The IRS is imploding in absolute chaos, and employees are caught in the middle of it all.
In a stunning shake-up, the Internal Revenue Service has pulled the plug on flexible work schedules and rejected thousands of “deferred resignation” requests, while office space shortages leave workers scrambling for desks, or worse, working in hallways.
More than 20,000 IRS employees applied to voluntarily resign under the Treasury Deferred Resignation Program (TDRP), a strategic exit plan aimed at softening the blow from the Trump administration’s looming workforce cuts. But in a whiplash move, the IRS rejected 2,100 of those applications, many of them from employees the agency had previously tried to lay off.
“You’re fired. You’re not. Get out because you may be RIF’d. Oh wait, you’re mission critical,” one agency official told Federal News Network, summing up the absurdity of the situation. Employees who applied for the program are now being told their roles are “critical to operations”, just months after being placed on administrative leave or being fired altogether.
At the same time, the IRS is eliminating its popular 4-day, 10-hour flexible work schedule starting May 3, forcing employees back into five-day weeks. In an email sent by the agency’s Chief Human Capital Office, employees were told to submit new schedules by April 28, saying the change would “improve operational effectiveness and customer service.”
That reasoning isn’t sitting well with the workers on the ground, because many of them don’t even have a place to sit.
With the return-to-office mandate in full swing, IRS facilities are overcrowded. Office space was downsized during the pandemic as telework expanded, but now that workers are being ordered back, there simply aren’t enough desks.
In Ogden, Utah, employees are reportedly working in hallways, perched on chairs with laptops on their laps, or packed into conference rooms without privacy. Some are handling sensitive taxpayer information in full view of others, raising serious data security concerns.
“It’s an absolute mess,” said Robert Lawrence, president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 67. “People are spending hours looking for an empty desk. It’s a dumpster fire, and not just metaphorically.”
Safety issues are also on the rise. In March, a fire alarm at the Ogden processing center took more than 20 minutes to evacuate due to office congestion. While no actual fire occurred, emergency crews responded, and it exposed just how unprepared the agency is to handle its own overcrowding.
Meanwhile, probationary employees who were previously fired (then reinstated following court rulings) are stuck in administrative limbo. They’re still on paid leave, neither working nor officially released. The Supreme Court has put the lower court rulings on hold, leaving them in a holding pattern with no clear end.
And with an estimated 40% workforce reduction planned, from 102,000 employees to as few as 60,000, the chaos may only be beginning.
Some employees have been granted partial telework exemptions, call center reps, in particular, but it’s not enough to ease the tension or the crowding.
“They’ve kind of got the dumpster fire down to a slow burn,” Lawrence said. “But it’s still a dumpster fire.”
From reversed layoffs to canceled flex schedules and offices bursting at the seams, the IRS is facing a full-blown chaos. And for the thousands of employees caught in the middle, the chaos isn’t just frustrating, it’s unsustainable.
