Inside federal workers’ return to office

Defense Department employees returned to work at an Army base in the Midwest only to find their offices were not mission ready.

Overflowing parking lots force them to scramble in ever-widening circles in search of open spots or risk tickets for parking illegally. Crammed into tight quarters, they sit elbow to elbow at card tables and talk over one another on the phone and on video calls. There are few spots to break for lunch or a snack because all of the cafeterias on the base shut down long ago.

Supplies are so scarce that they have to bring their own toilet paper and paper towels. To help out undermanned cleaning crews struggling to keep up with germ-riddled bathrooms and dirty workspaces, employees are told to pack up their trash and take it home with them.

Making matters worse, fresh worries about Legionella – the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease and sometimes lurks in the base’s World War II-era buildings – have been making the rounds.

Morale has cratered as employees juggle long commutes and child care headaches, said a Defense Department employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Once driven to boost productivity, they now punch in and out like clockwork and have all but given up answering calls and emails after hours.

“We honestly get way more done at home than at the office, but those are facts and no one seems to want to know facts anymore,” he told USA TODAY. “This will end up costing the government much more money than it will ever save.”

His experience reflects the sometimes harsh realities of a rushed return to headquarters and field offices around the country ill prepared for a massive flood of workers after years of telework, according to eight federal employees inside seven agencies who spoke with USA TODAY on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

The Office of Personnel Management – the federal government’s human resources division – told USA TODAY that the return to office is a priority for the Trump administration and that it is supporting federal agencies in making “necessary improvements to provide a safe and effective work environment for federal workers.”

“In-person collaboration strengthens productivity, mission delivery and public service,” Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in a statement. “OPM is committed to ensuring a smooth transition by working with agencies to address workplace concerns, including facility conditions, resource availability and connectivity.”

President Donald Trump has ordered federal employees back to the office full-time as part of his administration’s mandate to make government bureaucracy less costly and more efficient for the American people. “If they don’t report for work, we’re firing them,” Trump said.

Many federal employees were directed to work part- or full-time from home since the COVID-19 pandemic. Some remote work arrangements began much earlier.

Less than half – 46% – of the 2.3 million federal employees were eligible for remote work and about 10% were fully remote, meaning they worked from home all the time or part-time, according to a report issued by the Office of Management and Budget in August.

Telework and hybrid schedules boosted productivity to record levels and made it much easier for them to manage their daily lives and family schedules, according to federal employees who spoke with USA TODAY.

Mad scramble for parking and cubicles

So far, the transition away from remote work has been bumpy. Federal agencies shed so much office space to reduce costs after the pandemic work-from-home order that there are now too many people for the available space.

Federal workers say they get in early to jockey for parking spots, desks, chairs and basic supplies, rely on spotty internet connections and retreat to their cars to discuss sensitive or classified matters out of earshot of coworkers. Some people have set up makeshift offices inside supply closets.

Of the six passenger elevators that reach the higher floors of a 30-story building in downtown Atlanta that houses the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies that serve the public, only one is in service, forcing long waits for federal employees and the visiting public. In some lobbies, the buttons for elevators that service the lower floors are missing and instead have a gaping rectangular hole exposing the wiring.

Assigned seating assignments didn’t match any of the cubicles in the IRS office. One IRS employee said he is squatting in a cubicle assigned to someone else.

Long ago abandoned on the desk is a framed Bible verse and a mostly untouched box of blank discs from 2003, even though IRS computers no longer even have CD drives. Some of his colleagues were not so lucky. They had to set up their laptops in crowded conference rooms.

Rather than making them more efficient, the in-person mandate has made them less so, the IRS employee said.

On LinkedIn, Kimbra Turner, a regulatory health information specialist, described a similarly chaotic return to the Food and Drug Administration’s main campus in Maryland.

With the agency on telework since 2010 or so, overcrowding was the main issue, she wrote. People showed up before 6:30 a.m. or 7 a.m. to find a parking space and leaving campus at the end of the work day could take as long as 30 minutes because of the backup.

Scouting for spots to have secure or sensitive conversations, some people worked out of closets, according to Turner. Networks were overloaded. Basics are in such short supply – not to mention the rash of broken monitors and even a broken desk – that she brought in her own keyboard and mouse.

“We are doing what we can, but this is NOT a situation that was implemented (or even designed) for efficiency,” she wrote. “We continue to show up and fight because the public health mission, the dedication of federal employees and the work of the federal government is stronger than the whims of a few egomaniacs.”

‘They just want to stick it to us because they can’

Some offices that have stood semi-vacant for years have sanitation issues, from infestations of cockroaches and rats to clogged toilets and busted sinks to overflowing trash cans, and too few janitorial staffers to stay on top of it all.

Federal workers say they suspect the Trump administration deliberately made the return to office stressful to get people to quit in frustration.

Trump signed an executive order on Inauguration Day directing the heads of federal departments and agencies to “as soon as practical, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”

Billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have warned that federal workers must show up in the office. He has said he welcomes the wave of “voluntary terminations” of those federal employees who don’t.

“They say we are unproductive and lazy and that is just a big bald-faced lie,” an employee of the Department of Health and Human Services said. “There’s no rhyme or reason for doing this other than being vindictive and being bullies. These are punitive steps. They just want to stick it to us because they can.”

Long commutes and limbo for some federal employees

Federal workers say the biggest blow has been to their work-life balance with so much time wasted behind the wheel or on public transit in rush-hour traffic.

One Homeland Security employee estimates he spends 2 ½ hours a day in his car instead of playing with his newborn son. “It’s a huge morale killer,” he said.

An FDIC employee with one child and a second on the way lives with his parents and said the in-person mandate has forced him into an impossible situation.

He pays $1,200 a month in rent, well below market, and his mom cares for his child during the work day. If he moved closer to the office, the rent would be nearly triple, not to mention the additional child care costs.

So for now he’s gritting his teeth for the four-hour round-trip commute. “I’m just blessed to have a job still,” he said.

For many of these workers, the return to office is not all smaller sacrifices, like missing out on an early morning run or eating dinner with the family.

Some commutes are so lengthy that federal employees are crashing in shared sublets or youth hostels on weeknights, with family, friends or neighbors picking up the slack on the homefront.

Extra expenses plus gas and car maintenance add up quickly to a substantial pay cut, they say. Also off the table are dinners out or putting away for retirement or a house.

Those federal employees who were hired as remote workers and sometimes live hundreds of miles – or states – away face a tough choice: Uproot their lives or walk away from the job they love.

Still others are stuck in limbo with no idea where or when they will be asked to report in person. OPM is “phasing in” the return of remote workers who are more than 50 miles from an agency office.

One HHS employee hired as a remote worker lives hundreds of miles from the main office. “My duty station is my home,” she said.

She still doesn’t know if she will be assigned to an office near where she lives or if she will be called into the headquarters.

“If it’s near, that would be fine. I have no problem with that, and I have no problem with doing my job in person,” she said.

If not, her husband would have to give up his job and she would have to pull her kids out of school, with no guarantee that she will keep her job with mass layoffs looming.

“If I am told I have to go somewhere hundreds of miles away, it’s going to be a nonstarter for me,” she said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Morale killer’: Inside federal employees’ return to office