I Got My Job Back!

Andrew shares a ridiculous yoyo trick—how to get your federal job back in just 3 months!

I have some exciting personal news to share: I can finally opt out of receiving emails from LinkedIn! I’ve got my nearly full-time job back!

My friend Sean got me this cake. We ate it at the VA about thirteen years ago. It was the most fitting picture I could find to commemorate my return to the VA.

After pitching on the seas of job insecurity since the day after President Trump’s inauguration, I’m finally back in the boat and returning to my role as Senior Research Editor for the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC) and Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. I’ll also continue to freelance and write here.

My sense is that, for now, some of the disastrous effects of the president’s early executive orders and other policies are rolling out with the tide, particularly as he focuses on other atrocities, like this Big, Beautiful Bill, which is a tremendous and terrible transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and from our future to our present.

But that doesn’t mean that the administration’s maniacal plan to harm American workers and eviscerate domestic research is over. As we wait to learn about the potential slashing of indirect research costs or the coming reduction in force within the VA, here’s a timeline to illustrate just how inefficient the administration’s mission to eliminate inefficiency really has been—take note of how much time and effort was spent trying to keep me employed. Each hour spent crafting a new lifeline for me was an hour that could have been spent doing the important work of research or research support:

12/13: I’m informed that the contract for my four-days-a-week job ends 2/28; my new one is approved for 3/3. Because a great deal of research at the VA is funded by non-VA sources, Congress mandated the creation of organizations like my employer to work with the VA. As a result, many VA researchers are like me, non-VA employees on two- or three-year contracts.

1/21: The day after the inauguration, I receive this email: “We must rescind our offer of employment . . . due to the freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees as directed by President Trump.” I’ve worked in VA research for twenty-two years, but because of my contract renewal dates, I’m considered a new hire. I feel confident that this is just red tape; my local admin team will know exactly how to cut through it and things will go on as usual.

1/28: My director calls to warn me that they may be unable to save my job.

1/29: I lose my Tuesday job at The Other Journal—this one’s related to a lack of tuition funding to support the journal, not the policies of DJT. The call is not entirely unexpected, but I can’t quite fathom getting the bad news about two twentyish-year jobs in a span of twenty-four hours. I worked at TOJ for eighteen years and am very proud of how we championed thoughtful theology, philosophy, social justice, and creative writing there.

1/31: My admin team and I try to get me hired at a university affiliate. We fail.

2/3: An HR person whose name means “Bolt of God” emails, saying, “Please disregard the rescission letter.” Certain VA job classifications, like mine, have been deemed exempt from the freeze! I never hear from the bolt of God again.

2/10: A friend tells me about the president’s war on indirect costs—money that goes to costs that are not specific to a particular grant, things like administrators and laboratories and lights. These changes, I realize, could cripple research throughout the country. This contributes to university decisions to implement their own hiring freezes.

2/13: My boss tells me that someone looked closer at my exemption and decided only clinical employees are exempt. “Research” like “woman” is now a bad word.

2/18: For a work project, I try to meet with the one official at our VA trained to review the transport of research data offsite. I can’t. Trump canned her because she was a probationary employee. Later, she is rehired based on a judge’s ruling.

2/19: My admin team and I try to get me hired as an independent contractor. We fail.

2/21: My admin team and I try to get me hired for an exempt VA job category. We fail.

2/28: I lose my job.

3/3: My employer hires me for a temporary part-time writing gig—20 hours a week until 5/15. This means my family and I will keep our health insurance. I interview a researcher who can’t complete his study on the effects of cannabis laws because Trump canned his analyst and a researcher who says their cancer research sites will shut down due to new return-to-work policies.

3/11: My admin team and I try to get me hired at a university affiliate. I’m grateful for all this effort. But it would be unnecessary if Trump valued American workers or understood the value of dementia and PTSD research or cared for Veterans and their families.

4/2: I learn that the university position has been exempted from the school’s hiring freeze, but the job will include a pay cut. To do the same exact work. In DC, the president is gleeful to squeeze more out of an American worker. He must squeeze more out of everyone. The world is tariffied.

4/14: I officially receive a job offer from the university.

4/16: My desire for justice and money is apparently stronger than my desire for job security. After talking to my boss and her colleague at the university, I counter the offer. I never hear back from the university’s HR department.

5/8: My employer extends my part-time work until 5/31.

5/12: The VA changes their policies regarding the hiring freeze. My employer submits a new-hire packet that we hope will meet the qualifications. In ordinary times, it takes about three months to process a new hire within the VA. We hope that because I’m already in the system, this might go faster. But these are not normal times, and I’m warned that it could take six months. Or longer.

5/13: I am interviewed by two staff members of the Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee (i.e., Senator Richard Blumenthal). They tell me that under the new administration they are finding it much more challenging to hear what’s happening within the VA. These days they get most of their tea from Reddit, so they want to hear from real-live people who have been directly affected by the anti-VA policies of this administration.

5/15: My employer identifies a pot of money that will allow them to extend my temporary assignment and increase my hours. My new end date is 8/1.

5/22: Someone at the federal HR entity (HRMACS) realizes that I have a rescinded employment packet already completed. They rescind the rescinding of the rescinding of the rescinding. In other words, I don’t have to get fingerprinted or TB tested again; I’m told that my contract from December is reapproved. After months of uncertainty and part-time work, I have my job back. The 8/1 end date is no more. This is tremendous news, and yet I can’t help but wonder, what was all this for? What was the new and better thing that my well wishers told me God had hiding around the corner?

5/24: I am interviewed about my story by a local PBS reporter.

5/27: I sign an OF306 Declaration of Federal Employment as an “appointee.” I expect that my new contract will run another two years, which will put me at the halfway point of this administration. I’m hoping we’ll have a less neutered Congress by then and that the president will feel the constraint of a co-equal branch of government preventing him from storming about the country breaking things. I’m hoping that the adults will prevail, that research will rebuild, and that I won’t have to add additional items to this timeline.