By Sunlen Serfaty | CNN
(CNN) — As federal workers get fired by the thousands, the news has sometimes come in unceremonious, callous ways.
“Read this immediately,” – went the subject line of a termination email received by one worker. For another, it was the prepaid UPS label that showed up without warning—along with instructions for returning the work computer they were using.
These have been some of the impersonal ways workers have discovered their fate.
Federal employees who were new to their current job – though not necessarily new to federal work – known as probationary workers, have been a target of the Trump administration’s purge of the federal government, championed by Elon Musk and his DOGE campaign. Now, 72 hours after being purged because they were considered probationary workers, a biting reality has set in for many of them.
“I feel like the cruelty is the point, if I am being honest,” a federal worker, terminated on Thursday, told CNN. “There has been so much indication from the new OPM director and Elon Musk and from DOGE that the whole point of this is to scare people away from working in federal government or those who are still there, to want to leave.”
CNN spoke to more than a dozen federal workers from numerous federal agencies in the immediate days after the purge.
For many, the frenetic nature of the firings has left them confused – and even days later – without a full accounting of their termination.
The former workers told CNN their human resources questions are not getting answered: How long they will have health insurance? When is their last paycheck? What about their retirement accounts? And who can they contact for additional information?
For Victoria DeLano, her first indication that she was terminated from the Office of Civil Rights at Dept of Education was when she logged on to her computer at home on Wednesday evening and found her government access had been revoked. She reached out to her team leader via text message on her personal phone. Only then, did she get confirmation she had been let go and told her there was no other information to give her.
Five days later, she is still without any formal information.
“I still have nothing,” DeLano, who is a member of the American Federal of Government Employees (AFGE) union, said. “Nothing about my benefits, nothing official about termination, nothing about severance. I don’t even have a letter of termination to get unemployment.”
Beyond just the immediate sting of losing their jobs, recently terminated federal workers tell CNN, it is the callous, impersonal, and chaotic way in which it is happening that is rubbing salt in the wound.
Another federal worker said they received a phone call from a supervisor they had never spoken to Thursday night and then access to their computer was revoked within thirty minutes of that call.
“It is so careless,” the worker said. “You are telling me I’m terminated immediately. What does that mean for my health care? What happens to my retirement? I don’t have a way to get in touch with anyone. Everyone is locked out. How do you then have a conversation if you are locked out of your system?”
“Oh my God – now what?” a recently-terminated federal worker told CNN of their first thoughts after digesting their termination email, which came late Friday night with very limited information on resources that would typically be provided to terminated employees.
Among those CNN spoke to – a woman who is six-months pregnant and whose family relies on her health benefits, a disabled federal worker, a primary caregiver for an aging parent and a young couple planning a wedding in the fall. All have now been terminated and are left wondering what impact their firing will have on their life ahead.
“There has been absolutely no clarity – there is no articulation what is next,” another recently-terminated federal worker said.
“I received no warning. I was immediately locked out of the system. I can’t even access my last paystub,“ a recently terminated worker said.
Some are wondering how to return government equipment like phones and computers, with those devices still sitting in a lot of the former employees’ homes.
“There is no information on these emails,” another recently terminated federal worker said. “This is not only cruel. It is extremely unorganized. They don’t have a plan for returning equiptment. They don’t have a plan for contacting people once they fire them. This is chaos.”
In the immediate aftermath, federal employees are sharing tidbits of information that they learn about their agency on the messaging app Signal, on social media and on telephone calls with one another. Some are attempting to pick up the pieces – and trying to move past the confusion and resentment.
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For one recently fired federal worker who was planning a wedding for the fall, those plans are being reassessed.
Among the options – potentially foregoing a honeymoon or reducing the scope of their wedding – with the hopes of not having to postpone the nuptials out right.
“Elon Musk is not taking my wedding,” they said wistfully.
