Editor’s note: On Jan. 28, the Office of Personnel Management emailed an offer for deferred resignation to more than 2 million federal employees. Among the people who received those emails were employees at offices in Athens County: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Soil Conservation Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We granted the author of this letter anonymity to protect them from possible retaliation.
Dear head of the Office of Personnel Management,
Disclaimer: I write this letter on my own personal time and using my own personal equipment. Time stamp 2320 EST on 2/4/2025.
I am writing to you today to respectfully decline your offer allowing me to resign from my position with an agency of the U.S. federal government. I regret that the offer was made to me from an unattended email address only programmed to accept replies stating “resign,” in that it forces me to explain the reasons for my refusal publicly.
Let me start by saying that I have faithfully served this agency and her mission to care for the land and serve people since 2006. For me, working for this agency and then being able to spend my career furthering the conservation and judicious use of public lands has been the embodiment of expressing my core values as a human being. My parents taught me and showed me through their actions that 1) our natural world is vital to us for survival and enjoyment and its own intrinsic value or simply existing, AND 2) the care, understanding, and support of people less fortunate is our responsibility as we are beneficiaries of privilege.
When I first started working for this agency way back in 2006, I could not believe my good fortune! I had what felt like the best job in the world! I worked outside, in most folk’s vacationland every day! That job was “seasonal” though, which meant it only lasted from May to November. I worked those types of jobs, doing whatever work was available (visitor surveys, plant surveys, trail maintenance, visitor surveys, painting, sign posting, etc) until I was finally able to get a permanent position. Even after securing a permanent position, I would have still been easily terminated until 2013. That is, I worked for 7+ years to establish myself in the agency.
To the furtherance of the agency I worked HARD — late hours and weekends — only to one day learn from a judge that sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you work, sometimes the judgement does not come down in your favor. Even then, after unfavorable judgement, I worked to achieve approval; to improve explanations; to improve analyses; to work with people towards common goals. Along the way I sacrificed time with my family, my first marriage, and my own well being.
If you tell me I haven’t given enough to the agency and my public service, I will give you the therapy bills to dispute your claim.
I digress … my point is to explain why I WILL NOT be resigning.
My initial reaction to your offer, and I imagine the reaction of many others, was to want to snap it up! Who wouldn’t want 7 or 8 months of pay while doing whatever else they might want?!? I admit I thought, “maybe this is the sign that you should get your teacher’s certificate and actually make a positive change each and every day.” Then I had the equal and opposite reaction, which was a giant figurative middle finger to you, to the president, and to Elon Musk. This end point involved me resigning in order to go work for the “other guys.” The ones that bring the lawsuits.
In the end, though, I’ve landed on the truism that the best way, in fact the ONLY WAY, to ensure that the civil service and the agency mission that I love and have dedicated almost 20 years of my life to, that it survives and continues through this dark time is for people like me, and in fact ACTUALLY ME, to stay where we are and continue to work towards the furtherance of our agency mission.
I believe in the conservation of natural resources. I believe in the use of those natural resources for the betterment of our society while we also maintain ecosystems, maintain environmental quality, and maintain opportunities for public enjoyment. I believe that these values are NOT swayed or changed by political ideology. I believe that it is important, if not critical to the continuance of these values that I maintain my position as a federal government civil servant. For these reasons I must respectfully decline your offer.
An anonymous Athens County resident
