I live in what is called the DMV, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. It is a geographic region that exists to suckle at the teat of the federal government. It is no small coincidence that the acronym is the same as the Department of Motor Vehicles given the service levels of many Federal agencies. But I digress.

Today was a great day. Today, federal employees were required to be in the office again. I went to the gym and it looked abandoned, easily half of the normal attendees. I actually was able to get on all the equipment I wanted. Stopping at Wawa, the store was empty. The line of cars trying to get to I-95 was miles long.

I worked at home for years. When the firm I worked for required me to come in, I didn’t have a local commute. I had to go to Secaucus, New Jersey, quite literally a place built on a slaughter pen and a swamp. Sometimes they sent me exotic places like India. I never liked it, but I recognized that the privilege of working at home meant I had to travel from time to time, and be in the office when asked. As such, my pity for the federal workers having to go back to the office for the first time since March of 2020 is incredibly low.

Also, today is the day that federal employees in most agencies were required to submit five bullet points for what they worked on last week. I worked in a place where I had to track my time to six minute increments to projects and tell the people that owned those charge codes what I did. We called them time sheets and while the sucked, they also made individuals accountable for their time. In other words, for normal people, putting together a list of five things they did last week would be a three minutes exercise, tops. Yet some feds are acting as if we were asking them to part the Red Sea or split the atom; all of which makes me suspicious.

Right now, my fertile imagination pictures them trying to come up with ways to make what they actually did seem important. Watching YouTube videos is being crafted as, “Explored video options for conveying important messages about my key program.” Going to the gym is being morphed into, “Conducted a top down strategy session to ensure goals aligned with project objectives.” Going out for a two-hour lunch will become, “Facilitated the delivery of key supplies necessary for the success of our current department mission.” Walking the dog is now, “Conducted a high level discussion with a peer about current workload issues.” Watching the View? Let’s call it, “Monitoring newsfeeds for information linked to the work assigned me.”

All of this is a big story with the local media. The news radio stations have daily broadcast how bad life is for federal employees. They actually broadcast, “We want to hear about the impact of the Trump administration is having on federal employees.” They actually had an “expert” come on and tell listeners to not do what Elon Musk had asked, instead, “You should tell them you are upholding your oath to the Constitution that you took when you got your job.”

Yeah. I don’t see that playing out quite the way the expert thought it would.

What the media never asks is how do non-federal employees feel about all of this. In the bubble that is the DMV, the beltway bandits are focused on this as if it is the end of civilization. What they don’t understand is that those of us who worked in the private sector have dealt with these stresses for decades. Not only have I had to document what I do at work, on several occasions, I’ve actually been forced three times to interview for the job that I current held. I, like many people have been downsized, right-sized, outsourced, reallocated, reorganized (to the point where I wondered if we ever were organized), realigned, had my workload redistributed, and had my efforts redirected. Like millions of other Americans, been there, done that.

I’ve also been laid off. In fact, a significant number of people in the U.S. have. It’s not fun. We’re all sympathetic when it happens, but we also recognize that life goes on. No one should expect job security for life.

Those of us not leashed to the monstrosity that is the federal government also know that asking you to put together a bullet-point list of five things you accomplished last week is the bare bones minimum you should have to do to keep your job. Whining about it, resisting it, or getting dramatic on TikTok or BlueSky, doesn’t make you William Wallace making an epic speech about your freedom. Your wails that you are appalled, are just so much background noise.

It makes the rest of us have even less support for you, as if that was even possible.

Blaine Pardoe is a New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author canceled by one of his publishers in 2022. His conservative political thriller series, Blue Dawn, is the story of the violent overthrow of the government by radical progressives. His new series, Tenure, is about a Punisher-like hero that goes after the woke. He also authors the bestselling military science fiction series, Land&Sea.

Image: AT via Magic Studio