Just in case anyone was wondering, I am in fact a federal employee and I am in fact having A Fucking Time Of It
In roughly chronological order, here's all the things that have fucked us over the last two weeks:
Hiring freeze effective immediately, which involved rescinding final offers to people who were about to start their job. A final offer is something you can get a mortgage with btw. It's what you get after months of paperwork. It's something you move cross country for. Eighteen people just at our hospital had a final offer rescinded
A demand for a return to in person work, with no explanation given for why they want this so badly. No explanation on people who have teleworking written into their contracts, or people who have teleworking as a reasonable accommodation
Related to the hiring freeze: no creation of any new jobs in even a preliminary way, even to prep to fill existing vacancies after the 90 days are over
Closing of all DEIA teams groups, webinar series, webpages, department gatherings... Anything you can think of. This included the queer teams based communities that were just a place for people to chat
Related to this: our acting secretary sending out an email that sounds straight out of the fucking Gestapo, where "we are aware of efforts by some in government to deliberately redefine DEIA positions in an attempt to keep their jobs. If you know of this happening, here's an email line we've set up for tips. There won't be adverse consequences for reporting, however, failure to report may have adverse consequences"
What appears to have been trying to be a total freeze on federal spending, which threw literally everything into chaos, I was not able to follow it at all, but the hospital is still running so I'm assuming money is happening somewhere
Two strange emails from OPM.gov, marked EXTERNAL, saying they're testing a new distribution list and to please reply yes. These were considered so universally sus by employees that they had to come down from central office and confirm that yes, these are legit, please reply
A day later, an email from that same external address offering voluntary resignation, which I'm pretty sure is the bit that's been all over the news for (checks notes) being word for word the same email musk sent to Twitter before proceeding to Not Pay Them
A restriction on communication and travel. "No speaking engagements or attendance at public facing events, seminars, or conferences (unless approved by chief of staff) for 6 months. VA only events are excluded." Which was later clarified to mean "well if you're going for continuing Ed, as long as you aren't presenting, it's ok" but then backtracked to "it's probably ok but you still need approval which can take upwards of a month." Why are they restricting speaking at conferences? It's not a money thing because traveling for VA events still costs money. It's like they're looking to prevent staff from interacting with anyone external, for some reason
And today, an email this morning that "leadership has received guidance from the office of personnel management [regarding the EO about "gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth"] and is working to execute the EO fully, faithfully, and thoughtfully."
This afternoon at 4:30, this began with an all employee email saying that all personal pronouns are being removed from Outlook display names by IT, which was a system implemented several years ago and broadly popular! But nope, we'll need to go back to guessing what genders new coworkers named Quinn, Alex, Morgan, and Taylor are.
(oh I forgot! I can't use the word gender at work anymore. Using Proper Terminology (as interpreted by our ~~~Illustrious President~~~) in all communications at work is now required)
It's been a fucking week and a half and I am so goddamn tired guys. Sorry I haven't been on again but I'm spending most of my energy on Not McFucking Losing It rn