees to send the information to their supervisors.

Among the Transportation employees who need to reply are the Federal Aviation Administration’s chronically understaffed air traffic controller workforce. Many controllers are working mandatory overtime six-day weeks of ten-hour shifts.

On Saturday, their union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, denounced the move by Musk as a “distraction” to controllers during a time when the air safety system is “fragile.”

NASA, on the other hand, said it will respond on behalf of the agency, adding that workers are not required to answer OPM’s email, and that their employment will not be affected if they opt not to respond.

Ironically, employees at OPM, the agency that sent the initial email, were left in the dark about how to handle the instructions themselves until about 6 p.m. Monday evening, when they finally got guidance saying a response was voluntary but strongly encouraged, according to an email obtained by CNN.

‘Today was crazy’

The chaos began Saturday not long after a mass email from OPM landed in the inboxes of federal workers across the country. Work was disrupted in some agencies as staffers and officials sat in on hastily assembled meetings and tried to decipher a multitude of emails. Agency heads debated how to respond to Musk’s demands, several sources told CNN.

David J. Demas, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3003, which represents 320 Federal Bureau of Prisons workers, said he received 30 phone calls on Monday from his members, who work at US Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania, asking how to respond to OPM’s email.

Some workers who were off duty wanted to know if they needed to come to the prison to reply since they don’t have access to their work email on their phones or home computers. And those who were working asked for guidance on what to include in their five bullet points.

“Today was crazy. A lot of people were coming in from being off to try to send an email, a silly email that doesn’t even make any sense to us,” said Demas, who also woke up at 3 a.m. Monday to find three text messages and 10 emails from worried members.

Just before 11 a.m. Monday, the Department of Justice sent an email to workers saying that they did not need to respond, which Demas then relayed to his colleagues.