President Trump has described his new in-office requirement as a way to ensure workers are doing their jobs. He sees potentially leading more employees to quit as an added benefit.
For some federal employees, returning to the office has meant an expansion of their duties to include cleaning toilets and taking out the trash. For others, it has been commuting to a federal building only to continue doing their work through videoconferencing.
Some showed up at the office just to be sent home. Others showed up early and had no where to sit. Some employees with the Federal Aviation Administration returned to an office where lead had been detected in the water. And spending freezes have meant a shortage of toilet paper in some buildings.
Federal workers have been returning to offices in stages since President Trump issued an order to do so right after being sworn in. He has described the requirement as a way to ensure that workers are actually doing their jobs while believing that it could have the added benefit of leading more government employees to quit.
“We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient,” Mr. Trump said.
For those who have gone back, the process has been marred by a lack of planning and coordination by the administration, leading to confusion, plummeting morale and more inefficiency, according to interviews with dozens of federal workers, most of whom would speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.
They have described the logistical challenges, cramped conditions and shortages of basic supplies that come with such a blunt policy change for the nearly one million employees who had been working in a hybrid or entirely remote position when Mr. Trump returned to the Oval Office. At the beginning of the year, the civilian federal work force was estimated to be about 2.3 million, according to the Office of Personnel Management.