Ha ha, joke’s on them. Our office doesn’t have space for all of us. We downsized to …gasp… save money, which is what the federal government is supposed to do. They’d also have to renegotiate the union contract, something they just finished doing, so it’s not something they really even can address for several years at least.

But Biden isn’t squeaky clean on this either, he mandated some percentage of office space being utilized. Supposedly this was to help local businesses, like the fast food chicken place across the street that has survived without us there for almost 5 years now. (They were renovating our building and had us all move out during the pandemic.)

But there’s something wrong with the formula being used to calculate utilization of the building - and in our case, even if every cube was full every day, we still wouldn’t meet the requirement, because of how it’s calculated. I don’t have details, but it apparently includes space people can’t occupy - like server rooms and the cafeteria - and there’s no way to get an exception.

I’m pretty sure upper management would continue the telework setup if they could (I really think they intended to be primarily remote before the Biden administration put the brakes on it). But higher authorities have said no. Our current telework agreement is that we have to go into the office twice per pay period (two weeks), which isn’t too bad, but I’d still prefer not. My return to office is scheduled for February. We’re bracing for a lot of people to find other jobs or retire, and it has already begun.

I’m hoping to retire in about 7 years. Maybe this next administration will buy me out. I’d be open to a generous severance package.