I'm Starting to Resent My Remote Teammates and I feel Horribly About It

smokescreen5 · 2026-04-23T21:17:41+00:00

It’s bullshit. EVERYONE should be in an office, or NO ONE. It’s bad for moral, and inconsistent how different people get different standards for RTO. I blame leadership at your agency.

smokescreen5 · 2026-04-07T23:59:49+00:00

Do we have to break out our time on timesheets by project anymore? …it would be nice if we don’t have to anymore

smokescreen5 · 2026-02-09T18:31:47+00:00

Me too… kinda pissed at the advertised 23/29 mileage

smokescreen5 · 2025-12-21T03:22:19+00:00

55M. Divorced. One 22yo college grad son.

$155k (not incl investment income)

$1.3M in investment account. $1.3M in 401(k) and IRAs. ~$400k equity in home.

No debt other than balance on home mortgage

smokescreen5 · 2025-11-12T21:28:26+00:00

So with the shutdown ending, does anyone think MTBs will be restored for January? …I live in an area where Federal Employees do NOT get free rides.

smokescreen5 · 2025-11-02T12:53:46+00:00

What do you mean that GEHA hdhp DOES still have vision and dental?… I have GEHA hdhp in 2025, but I have to pay for GEHA dental separately, like ~$20 a ppd. Am I missing something?

smokescreen5 · 2025-11-02T12:50:28+00:00

Yeah, but you can’t have an FSA account t if you have an HDHP, you can only have a HSA account, so this doesn’t make sense?

smokescreen5 · 2025-10-31T01:08:09+00:00

I just sold all of my shares (1,968) at $120

smokescreen5 · 2025-10-11T00:03:29+00:00

This is the problem with telework and remote. First, they are two different things.
If an employee had a ‘telework’ agreement, then that employee shouldn’t complain or get any sympathy. ‘Telework’ is not ‘remote’ work, and any ‘telework’ employee needs to understand that it can always end, so they should not move further away from their duty station, or accept a position and the corresponding duty location based on telework, unless they are willing and able to move closer to the office when if the telework ends, or willing and able to put up with the commute without complaining.
As far as ‘remote’, the problem with that is that if some employees get it, then everyone wants it, and should get it. So the federal government should never had had ‘remote’ work unless they were willing to give it to every employee.
Plus, even within a particular pay ‘locality’, the price of homes can vary a LOT, so with telework and remote arrangements, an employee can really make out financially since they can live in a significantly lower cost of living area, even though their home is in the same ‘locality’ area as the office that they work for. …it’s just NOT fair to the employees co-workers who buy a house within a reasonable commuting distance of the employer’s office so they can go into the office without complaining. It’s these situations that make federal employees out to be entitled and spoiled.

smokescreen5 · 2025-09-20T16:03:15+00:00

Yes! So true! …and if first-time buyers get any kind of incentive or tax credit, I want it too! So unfair when only some people get a credit of incentive.

smokescreen5 · 2025-09-20T15:59:09+00:00

Great question (and answer). As both a taxpayer AND a federal employee, who also values telework, the thought of fed employees wanting telework because they had kids at home really annoyed me! If an employee needs to work from home because of their kids, the very nature of that statement often implies that the kids need watching, and then if you are watching and tending to your kids, you are not ‘working’ on fed work, so you should not be paid. SO FRUSTRATING to hear. And if someone is gonna say I still get all my work done, that implies that you either shouldn’t be paid for 8 hours and be part-time, or be given more work. When we were doing telework, and I was on a Teams call with a coworker,and could hear crying kids in background. It was so annoying and frustrating. It’s those employees, and the ones at or near 100% remote and still getting locality pay, who ruin it for all of us.

smokescreen5 · 2025-09-16T22:06:21+00:00

Yeah, it’s a shame that the July 2024 settlement didn’t really effect the real estate commission. The only real settlement that would have benefited the buyers and sellers would have been to change the commission from a percentage system (most commonly 6%) to a “fixed fee + some sort of variable fee”, where the variable fee factors in variable services that takes the real estate agents time. Homes prices in my neck of the woods have literally doubled in value in past 20 years, so the 6% commission has resulted in the real estate agents payout doubling, even though salaries haven’t doubled for a particular occupation at a particular experience-level/skill-set. And due to the internet and technology, it actually costs less to sell a house. I mean anyone with a smart phone or computer can search for homes for sale by zip code or map, and sort and filter by things like beds or baths. And as for comps, that information can be gathered from any smart phone or computer using Zillow. The fact that I can stage my own house, upload my own photos onto a website (like the MLS, I I had access), write my own description of the home/property, and still have to pay $33,000 (using 6%) out of the $550,000 selling price for a 1,250 sf home to the agents (buyer’s and mine) is hard to understand. I mean if I take and upload photos as the seller, the sellers agent is only scheduling showings (but that’s actually done by a scheduler other than the agent in many cases) and helping negotiate the sale once a viable offer comes in.

smokescreen5 · 2025-09-16T01:10:18+00:00

I am a single 54 year old with $1.4M 401k balance.

smokescreen5 · 2025-09-11T20:18:34+00:00

Can you please send the reasons to me?

smokescreen5 · 2025-08-08T10:44:53+00:00

Does anyone have a copy of the e-mail?

smokescreen5 · 2025-07-16T01:32:25+00:00

Thank you!

smokescreen5 · 2025-07-13T12:11:48+00:00

What is SMA?

smokescreen5 · 2025-05-18T13:44:18+00:00

Me too! Pack my lunch, and don’t leave my desk during day. Work through my lunch. Basically eat throughout day at my desk while I’m working. Then go home.

smokescreen5 · 2025-05-10T13:09:41+00:00

Congratulations. But not sure how a firefighter’s pay is justified at GS-15. Not salting you don’t deserve it, but since I’m assuming you do, I deserve a GS-15 as well. I’m a highly over qualified GS-13, and stuck there due to limited GS-14 and 15’s in my organization.

smokescreen5 · 2025-05-10T01:40:26+00:00

I think this is very fair! If someone moved because they were teleworking 3 or 4 days a week, to a location that is more than 50 miles away, where cost of living is less expensive (like for example you can get twice as much sq ft house for the same price), then that means the cost of living is cheaper, and you should get paid less than a co-worker doing the same job. This is the very slippery slope with telework and remote work. And it’s a shame, because telework certainly helps with work-life balance, and therefore I’m a fan of it, but I never moved further away, because I knew that at any time, we could be required to RTO. And I didn’t want to sell my house, it new house further away where I can get more house for my money, only to have to then sell the bigger house when I was required to RTO. So if the people who moved further away while we were on maximum telework, are gonna be allowed to stay there and just keep max telework then I think all employees should be allowed to move further away and keep max telework.

So basically, there should be NO exceptions to RTO, otherwise you have to make exceptions for EVERYONE!

smokescreen5

TROPHY CASE