WASHINGTON, D.C. — A landmark survey of federal government employees has produced results so bewildering that the agency tasked with analyzing them has requested a second survey to determine whether the first survey was real.

The Federal Workforce Awareness Assessment (FWAA), conducted over 18 months by the Office of Personnel Management in partnership with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a consulting firm that may or may not have been a real consulting firm (their invoice is still being verified), surveyed 42,000 federal employees across 187 agencies. The findings paint a portrait of a workforce that is, in the most generous interpretation, profoundly uncertain about the nature of its own existence.

Key findings:

• 67% of respondents were unaware their position existed prior to being hired for it
• 23% could not identify the department they work for
• 14% reported going to the wrong building for at least one year before being corrected
• 11% expressed genuine uncertainty about whether they were actually employed or “just sort of… here”
• 8% could not confirm they were currently being surveyed
• 3% asked the surveyors for directions to their own office

“We expected some level of confusion,” said Dr. Nina Ledger, the lead researcher on the FWAA project. “What we didn’t expect was that the confusion would be so comprehensive, so deeply felt, and so utterly comfortable. These people aren’t distressed about not knowing what they do. They’ve made peace with it. Some of them have built entire philosophies around it. One man told me he views his job as ‘a koan — a riddle with no answer, and that’s the answer.’ He’s been at the EPA for 31 years.”

The Wrong Building Problem

Among the survey’s most striking findings was the prevalence of what researchers termed “spatial employment dissociation” — or, in plain language, people going to the wrong building to do work they don’t understand for departments they can’t name.

Ronald Benchley, 58, is perhaps the most remarkable case. A GS-13 Management Analyst, Ronald has been reporting to the Department of Energy building every weekday morning since 2007. He works for the Department of Agriculture.

“I figured it out in 2019,” Ronald told me, sipping coffee in a break room he has used daily for nearly two decades. “Someone asked me about wheat subsidies and I realized I didn’t know what those were. That seemed odd, so I checked my paperwork and discovered I was supposed to be in a completely different building. But by then I’d been here so long that I had friends, a favorite mug, a preferred parking spot. Moving seemed disruptive. So I stayed.”

When asked what he does at the Department of Energy, Ronald paused.

“I attend meetings. I nod. I take notes. Nobody has ever questioned my presence. To be fair, I’ve never questioned theirs. For all I know, half the people in those meetings are Agriculture employees who wandered in. It’s possible the entire Department of Energy is staffed by people from other departments. I don’t have evidence for that, but I also don’t have evidence against it.”

Ronald’s case is not unique. The survey found that 14% of federal employees — approximately 294,000 people — have reported to the wrong building for at least one year. Of those, 62% were never corrected, 24% were corrected but ignored the correction, and 14% were corrected and moved to the right building, only to discover that the right building was also the wrong building due to a reorganization that no one had communicated.

The Department of Workplace Location Accuracy was created in 2021 to address this issue. It is located in a building that three other agencies believe is theirs.

The Acting Director of a Dissolved Department

Perhaps no one embodies the survey’s findings more completely than Warren Stempel, 72, who holds the title of Acting Director of the Federal Board of Weights and Measures Standardization — a department that was dissolved in 1987.

Warren has been Acting Director for 37 years. He continues to report to an office on the fourth floor of a building in Arlington, Virginia, where he maintains a staff of one (himself), manages a budget of zero, and fulfills the duties of a position that no longer exists within an agency that was formally decommissioned during the Reagan administration.

“I received a memo in 1987 indicating that the Board was being dissolved,” Warren explained, seated behind a desk that held a telephone, a stapler, and a photograph of himself shaking hands with a person he cannot identify. “But the memo said the dissolution would be ‘effective upon completion of all pending actions.’ I had pending actions. I still have pending actions. I have a form from 1986 that requires a signature from the Deputy Director, but the Deputy Director retired in 1985. So the action is pending. And as long as actions are pending, the dissolution isn’t complete. And as long as the dissolution isn’t complete, I’m the Acting Director. It’s airtight.”

Warren’s office is heated, lit, and cleaned by a janitorial service that has never been told to stop. His paycheck arrives every two weeks via direct deposit from an account that the Treasury Department has flagged as “anomalous but not incorrect.” He was given a service award in 2019 by an automated system that tracks tenure. The plaque reads: “35 Years of Dedicated Service to the Federal Board of Weights and Measures Standardization.” It sits on his desk next to the stapler.

“People ask me when I’ll retire,” Warren said. “I tell them I can’t retire. I’m the Acting Director. Acting Directors don’t retire. They wait for a permanent director to be appointed. And no one is going to appoint a permanent director to a dissolved agency. So here I am. Here I’ll stay. Probably forever.”

He paused.

“Do you think I should water this plant?” he asked, gesturing to a plastic fern.

On Hold With HR Since 2019

Linda Prescott, 44, a GS-9 Program Specialist at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called her agency’s Human Resources department on March 14, 2019, to inquire about updating her emergency contact information. She has been on hold ever since.

“At first I thought it was a normal hold,” Linda said, speaking to me while holding her desk phone to her ear with her shoulder, as she has done for approximately six years. “But then days passed. Then weeks. Then months. I kept waiting because the recording said my call was ‘important to them’ and I believed it. I still believe it. Why would they say it if it wasn’t true?”

Linda estimates she has listened to the hold music — a 47-second loop of what appears to be a MIDI rendition of “Greensleeves” — approximately 4.1 million times. She has memorized every note, every pause, every slight digital artifact in the recording. She hums it in her sleep. Her husband reports that she once conducted an invisible orchestra during a dinner party.

“I’ve considered hanging up,” she admitted. “But what if they pick up right after I do? I’d have to call back and start the whole process over. I can’t risk that. I’ve invested too much time. This is a sunk cost situation and I am committed.”

Linda’s emergency contact information remains unchanged. Her emergency contact is her mother, who passed away in 2021. When informed of this, Linda nodded slowly and said, “All the more reason to get this updated. Could you hold for a moment?” She then pressed a button on her phone and put me on hold.

”Arriving, Sitting, and Wondering”

The survey asked employees to describe their daily routine in their own words. The most common response, given by 31% of respondents, was some variation of “arriving, sitting, and wondering.”

Selected responses:

“I arrive at 8:00. I sit at my desk. I open my email. I have no emails. I close my email. I open it again in case one arrived in the interim. It hasn’t. I repeat this until lunch. After lunch, I repeat it until 5:00. Then I go home. I have done this for 14 years. I am content.” — Anonymous, Department of Commerce

“My daily routine: Walk in. Badge in. Say good morning to Diane. Sit down. Look at my computer. My computer has a screensaver of tropical fish. I watch the fish. Sometimes I name them. My favorite is Gerald. At 5:00, I badge out. I feel I have made a contribution.” — Anonymous, Department of the Interior

“I honestly don’t know if I work here or if this is a very long, very boring dream. Both explanations are equally plausible. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out. Either way, the dental plan is good.” — Anonymous, General Services Administration

“I was hired in 2011 to implement a new database system. The database was cancelled in 2012. I was never reassigned. I still come in every day. I sit at my desk. My desk has no computer. It used to have a computer, but IT reclaimed it in 2015. I didn’t complain because I didn’t want to draw attention to my situation. So now I just sit at an empty desk. I bring a book. Currently reading Moby Dick for the ninth time. It’s about obsession. I relate.” — Anonymous, Department of Veterans Affairs

The Department of Workforce Awareness

In response to the survey’s findings, the federal government in 2023 established the Department of Workforce Awareness (DWA), a new agency with a $28 million annual budget and a mandate to “ensure all federal employees are aware of their own employment, its nature, its purpose, and its location.”

The DWA was staffed with 45 employees. Within six months, a follow-up assessment revealed that none of the DWA’s 45 employees were aware the DWA existed.

“We were told we were being hired by a new agency,” said DWA employee Marcus Clipboard, 36. “But nobody told us what the agency was called, where it was, or what it did. We were given desks. We were given email addresses. The email domain was ‘@dwa.gov’ but none of us knew what DWA stood for. I assumed it was an acronym for something classified. I didn’t want to ask and seem uninformed.”

When Marcus was told that DWA stands for Department of Workforce Awareness, and that his job was to help federal employees become aware of their employment, he stared at me for a very long time.

“That is deeply ironic,” he said. “And also — what’s my job, specifically? Within that? Am I supposed to go to other agencies and tell people they work there? Do I knock on their doors? Do I send an email? Is there a form? Nobody gave me a form. If there’s a form, I haven’t seen it. This might be the first time I’ve thought about any of this.”

Marcus then asked if I could tell him where his supervisor’s office was. I could not, because his supervisor, according to the organizational directory, was located in a building that was demolished in 2020 to make way for a new building that has not yet been built.

The Existential Question

The FWAA survey included one open-ended question at the end: “Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience as a federal employee?”

The responses ranged from philosophical to resigned to oddly beautiful. A few stood out:

“I have worked for the government for 26 years. I have never produced a tangible output. I have attended approximately 8,000 meetings. None of them resulted in action items that were acted upon. And yet, every two weeks, money appears in my bank account. This is either the greatest system ever devised by human civilization, or a clerical error that has persisted for over a quarter century. I choose to believe it is both.” — Anonymous, Department of Labor

“My job title is ‘Liaison to the Office of Interagency Liaison Services.’ I am a liaison to the liaisons. I connect people who connect people. I am a bridge between bridges. I have never met anyone on either side. The bridges go nowhere. But they are well-maintained.” — Anonymous, State Department

“Sometimes I wonder if the entire federal government is like this — millions of people sitting in buildings, doing things they can’t describe, for reasons nobody remembers, funded by money that nobody tracks, overseen by people who are themselves overseen by people who are themselves sitting in buildings doing things they can’t describe. And then I realize: yes. That’s exactly what it is. And I love it. Not because it makes sense. But because it doesn’t have to.” — Anonymous, Department of the Treasury

The Office of Personnel Management has announced plans for a follow-up survey in 2026 to assess whether the first survey improved workforce awareness. Preliminary planning has hit a snag: the team assigned to design the follow-up survey cannot locate 40% of the original respondents, who may have moved to different buildings, different agencies, or — in at least one case — a different country, while still collecting a federal paycheck.

“We’ll find them,” assured OPM Director Christine Headcount. “We have the tools, the resources, and the dedication. We also have a new agency — the Department of Employee Location Services — that was just created to help with exactly this kind of thing.”

When asked where the Department of Employee Location Services was located, Director Headcount checked her files, frowned, and said: “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Chad Compliance is Government Is Love’s Workforce Correspondent. He was unable to verify his own employment status with Government Is Love’s HR department, which may or may not exist. His paychecks continue to arrive. He has stopped asking questions.