‘Devastated.’ ‘Cruel.’ ‘Surreal.’ Federal workers share the toll of losing their identity
Bonnie Green, 60, National Science Foundation in Bethlehem, Pa.
Bonnie Green discovered she was fired via text messages from colleagues on Feb. 18. Green is also a psychology professor at East Stroudsburg University. She’s been with NSF since 2020, first as a program officer and then as an expert for the agency’s Directorate for STEM Education. Green is private about whom she voted for, but says that she runs politically conservative and that many of her friends voted for Trump. She learned about her termination while administering an exam.
“I was giving an exam. My cellphone was sitting there and I got the vibrations. The texts were coming in. But I’m thinking, ‘This is weird. I normally don’t get texts.’ So I opened up my phone to take a look, and I’m getting texts from NSF colleagues saying, ‘I’m so sorry. Are you OK?’ … They said, ‘Log in to your email.’ So I did … At five minutes to 11, I received an email saying that my position was ending, and I had until 1 o’clock until my emails and everything were done. …
In my head, I’m saying, ‘Grab your evaluations, grab your evaluations, get your W-2s.’ Because they’re all on the system, and it’s going down at 1 o’clock, and my students need me, and I’m like, ‘What do I do?’ And I picked NSF over my students [said through tears]. … All of my systems are shutting down. I pick whatever files I can, send them to the administrative assistant and I do this as much as I can, and then I have to get back to my students. I am so disgusted. I loved NSF. I gave them everything. … I was working a full-time job on a half-time pay without benefits. I gave them everything, and they couldn’t even give me the common courtesy of a mild heads-up. …
Most people who know me consider that I run conservatively. I certainly have very strong views regarding issues of fiscal prudence. We cannot waste taxpayer dollars, and I feel very, very strongly about that in tremendous ways. I am concerned about the debt. … And I know that there is waste in the federal government, and I think that it should be ferreted out and cut. … But these particular cuts have been done without reason. …
Many of my friends voted for Trump, and one of the things that they have said to me specifically is that it was not their intention for things to be carried out this way. It was their intention for the economy to get under control, for the debt to get under control. … I don’t believe that anybody who voted for Trump was expecting us to be weakened in this way.”
