The Leftovers

Dispatches from the Guilty Remnant

This post is from a current federal employee who goes by the name Annie Blackburn.

She is the fourth guest contributor to “Notes on the Putsch.” Like all guest posts, this essay has not been edited.

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It happened quickly. There were signs, of course. We knew a wave was coming. But when it came, it swept people away with a ferocity no reasonable person could have anticipated. Not really. People who had put in decades of work in service of the greater good were shown the door with nothing more than a wave goodbye (if that). Others with nascent federal careers were urged to leave. “Here’s my hat? What’s your hurry?” Those of us who stayed – for better or worse, the jury’s still out on that – had little time to get our affairs in order or say goodbye.

So much has been said about the two offers made to most federal workers in nearly every federal agency. I refuse to say its name because it’s so dumb. They wanted us to sign our own death warrants. Act now! For a limited time only! Cuts were promised, threats were laid out, then people were booted to the curb.

The abrupt exit of my colleagues and the continued dismantling of the federal government has been without thought or kindness. Oh!? You spent your whole career here? Fuck off! It feels like we are in a deranged game of Whac-A-Mole, and we are the moles.

The halls at the office are empty now. It feels like people are on vacation. Calendars remain frozen in April 2025, hanging on walls in emptied out offices, much like calendars were stuck in March 2020 for so long. Meetings are sparsely populated. Absences go unmentioned but not unnoticed. Whether those who are left behind feel guilt, anger, embarrassment, or sadness over the hasty exodus of so many is unclear.

At work people are just gone. It’s as if they disappeared into thin air, their absence feeling like something out of HBO’s “The Leftovers” (and the book of the same name). In the world of “The Leftovers,” 2% of the planet’s population disappears one day without explanation. They weren’t snapped away by Thanos. They were just gone.

Those left behind, the leftovers, must deal with their unimaginable trauma while looking for meaning in lives that don’t make sense anymore. Some survivors can’t move on and pretend everything is the same as it ever was. One group, the Guilty Remnant, make it their mission to be living reminders of what was lost. That’s what it feels like to be a federal worker right now. Living reminders to our dishonorable and corrupt overlords that dismembering a body doesn’t cut out the heart.

I’m aware that making this comparison is the height of melodrama. I’m not mad at my coworkers who left. There were no easy choices. My colleagues who chose to pull the cord on their parachutes at a much safer altitude have the unenviable task of trying to find a job in a market full of other federal workers also looking for jobs.

Those of us who remain in the federal workforce have to wade through the carnage of a poorly planned smash and grab, all the while carrying on with daily tasks. Drums keep a pounding rhythm to the brain, after all. We have mortgages to pay, kids to raise, hobbies to fund. Rome is burning but we still have jobs to do. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. We are faced with daily indignities, watching people push agendas and ideals that aren’t for anyone’s greater good.

Our staying probably won’t change anything, but we hope it can stem the tide of insanity. Every day we run from the Eye of Sauron and dodge search lights like Andy Dufresne escaping from Shawshank. But we aren’t martyrs. We will eventually get too tired to keep going. I’m so tired. Everyone is. I see it on the faces of colleagues and strangers I pass in the barren hallways. Our fates are still at the mercy of a madman.

But for now, for as long as we can, us leftovers, will do our best to hold the world on our shoulders, take solace in the company of the trusted few who share the burden, and hope there’s something to put back together at the end of all this.

— by Annie Blackburn