And

being a probationary employee, I was like, I know that it's, you know, I'm at a higher risk of losing my job, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm going to keep coming to work every single day.

Essentially, a request came to put together a list of employees in their probationary period. My

supervisor was called in on a very quick turn. They had like one hour where she and all the other, they call them the team directors, all of them come in together and now they have a list of everybody who is a probationary employee and they have to write a justification to make decisions. Do you want to retain this person or no? And then you have to write a justification for why you want to keep them. And they had 200 characters to

write this justification up. And then on our team, it became really apparent that Doge was on the scene. We learned about people having interviews with folks that were not government employees, regardless of whether they were probation or not. I was nervous because I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I knew I was being evaluated for fit by this person who likely knows very little about how government functions. I entered the meeting, video on, and I saw this young man, one of the Doge lads. And it felt like I was going to a job interview with somebody I didn't like and I would never work there. It just made me sick to my stomach. And all that's going through my mind is like, here I am, I'm going to be judged by somebody that's not quite half my age in a 15 minute call. Like 15 minutes. And the hiring process took almost six months for me. So, you know, I went through a lot to get the job, but it seemed like I didn't have to go through much to lose it.

Probationary employees do have rights. They cannot be fired without cause. And I know I'm not a low performer, so I started tracking every bit of work I did. The stress is starting

to build. Like, jobs really not secure at this point. It's like contraction in my stomach and chest. I started to, like, not be able to eat or sleep. It

kind of raised that anxiety for me because I knew what my career is about to be screwed over basically.

I'm going to be completely honest. Like I'm a little combat vet going to work at the VA. Like I was like, you know, no one's really coming after us. And then like, you know, my, my wife is a federal employee too, at one of the agencies that he does not like, but I, I thought I would be safe so long as I just got in before, you know, there was any, before the inauguration, um,

Are you okay with me using your name?

Yeah, I am. There's no turning back now. Like, I really don't care. My name is Andrew Lennox, 35 years old. What I work for is the Veterans Health Administration. Our job is to provide medical service to either veterans or, like, family members of veterans. And I love it. I love everything about it. Like, I knew I belonged here my first day when i walked through the doors and like there was a vietnam vet that like saw a marine corps keychain slap my back called me a jarhead it's a place where you fit you know once you leave the military you do kind of feel like you're alone but then once you're here everybody's your family And then I was at home, and this new nerdy thing I've gotten into is I make scale model replicas of military figures from the local war on terrorism. I don't know. A buddy at my old job told me it was fun, and he gave me a little marine mortar set for a six-pack of beer. And so I started making those in my evenings for fun, since it's cold out in Michigan. i was painting a tiny afghan carpet store and my wife said her agency is getting a bunch of weird emails i go to grab my work phone and i because it's i knew it died and i plug it in i was like well let's see if i got fired and i was joking and then when it turned on i opened my email and i said i got fired and

I was working for the Department of Energy, and the 13th, day before Valentine's Day, I'd been following the news all day and reading that agencies were planning to let folks go. And I was very nervous, so I had my work phone on me after I signed off for the day, and I had been checking my email probably every 10 minutes. And I ended up falling asleep on the couch because I just couldn't— I wasn't ready for bed. I wasn't ready. I was stressed. So I heard my workstation sort of alarm. I had forgotten to turn off my speakers, which sounds kind of funny, but if I don't turn off my speakers, I can hear my laptop make an alarm in the other room. So I hear a message come in. It wakes me up and I try to open up my email and it's not loading. So then I try to sign into my laptop. It did not work. And so I tried again. It did not work. I shut down and restarted. It would not work. I was like, had an extremely tight chest. I was so shocked at the way it was playing out.

I worked as a probationary employee within the Forest Service. At 3.55, I got the call from my boss that he got a call at 3.45 that he has to let me go. I texted my mom. I was like, I'm being fired. She immediately called me and I was bawling my eyes out.

I was an enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And I think it was 7.06

p.m. is when I got the email saying that I had been fired. I

received an email telling me that I was terminated. And then I received another one telling me I was terminated again. And then I got an email saying all of those terminations were rescinded. And then I got two more emails telling me that I was terminated again. And so I was fired. I just got

home, got in my apartment. Ten minutes later, I got a notification that was just a copy and paste email that it looked like where my name and position was filled in, citing my performance as the reason for firing. They said, due to my poor performance. And then I immediately texted my direct supervisor. I had no idea this was happening. I reached out to my supervisor, just let her know. I said, hey, I just got an email from the director saying that I was terminated. And she comes back and says, I'm so sorry. And then she's like, I got the same one. And so she had been terminated as well. But then this morning, she got up and is looking at her own email. And there's an email from our director saying, I got some new information. Your name should not have been on that list. So you can ignore the termination email. You are not fired. People need to know what's actually happening. It's just chaos. It was just the fact that we think you're easier to fire, so we're going to go ahead and do it. You

know, it felt like punitive and inhumane, if I may.