Talk about bureaucracy. If bureaucracy means something is complicated and Kafkaesque, that’s exactly what I was experiencing that pre-Thanksgiving morning.
I was shuttling among imposing, sterile-looking federal government buildings in Washington D.C.’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood and feeling rather foggy myself. The task at hand was seeking a required form from my former federal employer to get a retirement I.D. badge.
I sought the badge because I was going overseas soon. I wanted to ensure if anything bad happened while I was there, I’d have an official I.D. to verify that I am an American citizen and that customs authorities would readily allow me back into the country. I’ve learned it’s always smart for travelers to have backup I.D.s when abroad.
But as someone who believes in doing the right thing, it was turning into something all wrong.
Meaning, on that particular day, no one seemed to know the correct office to obtain this form. I kept being misdirected to one different building after another. Everywhere I went, I was told I wasn’t in the right place.
Besides the buildings feeling impersonal, I was also starting to feel like a non-person. It was as if, in my urgency to find the correct office, I was bothering impassive-faced security guards packing guns in their holsters.
Probably because of the dangerous times we live in, I looked suspicious to the guards with my small bag, which only contained my innocent water bottle and newspaper. So, I didn’t argue or make a fuss when they told me, in effect, to get lost. They couldn’t have known I was already feeling lost--like I was in a Kafka novel where nothing made any sense.
I approached still another government office exhibiting my expired federal I.D. badge. I hoped to impress the intake specialist sitting behind iron bars in a cage that I was official. He didn’t seem impressed. In fact, he demanded I give him the expired I.D. badge and that for some odd bureaucratic reason, I was forbidden to keep it. Now I was reduced to practically nothing. I was just an ordinary badge-less person in a city full of official people wearing important-looking agency badges and I was walking around with a nondescript driver’s license.
Another specialist then said I was in the wrong building. I had to retrace my steps to the first building, which supposedly housed the retirement office. I had already been there earlier and had been notified to come to this building, as I told the man. He shrugged and said they had given me wrong information.
That was enough craziness for one day. I decided to forgo trying to get this badge. I would have to make doubly sure that while I was on my foreign trip that my personal belongings weren’t stolen. I was still scarred when a few years back, a pickpocket had made off with my wallet during my visit to Costa Rica, which led to major complications getting my pilfered items replaced. Maybe that’s why I wanted to go the extra mile for this I.D. However, because I was getting nowhere, I reluctantly concluded this seemingly impossible dream was turning nightmarish. Give it up, I told myself.
Perhaps these federal workers’ dour interactions with me reflected their personal apprehension on how Donald Trump and his minions would try to eliminate their jobs once he came into office on the following January 20.
In one of Trump’s first actions as president, he issued an executive ending remote work for all federal employees. Elon Musk, Trump’s henchman as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, said ending remote work would result in a “wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”
Then, in another insulting and what’s been termed an illegal move, Trump offered federal workers a buyout as an incentive to resign from their jobs. In an email to about 2 million feds, workers were told if they agreed to a “deferred resignation,” they would receive all pay and benefits “regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30.”
Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary wrote that “many employees don’t believe this promise--and they are right to be skeptical and alarmed.” Singletary said this “so-called volunteer decision is a trap and a travesty to those who work hard to serve the American people.”
News reports say that to date, Trump has fired, dismissed, reassigned, or marked for layoffs at least 240 federal employees, including 18 inspectors general from a number of different agencies. In addition, hundreds of FBI agents faced possible layoffs, demotions, or relocations, while at the State Department, many senior career diplomats left their jobs at the demand of Trump’s new administration. Also, Trump directed that all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion staff be put on paid leave to be eventually laid off.
Those employees who haven’t already quit their government jobs are considering whether they should remain under an administration that treats them so contemptuously.
In his first term as president, Trump sidelined and ridiculed civil servants, many of whom quit rather than be subjected to abuse. Now, as an employee at the Environmental Protection Agency put it, facing another four years of Trump’s insults and scorn, “we are absolutely having conversations among ourselves about whether we can stomach a round two.”
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I reconsidered getting that badge. I’d give it one final shot that coming Monday. I really wanted that extra I.D. for insurance, in case the unforeseeable happened.
This time, I double-checked the agency website to make sure I followed the right directions for getting the required form. I had to go to that same building where I had relinquished my expired badge. When I arrived, the same intake specialist repeated himself, reminding me of that old Abbott & Costello comedy sketch, “Who’s on First?” You need to go back to the retirement office first -- where they had told me to come here, he said.
I wasn’t going to take no for an answer when I returned to that building, even as I saw the security officer discretely place a hand on his gun. After several minutes of gentle persuasion, I convinced the guard that I wouldn’t be breaking any rules if he accompanied me upstairs to where the retirement office was supposedly located.
When I arrived there, a nice lady told me no one was available at the moment to help me.
I had about lost all hope, when suddenly, the world turned 180 degrees. A gentleman emerged from his office. He must have heard the desperation in my voice. He said to have a seat and make myself comfortable. Not only would he get the required form for the badge, he would personally fill it out on my behalf.
While he went about his job, he asked would I like a bottle of water? And which news channel on the TV overhead would I like to watch while I waited? And how about some M&Ms to chew on for all the trouble I had been put through?
Could all this royal treatment be happening? Had I entered nirvana where people couldn’t do enough to make me feel wanted? To top it off, another lady from the office came around and asked why I had to be in the retirement office. I started to explain the situation when she smiled and said, “You don’t look old enough to be retired.”
Call me vain. But who wouldn’t like hearing such a compliment? It made all my previous travails almost worth it. Still riding a high, I brought the completed form over to the office I had been to twice before, where this time my badge was eventually processed.
All I can say is this slice of humanity from the retirement office made my day. It made me thankful that even amongst all the federal office buildings that looked so impersonal and cold on the outside, there were warm people inside that treated me not as another random number, but as someone who counts.
Author Bio:
Eric Green, a Highbrow Magazine contributor, is a former newspaper reporter, U.S. congressional press aide, English-as-a-second-language teacher, and now a freelance writer in the Washington D.C. area. His articles have appeared in various newspapers and websites, including the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.
For Highbrow Magazine
Photo Credits: Depositphotos.com