A younger federal employee says he was wrongly assumed to be a Department of Government Efficiency operative after returning to the office following remote work, and it resulted in weeks of isolation, awkward interactions and straight-up hostility.
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Mistrust in the Office
“From the day I started coming in, I've been feeling out of place,” wrote the employee on Reddit. “I receive mean looks, conversations straight-up dying when I walk by… or even just ignoring me when I say ‘Hi’.”
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The post, which gained thousands of upvotes and sparked hundreds of replies, hit a nerve with federal workers across multiple agencies. The central issue? Growing suspicion around DOGE — a much-discussed, loosely defined internal enforcement body reportedly tied to layoffs and oversight during the return-to-office push.
The OP explained that he had only recently started working in the office after remote onboarding. “I finally managed to strike up a conversation with someone,” he said, “and before we got friendly, he kind of checked me — asked what office I was with and all that.”
When the coworker realized OP was just a regular federal employee and not with DOGE, things changed quickly: “After that, he was super cool and even told me his team had been talking about me a lot because they thought I was a DOGE plant.”
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Everyone Is on Edge
Once the misunderstanding was cleared up on his floor, he started getting smiles instead of suspicion. But that goodwill hasn’t reached other parts of the building: “As for the other floors? I doubt they interact with this guy enough to know.”
The story resonated with hundreds who replied with similar experiences or office-wide paranoia. One user wrote, “My office is probably much much smaller than yours, but my supervisor tends to send out emails with name, picture, and a little blurb about new staff. Not just new feds, but new faces in general to just make it less weird.”
Others joked that OP should lean into it: “I’d get a ‘Hi my name is’ sticker and fill in ‘NOT DOGE’,” one commenter suggested. Another said, “This is exactly what DOGE would do.”
The topic triggered a larger conversation about the distrust plaguing federal workplaces in the current political climate. “People are super paranoid now,” wrote one user. Another added, “This is how it was in Nazi Germany and Stalin Russia… people turning each other in to protect themselves.”
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Fear, Paranoia and Office Culture
According to Reddit comments, suspicion toward new hires, especially younger ones, has been growing. Many said appearance matters more than it should: dressing too formally, smiling too much or simply being unfamiliar could result in cold shoulders. “If you look too young and preppy/WASP-y… you might inadvertently give off that impression,” one commenter said.
The OP admitted he dresses well because his father taught him to, but said he might consider “reading the room” more. Still, he maintained that he shouldn’t have to change who he is to be treated with basic respect.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you have to sh*t on other feds,” he wrote in an edit. “I shouldn’t be treated as other just because I am young and in government.”
Others agreed, blaming the administration for creating an atmosphere of fear. “They want the kind of environments where coworkers don't trust each other… instead of cooperate and band together to weather the storm,” one person commented.
For now, OP is trying to laugh about the whole thing. “What if DOGE are the friends we made along the way?” he joked.
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