Erin Cagney was supposed to hear on Monday that she could go back to doing the job she loved — as an archaeologist with the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. But the day came and went without a word.
Ms. Cagney finally learned her fate on Wednesday evening. She was being reinstated, but immediately being placed on administrative leave.
“I desperately want to return to my job,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “I don’t want to be on administrative leave, in limbo, for some unknown duration of time.”
Ms. Cagney, first ensnared in the Trump administration’s purge of thousands of probationary employees, now finds herself caught in the slow-motion chaos playing out across the government as 18 federal agencies contend with two court orders requiring workers to be rehired.
In interviews, more than a dozen fired probationary workers described a kind of purgatory in which information about their livelihoods and what might happen next was difficult, if not impossible, to come by. Most of the fired workers interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing for their future job prospects and citing their desire to get back to work.
In some cases, fired employees say they have received emails informing them of their reinstatement. Some have seen back pay appear in their bank accounts.