I didn't miss the point. This waste could have been avoided, is the thing, and anyone who cared about running and knew how to run an organization well, might have. Such a person might even have guessed there were excellent reasons that the executive has not, previously, been run by one single person issuing surprising and very specific decrees that reach down to the lowest-level workers, across large swaths of it at once, and not done that.
> I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but if the way we discover that government offices were sitting vacant for years (i.e. big waste) is by having people return to them and be unproductive for a few days (i.e. small waste), then the trade will be worth it.
This doesn't save anything. Now utilities and maintenance costs are higher. It's more spending. Leasing out or selling the buildings would have cut waste.
> I doubt anyone wants employees to be sitting in offices that aren't functional.
I don't know how many times and ways people involved in the admin have to say that their goal is to wreck the federal bureaucracy before people believe them.