Federal workers’ rush back to office is causing chaos

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency prepared for its full workforce to report in person this month, it faced a situation many agencies are confronting as they scramble to comply with President Donald Trump’s return-to-office mandate: There weren’t enough workspaces for everyone.

As a result, employees would have to “share workstations on a rotating basis,” the agency announced in guidance shared with employees last week. The guidance, obtained by the Washington Post, stated: “Supervisors will resolve workplace availability conflicts using the following criteria in the order listed below.”

Topping the list was “full-time employment status,” followed by seniority and pay-scale criteria. But if none of those settled the conflict, supervisors were directed to turn to the sixth item on the list: “flip of a coin.”

This is the new reality some government employees are facing as they seek something as basic as a desk to work at. Across the federal bureaucracy, the hurried effort to get everyone back to on-site work five days a week has bred chaos, confusion and inefficiency, workers at a number of government offices said.

“People are miserable,” said a FEMA employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Everybody is miserable and anxious. It’s palpable.”

On the first day of his new presidential term, Trump directed all agency and department heads to take steps to end remote work arrangements and bring all employees back to in-person work. In a memo two days later, the Office of Personnel Management recommended that agencies aim for full compliance within approximately 30 days – around the end of next week.

With the clock ticking, agencies have begun rolling out return-to-office mandates, even as the Trump administration seeks “large-scale” cuts to the federal workforce through layoffs and a deferred resignation offer that 75,000 employees accepted before it was shut down earlier this week.

With the administration also working to terminate leases on federal offices nationwide, some agencies are requiring most workers back. At others, managers have returned while rank-and-file workers have deadlines approaching.

It hasn’t taken long for problems to emerge.

A U.S. Navy Department employee in Virginia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he was ordered to return to the office Monday. But because of a lack of space, his team has been spread among four buildings, some of them separated by 30 to 40 miles. “I’m making a 15-minute drive to get paperwork routed,” he said. “Some people are making a 45-minute drive.”

But he said his wife, who works for a different Navy command, has it far worse. Her office has 14 working desks for 40 people, he said, so they take turns at the desks and spend the rest of the day killing time and chatting in the halls.

“They’re trying to say she can sit in the auditorium and do any work that doesn’t require the internet,” he said, “which is zero.”

A spokesperson for the Navy did not respond to a request for comment as of Friday afternoon.

At FEMA – where senior leaders were required to return to the office on Feb. 3, followed by managers last Monday, with others to follow – employees who lose the coin flip for a desk might have marginally better options than an internet-free auditorium.

The floors at its D.C. headquarters are divided into wings, each with an open area where people without desks are expected to work, according to the FEMA employee.

“It’s just a big open space, which is problematic if you have a job that requires you to do anything confidential,” the employee said.

According to the guidance shared with FEMA staff, the “minimum requirements for an employee workstation” are a work surface, a chair, a power source and an internet or WiFi connection.

Asked what kind of work surface people might have in the open wings, the FEMA employee responded: “I don’t know. That’s a wonderful question.”

A FEMA spokesperson also did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

At the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Southeast D.C., the return on Wednesday of U.S. Coast Guard employees who had been working remotely overtaxed the already-crowded campus parking garage.

In the lead-up to that return date, the garage was often full by 8:15 a.m., said one DHS employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job. To deal with overcrowding, the agency’s management barred full-time on-site contractors from using the garage. According to the employee, no exceptions were made for disabled contractors with handicap placards, many of whom are veterans.

In a recent team meeting, several colleagues complained about the situation, the employee said. Some have resorted to using a parking lot at the nearby Anacostia Metro station and, then, taking a DHS shuttle to the headquarters building.

At the meeting, according to the employee, one of the other workers described seeing an older woman struggling and failing to board the shuttle because it lacked disability accommodations.

“I am furious that any disabled people, but especially our disabled veterans, are being forced to endure this,” said the employee, adding, “I do not think the American people, even those who do not like the concept of federal employees teleworking, ever intended for this to happen.”

West Resendes, an ACLU staff attorney who works on disability rights, said the government can’t discriminate against contractors with disabilities and that “both DHS and the contractor’s employer may have legal obligations regarding disability accommodations.” He added, “Having a work-provided shuttle that is not accessible would appear to be a separate violation of federal disability rights laws.”

Resendes noted that accessible parking for workers with disabilities would seem to be required under an Office of Personnel Management memo last week stating that “agencies should not terminate or prohibit accessibility or disability-related accommodations, assistance, or other programs that are required by those or related laws.”

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement that the department’s parking policy “aligns with pre-pandemic guidelines, which did not permit contractor parking,” and that “this policy is being reintroduced to prioritize parking for federal employees.”

The statement did not address a question about the shuttle’s lack of access for people with disabilities.

Parking was also an issue at the Navy facility in D.C.’s Navy Yard neighborhood, where nearly 17,000 workers had to begin reporting in person this week to a headquarters with fewer than 5,000 parking spots. Employees were encouraged to take public transit, and the Navy directed some drivers to the Anacostia Metro lot one station away – the same one that the DHS employee described as insufficient to serve as DHS overflow parking.

Some of these challenges may be offset by the Trump administration’s push to drastically reduce the federal workforce. On Thursday – a day after the administration closed its deferred resignation program – the administration directed agency heads to terminate most probationary staff, potentially affecting around 200,000 employees.

An official in the General Services Administration, which manages federal real estate, said workers there were told Thursday that the agency has approval to spend funds on new leases and upgrades to existing facilities to support the return to in-person work.

“Anything return-to-office-related is exempt from a limit they currently have where if something is above $100,000 you have to get approval,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of job retaliation.

It’s unclear how the workforce reductions, potential building upgrades and efforts to shed federal offices will ultimately balance out.

Meanwhile, many federal workers remain in a state of limbo. A federal worker based in Boise, where she works remotely, said she has been told she’ll need to return to the office, but she has no idea what office she’d go to – or what the point would be.

“If I’m in an office space, I don’t work with anybody in the office,” said the worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, including which agency she works for, to protect her job. “My bosses are in a different location, our team is all over the West, and it has been that way for decades.”

She added: “It’s not that people don’t want to go to work. There’s just no place to go.”

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Hannah Natanson contributed to this report.