Hang on, let me close the door. In many federal offices, speaking the truth about how operations really work is viewed as simply too dangerous to risk. Government employees expect that if they say what's really going on in their agencies, they'll be subject to public humiliation, intimidation, isolation and recriminations on the job. They aren't completely wrong, either. You can have the right to free speech and still be afraid to exercise it.
Many federal employees are angry, frustrated and confused.
One senior manager, asked to draw a color-coded graph of his emotional state on an average day, drew a bell curve, the large middle hump thickly colored with solid blazing red indicating frustration running from 7 a.m. to quitting time. Another manager showed a line graph of her typical day calm green interspersed with wild fluctuations of red spikes. Oh, those are meetings. They are some of the government's top performers people with a burning passion for excellence, who throw their hearts and souls into their jobs. They are beginning to feel powerless and worse, they are beginning to act that way.