Since President Donald Trump mandated that remote and partially remote federal workers all must return to their offices, thousands of employees across the country have been figuring out how to navigate new commutes, seating arrangements, and a lack of supplies as basic as toilet paper and legal pads while still getting their work done.
One effect of all this, many federal employees tell WIRED, is that they are traveling long distances to spend all of their time in virtual meetings.
“I don’t directly work with anyone in the office that I am going into,” one employee at the Department of Housing and Urban Development tells WIRED. “So I show up and sit on [Microsoft] Teams calls.”
A Treasury employee says they spend most of their time at the office on video calls as well, “because of people working at other sites … and that’s hard when working from a cubicle. I definitely get less done because of the distractions.”
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one employee says that the focus on the return-to-office mandate has meant a lot of chaos for people who actually need to do their jobs in person. “Some teams and groups aren’t even on the same campuses because space was so limited. So they’re coming to work just to sit on the same virtual meetings as always,” they say. “And all the chaos has made it more difficult for the lab people, who actually need to be on campus. I’d say with everything they get two-to-three hours less of meaningful work out of me each day.”
Over the past few months, Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has upended the government. In addition to firing tens of thousands of federal employees, before being forced by judges to rehire some of them, return-to-office mandates have resulted in chaos. Outlets like CNN and Reuters reported on the initial confusion and disarray caused by forcing tens of thousands of employees back to the office all at once, but weeks later, employees say the situation is getting worse.
Though Trump and Musk have claimed the mandate would result in huge productivity increases and financial savings, more than 30 federal employees at 17 federal agencies tell WIRED the return-to-office order has resulted in widespread chaos, plummeting productivity, and significantly reduced services to the public. It isn’t just traveling to work to sit on Zoom calls—it’s that there may be no place to take the call or no working internet to connect to it. WIRED granted employees anonymity to speak freely about their experiences, which some say are affecting their physical and mental health—and nearly all say are resulting in a lower quality of work and worse public services.
"The workplace environment is unpleasant, loud, people talk about whatever they want, and the workload is insane with the mass layoffs and hiring freeze," an employee at the Department of Defense (DOD) tells WIRED. "This is a terrible place to work." The employee says they cry almost every day after leaving the office.
Multiple government employees claim that there isn’t enough space in federal offices, or necessary equipment, to make their return worthwhile.
At a DOD building, one employee says, the influx of people now working from the office has made simply accessing the facility a daily struggle for them.
“We are on a secure military facility with only a few access points,” the employee tells WIRED. “There are not enough gate guards to open multiple access points so the traffic backs up onto the highway.”
At one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office, during the first week of the return-to-office mandate in March, around 40 people were forced to work out of a single room. “I have lots of meetings every day, so I would have to go elsewhere to find some privacy, along with everyone else,” a DHS employee tells WIRED. Now, employees are not assigned office spaces until they arrive at work each day. “Every day, we have to go to one room to get an office assignment,” says the employee. “You don't know the assignment until the day of. If you are not assigned an office, you sit in a training room until that happens. My productivity has drastically decreased.” The offices are also so “gross,” the employee says, that they bring their own cleaning products to work.
Weeks after returning to the office, a Social Security Agency (SSA) employee claims there isn’t enough furniture for everyone. “If you're stuck on a floor without enough chairs, you're stuck standing for eight hours,” they say. “I'm unfocused, exhausted, and in pain. I'm certainly not at 100 percent.”
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An employee at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) says he was ordered to return to his office on March 10, despite being hired for a fully remote position in 2022. There isn’t enough space for private meetings, so if he wants to talk to one of the employees he supervises, he says, he has no options. “For private staff calls I have to go out to my truck and use my personal phone,” he tells WIRED. “I have requested a government cell, but they tell me I won't get it since I'm back in an office.”
Tech issues have plagued the return of many federal employees.
The USDA employee claims that the internet connection at his new office is “far worse than it is at home. So much so that I have had trouble using Teams with my staff in recent calls.”
“We are getting hammered with RTO tickets,” says another source at the USDA, describing the number of employees making requests for equipment to do their jobs in-office. “We do not have the IT infrastructure to support this massive RTO mandate.”
The DOGE-enforced $1 spending limit on federal credit cards, enforced in February, has exacerbated the problem, leading to shortages of basic supplies.
“All the money we saved on decommissioning equipment, saving on having contractors run cabling, enterprise hardware savings, will all be gone,” the USDA source says. “This RTO will not only bring work completion down for people now having to commute and people are going to work exactly their eight hours and not any time over. The stoppage of IT issues will bring down a lot of this as well.”
At the Internal Revenue Service, which ordered its workers back to the office four weeks ago, the $1 limit caused significant problems for those back in the office. “They have no soap, toilet paper, or paper towels anywhere in the building. Their water machine is broken. Many cannot get on LAN, and the Wi-Fi keeps going down,” one IRS employee tells WIRED. Another SSA employee says that they were told to “ration paper.”
“Supplies are limited because no one has purchasing authority,” the Treasury employee tells WIRED. “It’s a running joke that we bring our own pens and paper. We have a bit of a stock of pens in my department but can’t order more. We are out of notebooks, though there are some partially used legal pads from meetings available.”
Employees say the return-to-office mandate has also negatively impacted their productivity. “My whole team had been, probably to a fault, working long hours on quick turnaround projects,” a source at the Army Futures Command, which operates under the DOD, tells WIRED. “We were able to do a lot of this at home after dinner in the evening, because we’ve all got kids and family obligations. [Return to office] has ended all of that.”
Some federal employees say the return-to-office mandates are having a negative impact on their health.
One employee at the SSA, who identifies as queer and uses they/he pronouns, is also disabled and suffers from chronic pain and mobility issues. Still, they were left with no option but to make the long journey from their home to the office once the return-to-office mandate was enforced.
“With no car, I am walking a mile to the train, and from the station to the office on concrete and metal, limping along, using elevators when I can,” they say, adding, “While I can ask for Reasonable Accommodations, our DEI offices were gutted, so despite being directed to apply through the proper channels, there's no one there to process them.” In the weeks since they’ve returned to the office, nothing has improved.
“I'm not sleeping well, I can't have access to chairs and desks and monitors at proper heights to make me more comfortable,” they say. “I've had to start revisiting my orthopedic doctor to pursue treatments and start physical therapy again.”
A USDA employee says that returning to an office has aggravated their long-dormant carpal tunnel symptoms.
“I got an old wooden desk that is not intended to be a workplace,” the employee tells WIRED. “As a result of the table being too high for the chair they gave me, my carpel tunnel has been aggravated with numbness and piercing pain in the hand. My carpel tunnel has not been an issue for about 25 years now.”
A Treasury employee says that people on her team have had to quit due to stress stemming from the return-to-office mandate and the uncertainty of what’s next. “People here love their jobs. We love what we do,” they say. “Getting fired would mean so much more than just losing a paycheck.”
Some employees say these fears, combined with the poor working conditions, are impacting their mental health as well.
“I’m just going through a depressive episode in part because of the nonstop uncertainty and stress,” says an employee at the DOD. “Even the hardcore military bros in my agency are feeling grim about everything that’s happening.” A USDA employee told WIRED that they are now dealing with severe depression due to these mandates and general fear.
The threat of a reduction in force, or RIF, remains a constant concern for employees as they return to federal offices.
“There is just a lot of very dark humor at the office,” the Treasury employee says. “I think all of us are expecting to get RIFd or fired or something, but we are just waiting. Business as usual while everything is on fire.”
