We are not OK

Many people have asked me how I am doing and how things are at work. This isn’t easy to talk about as you will see as this goes but let me just be as transparent and as open as I can be. I am not good. We are not good. Work is not good. It is to the point that we no longer say, “How are you?”, we say, “Are you ok?”

I am writing this because I need some people to know that the outside world has no idea what they are supporting. On the news we are called government waste and inefficiency, but we are all people, human beings just like every one of you. We bleed red and feel pain. We have learned we are only safe talking to each other, because others show no signs of wanting to understand. I am writing this because I can take early retirement if it comes to that, and hopefully I don’t have to fear retribution, but this may be a little cryptic anyway. Yes, the fear is running high.

We now do not know who we can trust. No matter what your politics, the federal employee has become enemy number one. We hear the people we love rave about how it is so wonderful how they are cutting all this government waste. What we hear is we are government waste. All we see is our fellow federal employees getting fired through no fault of their own. For those of you who really feel that federal employees are unnecessary, just think about what all is done by federal employees: food regulation and safety inspections, drug and disease research, agricultural regulation and research, care and maintenance of our forests and waterways, regulation and enforcement of wildlife populations, coordination of air and rail traffic, regulation of imports and customs, construction or highways and bridges, process passports, immigration processing, criminal investigation, protection of borders, coordination and research for the military, processing of social security, SNAP, and Medicaid claims and applications, care of Veterans, burial of Veterans and government officials, care and operations of monuments and nationals parks, processing taxes, regulate fuel supplies, process and deliver the mail, and much, much more. Nearly everything you see, touch, or consume daily has had a government employee’s hand in making it safe, healthy, or clean.

Are there lazy or incompetent government employees who should be fired? Absolutely! I can give you a list of a few who should be gone. However, most federal employees are hardworking productive people who just want to do their job and go home to their families, just like every other person. I learned just this morning that someone who was here before me and has been my go-to on many things over the years, because she is a wealth of knowledge and can do anything you ask of her, was let go. That isn’t cutting waste, that is cutting numbers.

I know there is a lot of anger about people working from home and all the empty office buildings they keep showing on the news. Well, let me just ease everyone’s minds, there are no empty buildings like that around here. I work in a building that was built for employee education. We have a small computer room for new employee orientation, a reception office, a conference room, a simulation room with an observation room and debriefing room. Our office is a room for six cubicles and my supervisor has an office. There have been eight people in the building for years, because we teach classes using all the other rooms. We are a very tight group of employees who have very different jobs that work closely together to do our jobs. Last week we had to hand over the computer room, half the conference room, observation room, debriefing room and half of the supervisor’s office for other workers to come in. We are going from eight employees in the building to around fifty. We have no space for the employees, we have no parking. We are now cutting classes and educational offerings that are not mandatory because we don’t have the room to teach them.

Most of the remote workers who are being forced into offices here were hired as remote workers. When they applied for the job they applied for a work-from-home job. Now they are going from their safe place to sharing a table, elbow to elbow, sitting in a horrible chair, with someone they don’t know, in a room full of others doing the same. People search for remote positions for reasons like high anxiety around others, caring for a loved one, having to get kids to or from school, etc. Imagine putting in for a job that works for you and out of nowhere the henchman for the leader of the free world says you will now go to some office, somewhere within 50 miles of where you reside, and you can do it or quit. That isn’t an exaggeration, that is what is happening.

Now I am going to address the bullet point emails, excuse me, the pulse check email threat that everyone was calling us crybabies about. First, it was a lie. The pulse check came several days earlier when we all received a strange email from “HR” that simply said, “Reply ‘yes’ to this email.” Many turned it in as phishing because HR usually sends emails that are much more, shall we say, professional. Then we received another one that said it was for real to reply ‘yes’. Our leadership had to tell everyone to go ahead and do it. That was our pulse check. I can 100% guarantee that no one was worried about finding five things they did the prior week. Although we had a holiday and two days of cancelled clinics because of inclement weather. None of us were clamoring to find five things. What angered us was the humiliation, degradation and bullying. Federal employees take training constantly telling us that bullying will not be tolerated in the federal workplace, but who do you report it to when it comes from the top of the chain of command?

We were getting judged and ridiculed from every direction for being pissed off for this humiliation. One third of the federal workforce is Veterans, the other two thirds have a degree, certification, or license of some sort. We are not stupid. If we were sitting on the beach all the prior week, we could make up five bullet points. This was 100% a humiliation tactic and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it but take it. Yes, we were angry. We are angry, and we are hurt.

It all served its purpose though. It turned the media against us, it stirred a lot of emotions on social media, it is turning the national anger toward us and away from others, and it is making us miserable, which is what the henchman promised to do.

We may not be able to trust you anymore, because we have lost the support of some of our most loyal people. We will continue to mourn for our fellow federal employees, and we will have each other for support, until we do no more. No, we are not OK.