Cockroaches at NASA, no toilet paper: US govt employees face ‘mess’ as WFO resumes on Trump's orders
ByHT News Desk
Mar 17, 2025 08:23 AM IST
Trump's back-to-office order was part of efforts to reshape and reorient the 2.3 million strong federal workforce to cut ‘wasteful expenditure’
US federal government employees who were forced to return to work full-time from their offices by President Donald Trump on January 20, described chaotic workplace conditions in government buildings as they returned after years.
Federal workers shout chants during a rally across the street from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters, in support of the civil service in the wake of mass firings, and organized by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. March 15, 2025.(Reuters)
Federal workers shout chants during a rally across the street from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters, in support of the civil service in the wake of mass firings, and organized by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. March 15, 2025.(Reuters)
Donald Trump's back-to-office order was part of efforts to reshape and reorient the 2.3 million strong federal workforce as the administration seeks to cut “wasteful expenditure” and improve “efficiency” with the help of billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
According to Trump administration figures, more than 100,000 workers have left their jobs or opted for compensation packages after Musk-led DOGE began its purge. More large-scale cuts are under way, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been working remotely since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. 10 employees from eight different governmental agencies spoke anonymously to news agency Reuters and explained how their office buildings were incapable to house the returning employees.
About 1.1 million federal workers were eligible for remote work and about 228,000 of them had been fully remote, according to a report issued by the Office of Management and Budget in August last year.
Cockroaches, bugs at ‘Messy NASA’
At NASA headquarter in Washington, employees who returned to office last month found workplaces infested with cockroaches, bugs coming out of faucets and had to work from chairs with no desks.
Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers that represents 8,000 federal NASA workers said, “It's complete chaos at NASA headquarters. If you don't have a desk or a computer you cannot do your job. People are much more unproductive.”
Employees returning to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland are arriving before dawn and sleeping in their vehicles in worry of getting stuck in traffic. Biggs told Reuters that some employees prefer to attend meetings inside their cars using smartphone hotspot as the workplace has become noisy.
'It's a zoo'
Employees at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) compared their search for office desk in some regional offices to “The Hunger Games”, where young people are forced to fight to the death in a government-sanctioned contest.
An employee at the USCIS office in Chicago said they were forced to work from boxes in a storage room temporarily.
At the Department of Agriculture's headquarters in Washington, staff are reportedly fighting for office space while workers are busy reorienting the premises to create temporary workstations. A staff members said that workers returned to bathrooms with no paper towels. “It's a zoo,” he said.
An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) manager told Reuters that employees at IRS office in Memphis, Tennessee, are unable to discuss sensitive tax matters with clients over the phone as it could potentially breach the country's privacy laws.
Another IRS manager said that she was sitting on a floor with her laptop as the office lacks enough desks. An IRS human resource official said that she was asked to work from a supply closet.
The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has informed that it cannot guarantee desks or parking spots for the roughly 18,000 employees expected to report to their offices on Monday.
Critics vs govt
Critics and labour unions alleged that the back-to-office order was intended to make the work environment so unpleasant that it will force more government employees to resign.
Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 government workers said, “Bringing people back to work was nothing but a ploy to cause more confusion and get people to quit.”
Pam Herd, a professor of social policy at the University of Michigan, said, “It's the move fast and break things approach, without really thinking through the implications of a range of different choices you are making.”
“So they tell everyone to return to work without considering the fact that they don't have the space to accommodate everyone,” he added.
The Office of Personnel Management spokesperson, the government's human resources department, said the January 20 order's goal was to ensure that federal employees work efficiently to best serve the American people.
“We are prioritizing in-person work to strengthen collaboration, accountability, and service delivery across the federal workforce,” the spokesperson added.
A White House official told Reuters that facilities staff at the General Services Administration are working “tirelessly to address reported issues to a satisfactory outcome.”
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