A rally in support of federal workers outside an office building in New York City
A rally in support of federal workers outside an office building in New York City
For some federal employees, returning to the office has meant an expansion of their duties to include cleaning toilets and taking out the trash. For others, it has been commuting to a federal building only to continue doing their work through videoconferencing.
Some showed up at the office just to be sent home. Others showed up early and had nowhere to sit. Some employees with the Federal Aviation Administration returned to an office where lead had been detected in the water. And spending freezes have meant a shortage of toilet paper in some buildings.
Federal workers have been returning to offices in stages since President Trump issued an order to do so right after being sworn in. He has described the requirement as a way to ensure that workers are actually doing their jobs while believing that it could have the added benefit of leading more government employees to quit.
“We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient,” Trump said.
For those who have gone back, the process has been marred by a lack of planning and coordination by the administration, leading to confusion, plummeting morale and more inefficiency, according to interviews with dozens of federal workers, most of whom would speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.
They have described the logistical challenges, cramped conditions and shortages of basic supplies that come with such a blunt policy change for the nearly one million employees who had been working in a hybrid or entirely remote position when Trump returned to the Oval Office. At the beginning of the year, the civilian federal work force was estimated to be about 2.3 million, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
On March 17, when employees with the Food and Drug Administration returned to offices at the agency’s White Oak campus outside Washington, parking was scarce and a line snaked around the block with people waiting to get through security.
Soon, bathrooms ran out of toilet paper and paper towels. The cafeteria had not stocked enough food and there were not enough office supplies. And that was just a fraction of the problems.
A scientist with the agency, who was hired into a remote position, now has to share office space while she works on sensitive and proprietary projects, creating ethical and practical concerns.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, employees were told to brace for limited parking at two of the agency’s campuses. “Drive to Corporate Square and sit in the overflow space in Building 11,” read a sign posted on the agency’s intranet. “Be prepared to work from your laptop and Wi-Fi.”
At one campus, it can take 90 minutes just to leave because the parking is so full and choke points are at every turn. It can be hard to even back out of a space, one employee said.
It’s crowded, the employee said, because the CDC campus was never designed for all employees to work in the office. Over the past 10 years, there was a long-term plan to reduce the number of leased properties the agency used, which required an increase in remote work. But the Trump administration has banned that option.
The internal revenue service faced similar problems.
Jeff Eppler, a retired manager at the internal revenue service, said some employees who work directly with Americans on their tax returns did show up at the office on the first day they were set to return, March 10, only to be sent home.
“So instead of working that day, they spent time hanging out in the office and then were eventually sent back home to do the work that they would have been doing the whole day,” he said.
In some cases, IRS managers contacted employees on the weekend before the return date to tell them to continue to work remotely. One IRS employee described having to choose between reporting to an office knowing there was not enough space or continuing to work from home in violation of agency rules.
Another IRS employee described working while sitting on the floor during part of the first day back in the office because a cubicle the employee had reserved was no longer available.
A doctor for the department of veterans affairs said her return to the office after working remotely for the past two years had been dominated by sorting out seating charts, setting office hours and finding equipment for herself and her colleagues — tasks outside her job description that led to hours of wasted time.
The Biden administration sought to have employees back working at the office half of each week. But the Trump administration demanded that all civilian employees return to the office full-time, including those who were hired into remote positions.
Some agencies gave workers weeks of notice about when they would need to report to an office. Others received a heads-up a few days before.
One employee of the forest service described having been hired into a remote position without a specific physical office. In fact, when she was hired, the government paperwork stated that her “duty location” was her home address.