POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI) — The Trump administration’s return-to-work in-person mandate has proven to be controversial with many people. Local News 8 spoke with a family whose lives are now turned upside down by the order.
Jennifer B. and her husband are a retired military family. They moved to Pocatello after her husband was hired as a telework employee by Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
“He was not one of those people that worked in the office and then left during COVID and maybe came back,” Jennifer said.
Jennifer says they were told her husband could work remotely and his job would allow them to live at a distance. However, now that the president’s return to work mandate has gone out, Jennifer’s husband was told he needed to work at the base in-person. He had about a week to make the change.
“So now in the last week, we have had to make the very hard decision of selling our home,” said Jennifer.
They will have to leave the home and area they love as well as the barn they’ve been building themselves. It’s been especially hard on their teenage daughter who is involved in many activities in the area, including rodeo.
“We had to sit our daughter down…the other night and tell her…that we were going to have to sell our home. This is going to require her to leave her school, which she absolutely loves,” said Jennifer.
Jennifer’s husband has been trying to call Human Resources and about early retirement, but thousands of people in similar situations are tying up the phone lines.
“When he called, the lady that answered, she was very short, almost panting out of breath, and she she was frazzled,” Jennifer said. “And she said, sir, we are getting thousands of phone calls. We can’t help you for at least a couple of weeks.”
So Jennifer and her family feel like they are in limbo right now.
“We can’t even set a plan in motion at this time, because no one in leadership at local and state level seem to really understand what’s going on either,” said Jennifer.
Jennifer says she and her family are more than willing to follow the mandate. They just wish there were more time to get things figured out.
“I think that with the speediness of this change and the little bit of time that we were given, that’s not a lot of time to make that life decision like that,” said Jennifer.
Jennifer and her family hope they can get everything sorted out soon so her husband does not have to keep making the 4-hour work commute each day.
