Flemings’s experience is just one example of the uncertainty the freeze has sown in some people’s lives, and the status of his job ended up changing yet again. Two days after his offer was rescinded, he received another phone call re-offering it; despite his frustration with the situation, he gratefully accepted. Flemings estimates that there were 30 people in his intake session in Austin and notes that over the course of five days, the IRS ran six or seven such sessions a day. The OMB guidance issued since his offer was rescinded states that people who were offered a job before January 22 with a starting date before February 22 should have their offers honored, so it’s likely the others at those intake sessions—and possibly people in other cohorts being onboarded around the country—were subjected to similar turns of events.

Workers at other federal agencies have also found their lives destabilized by the freeze, although perhaps to a less dramatic extent. That includes one attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his employment situation. The attorney has worked at the EPA for eight years and has been applying, without much success, for jobs at adjacent agencies that are better in line with his Master’s degree. When he got a call for a position asking for an interview, he quickly agreed.

But despite higher-ups at that agency telling him they were very interested and that he was “uniquely qualified” for the job prior to his interview, the attorney received an email on the morning of January 27 saying that because of the ambiguity of Trump’s memorandum, the agency was still unsure how to interpret the hiring freeze and were “not sure what [they] were going to do with the vacancy at this point.”

The attorney, who said he knew of several people in agencies like his who were in similar positions, was also looking into a new job within his department, but after an interview was told that the EPA did not yet know whether the executive order permitted the hiring of people who are already government employees. That kind of confusion has become common across the federal government, he says. “OMB’s guidance wasn’t very, well, guiding.” If he can’t find a job soon, he’s considering moving to Canada to pursue a Ph.D.

When contacted, some of the agencies and departments named in this article provided comment about the hiring freeze; others did not respond. The ones that did affirmed their commitment to their employees and to the communities they serve and/or implicitly acknowledged the confusing nature of the freeze by saying that they were still consulting with the OMB and OPM. When asked about how the freeze had affected federal workers themselves, a White House spokesperson said, “We have not heard complaints, but as with any new administration, there are bound to be concerns from employees across the federal government,” adding that the president “has always said he will work toward a more efficient government that alleviates the use of taxpayer dollars for unnecessary positions and regulations.”