The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been ordered to hit ‘Ctrl+Z’ on its mass firing of 5,900 employees, thanks to a Merit Systems Protection Board ruling that’s basically the bureaucratic equivalent of a parent saying, ‘Go to your room… and apologize.’
The agency must now welcome back its fired staffers for 45 days, a period that will likely feel like a tense family reunion where everyone’s still mad about the Jell-O salad incident of 2020.
The Trump administration’s attempt to ‘trim the herd’ of probationary workers has devolved into a legal obstacle course, complete with HR-themed trapdoors and a boss fight against the federal complaint system.
It’s like The Office, but instead of declaring bankruptcy, they accidentally fired half the Scranton branch and now have to rehire them via certified mail.
The reinstated employees will reportedly return to desks buried under expired granola bars and sticky notes that say ‘REMEMBER TO WATER THE FICUS (OR ELSE).’
Meanwhile, the USDA’s HR team has reportedly started a TikTok series titled ‘How to Apologize to 5,900 People Without Making Eye Contact.’
The fired employees’ Slack channel has already been renamed ‘The Department of Second Chances (and Mildly Passive-Aggressive Coffee Mugs).’”
The USDA tried to play the ‘performance issues’ card, but the board side-eyed that faster than your cat side-eyes a cucumber. ‘Reorganization’? Sure, Jan. If this was a reorg, it’s the bureaucratic equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic while yelling, ‘Surprise! Everyone’s a lifeboat now!’
There are rules for reductions in force, people!
Step 1: Documentation.
Step 2: More documentation.
Step 3: ???
The USDA skipped straight to ???, which is how you end up in a legal showdown with a bunch of confused probationary workers and their suddenly viral LinkedIn posts.
The reinstated employees will now return to desks that probably still have ‘World’s Okayest Bureaucrat’ mugs and Post-its like ‘CALL MOM (she knows things).’
Meanwhile, the USDA’s HR team has reportedly started a support group called ‘So You Fired 5,900 People and Now They’re Back… Let’s Process This.’
The agency’s new slogan? ‘USDA: Where ‘Reduction in Force’ Means We Reduce You to Tears… and Then Hire You Back.’
In a plot twist worthy of a Netflix political thriller, the federal government’s ‘Great Probationary Purge’—which saw 30,000 workers axed faster than a Game of Thrones extra—has been deemed about as legal as a backyard fireworks show in a library.
A federal judge recently slammed the ‘rehire’ button on the whole mess, but agencies are responding with the urgency of a sloth on sedatives. ‘Rehire them? Oh, we totally will… after we finish alphabetizing our Post-it notes,’ muttered one hypothetical HR rep, probably.
Meanwhile, the White House and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have pivoted faster than a TikTok dancer caught in a lie. ‘Who, us order mass firings? Pfft.
Agencies do whatever they want!’ said OPM, presumably while twirling a mustache made of red tape. This despite evidence suggesting they orchestrated the culling like a poorly planned game of bureaucratic Hungry Hungry Hippos.
The result? Thousands of workers are stuck in limbo, a purgatory of paperwork where they’re neither fully fired nor fully rehired. It’s like being ghosted by your ex, only your ex is the U.S. government and the ghosting involves a 40-page PDF titled ‘So You’ve Been Un-Fired (But Also We Hate You).’
Bonus humor: OPM’s new motto: ‘We’re Here to Serve… You With Subpoenas.’ Meanwhile, the fired workers’ new Slack channel is called The Department of Karma’s a Bureaucrat.
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