Market Data 
- A federal worker thinks Trump’s RTO mandate has affected their marriage, energy, and weekends.
- Commuting every workday has been tiring; they used to commute just twice a week.
- Plus, as a military spouse, they think they will have to move in the future.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a federal worker. They’ve asked to be anonymous for fear of job repercussions. Business Insider has verified their identity and employment. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I work for the federal government, and we’ve officially returned to working full-time in the office.
That means my commute time has gone up to about 15 hours a week. I commute about three hours every day, an hour and a half in, an hour and a half back.
The biggest change is the lack of energy that I have. I also have disabilities, so traveling is pretty tiring.
My husband recently returned from his military training. We’re figuring out what the new schedule looks like and how to support each other.
We chose to live close to his base — about an hour and a half commute to my office by train — so he could be available for the soldiers under his command as things come up. At the time I was in a contract to only come into the office twice a week, so the commute seemed like an OK payoff.
Now that I’m going in every day, it’s not quite as balanced.
I’ve definitely noticed a lack of energy around the house and the restructuring of our weekends, where we used to go out and do things, meet up with people, and engage.
Usually we would meet up with friends at different places, like ice skating or go-karting or just a fun place for dinner. We also had regular game nights at different homes.
It’s definitely a lot more staying at home, getting things done around the house, running our errands, meal prepping, and things like that.
Dealing with the often reckless and chaotic rollouts of different agendas has definitely left a huge mental toll. Supporting someone who is away for training in the military has been really difficult because I barely have enough energy for myself.
It makes me sad. It’s definitely not what I had anticipated happening this year for sure, and it’s just been a drain.
I think we are back full time in the office because of the confusion and the lack of clarity from executive orders and OPM guidance. There’s been a lack of consistency in terms of who has to go back, when they’re going back, and what’s actually happening.
There was an OPM memo that came out that said that all military spouses should be exempt from the return to office, but the implementation just hasn’t been consistent. So even within my department, different components have implemented that guidance in different ways.
With the implementation of the return to office, there’s confusion regarding whether someone lives within 50 miles of the location, are they exempt from this order or not because are they technically remote.
Because I’m less than 50 miles, I’m not exempt. We definitely will be relocating in the future because military families move all the time.
Even if you live within 50 miles of where you work, that doesn’t mean it’s going to take you less than 50 minutes to get to work. In DC, traveling 50 miles could take you two hours. It’s not even a good measure of whether someone should be remote or not.
For someone who’s in the military, the work that they’re doing, especially the work my husband is doing, is very stressful, and it’s high energy all the time.
It’s very important that you’re able to provide that support for them so that when they come home, they’re not continuing to be stressed. There’s got to be an unwind point.
If I’m also stressed the whole time that he is home, then we just live in the stress bubble, and neither of us has the energy to work through that.
I came into the government for job security. You might not make as much money, but you’ll have good benefits, and you have job security, and that is suddenly not there anymore.
The uncertainty around the future is definitely a huge stress. We make the joke, we walk in and we say, “Haha, we still have a job today.” That’s that dark humor of like, yeah, I still have a job, but I have no idea what’s going to happen by the end of the day today or tomorrow.
That’s its own form of stress.
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at madisonhoff.06. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
