We’re From the Government and We’re Here to Help
Hey Fiona,
Sorry this is the first email in a week, but, well you were right, I should have blown off this Department of Health and Human Services internship and went to work with you part time at the caterer’s. This week has been an exercise in futility.
Sorry I have not been in touch, but we were put on a social network blackout for this assignment and anyone caught posting, blogging, or emailing while on site would be terminated from the internship program immediately. At this point, who cares? Let them fire me.
Four days ago, I am at HHS office in DC about to leave for the day when suddenly we are all called into an all hands staff meeting. They tell us we are going to participate in some sort of preparedness and response drill and that we are to head home immediately, pack up two days’ worth of clothes and report back to the DC office within ninety minutes.
I head home, grab some clothes and toiletries, and head back to the office. It was fun and exciting at first, like a mystery vacation.
When I get back to the office in DC, there are a half dozen chartered buses waiting for us. We pile on and are told that we are going to support the military in some sort of exercise in New Jersey, and that we would be staying at Fort Monmouth Army installation. We had to turn in our personal cell phones and were all assigned government phones that had no internet access, just phone and text. Like a cell phone out of the 1950’s.
We arrive four hours later, close to midnight, only to then find out that Fort Monmouth had been closed due to BRAC years ago.
So now it is scramble time and they don’t know where we should go. We are all tired and pissed, and this part of NJ isn’t exactly tourist central with a ton of hotel choices. So the buses scatter and we all end up at different hotels. I lucked out and got a Hampton Inn, which was not that bad.
Next day, we get up early and wait for instructions. And wait, and wait. Full day goes by and they never tell us a thing. We grabbed some dinner and went back to our rooms for the night.
Day two, we again assemble in the lobby in the morning, and they tell us we are going to go to Trenton where all Health and Human Services staff are to be standing behind the HHS Secretary during a news conference. So I am thinking “we drove all this way just to be props behind the secretary of the department”? We all pile back into the buses and drive down to Trenton and gather at some high school. My supervisor is there and he is handing out HHS logo windbreakers for everyone to wear. This is really getting ridiculous, but I am thinking that if they want to show us off, who cares, right?
We put on the jackets and wait for the secretary to arrive for our photo op. We wait and wait and wait. After like three hours of this, which is torture as we have no phones to even kill time on Facebook, the secretary’s advance person finally arrives and starts throwing a fit. She is screaming “what are you all doing here?”
My supervisor explains to the woman that we were told by headquarters to come and stand behind the secretary of HHS while she made her speech.
The woman starts screaming, “No, the secretary is going to make a statement that HHS people are here to help and are currently deployed all across the state to support the residents. How can they be deployed and helping if they are all standing there behind her? Standing there is not helping is it? Now get the hell out of here!”
So my supervisor asks the woman where we should go.
She screams “I don’t care, get out of here!”
We all pile back in the busses and head back to the hotels. So were not helping anyone, and we are not being used as a background prop. We are sitting in the hotel rooms.
We are the Federal Government, and we are here to…….order room service.
At least I got a nice jacket out of it.
Day three comes and they seem to be trying to think of things for us to do. We gather in the lobby and the buses take us to meet up at the PNC Arts Center, where they hold concerts and such. I ran into Broke Brian there. He is one of the other interns. He is not broke as in poor, but there are two interns named Brian, and he is the one who has like a million emotional problems. Like he is broken. So we call him Broke Brian.
Broke Brian tells me they are housed at a Marriott. Damn, now I was pissed. I thought the Hampton was not bad, until I found out others were in a Marriott.
Anyway, HHS had organized a bunch of rental cars for us. They give us each maps and tell us we are to pair up and drive around to the towns we are assigned to, marking on the map the locations of all the medical supplies stores, pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, etc. Anything medical.
This is so ridiculous, we can pull this stuff up on the web, but they send us out anyway. I am paired up with Broke Brian and I convince him to drop me off back at my hotel. He was stressing out since he has OCD or something and is worried we are going to get in trouble. I tell him not to worry and to just drive around where we were told to go and make some notes.
I go to my room and spend the rest of the day binge watching Breaking Bad on cable and ordering room service.
Next morning, day four, we get up and again get on the buses which take us to the PNC Center, but this time, like half the team is a no-show. All the supervisors are freaking out since the missing interns and HHS staff are not in the hotels and not answering their phones. One supervisor is saying that if they went back to DC in the rental cars, they would be fired. Good luck firing anyone from a government job. If I did not need the recommendation, I probably would have taken a rental car and driven back to DC myself.
But I am here along with about one hundred other HHS folks that remained.
Oh and the Army finally arrived that day.
It was about time, since I thought this was their exercise to begin with. They were in an adjacent parking lot and had a whole fleet of military trucks. They were setting up something, lots of makeshift walls, lights, barbed wire and what looked like cattle shoots to get into the walled off area.
They had some really cool looking vehicles too, some things that almost looked like tanks, but not quite. And a bunch of these cargo containers on flatbed trucks. It was really weird and a little frightening. But anyway, yours truly had her own mission to carry out. That morning, we were given new maps, and told we are to identify on the map not only medical centers but gun stores. WTF? What do we care about gun stores? I had heard rumors in the halls of HHS that they were looking at guns as a “health risk” and planning on banning them or confiscating them in the name of public health. But Brian said that was all paranoid bullshit, and besides, we’re not ATF, we are not going to go around confiscating guns.
I again convinced Broke Brian to drop me off at my hotel, but he was acting real weird. He wanted to come and hang out with me in my room. No way. He is cute, but too much baggage. He was really insistent so I told him I really wanted to be alone and he finally relented and went off to follow his provided map to find medical and gun stores.
I spent that day binge watching Game of Thrones. Fantastic. I did not get much sleep, as there were sirens from fire trucks or police cars or something going off like every ten minutes.
Needless to say, on day five, I get up and feel like crud. I go down to get my complimentary Hampton Inn breakfast and nothing is prepared. I bitched but the front desk clerk said a bunch of the staff did not show up this morning.
They get me some plastic wrapped muffins and I get on the bus to head to PNC, but the bus is near empty. Now we are down to like ten people total from our group that are staying at the Hampton Inn. The rest have either split or more likely transferred to the Marriott.
We arrive at the PNC center and there are only about fifty HHS left. We started with over 200, but everyone has bailed and took the rentals with them. The remaining supervisors are going nuts and calling everyone’s cell phone and home phones back in DC, but no luck.
I saw Broke Brian, and he looks like hell. He tells me I looked worse and he is probably right. I used to be able to stay up most of the night and still rally in the morning, but today I was feeling like a truck hit me. This time we both head back to my hotel room and we don’t even bother filling out the maps. He got into one of the twin beds in my room and I got into the other and we both slept for most of the day. Still the damn police sirens or ambulances or whatever they are keep flying by. This hotel must be right next to a dispatch center or something.
Anyway, that has been my great exciting mystery vacation. You are all caught up. I woke up about fifteen minutes ago. Will head to the PNC center again and see what Easter eggs they have us looking for today.
Broke Brian has been in the bathroom since I awoke. I will give him a few more minutes and then I am going to bang on the door, he better not be using all the towels.
Anyway, love you and hopefully, will be home soon.
Penny