I have the full picture now. Let me give you a straight assessment.
Here’s what actually happened in the EEO process, and why the system worked against you even when the facts were on your side.
What you filed and why it was framed wrong from the start
Your complaint was filed as age discrimination under the ADEA — that you were 65 and were passed over for a housekeeping aide position in favor of a younger person. That’s a valid legal theory, but it’s one of the hardest to win because you have to prove the decision-maker knew your age and acted because of it. The VA’s entire defense rested on one simple claim: nobody involved in the selection knew how old you were. The HR specialist didn’t tell them. The certificate of eligibles didn’t include it. Because you yourself said in your interview that you didn’t know whether the selecting official knew your age, the VA used your own words to undermine your case.
The EEOC’s Final Agency Decision didn’t dispute that you were well-qualified. They explicitly acknowledged you were rated “Well Qualified,” the same as the person who was ultimately selected — and that person even declined the job offer. So the position went unfilled rather than give it to you. That fact alone tells a story, but the agency framed it as a neutral decision based on your “past work performance and numerous resignations,” and the EEOC accepted that framing.
The deeper problem: your actual grievance was never the legal claim
Reading your personal statement and the appeal update, your real complaint wasn’t primarily about age. It was about something harder to litigate: that the VA created working conditions so demeaning — police called for using assigned keys, bathroom permission requirements, arbitrary trash bag counting — that any self-respecting person would eventually leave, and then used those forced departures as a permanent blacklist against you. You called it a “disposable environment.” The EEOC actually dismissed that specific claim outright, saying it “failed to state a claim” — meaning it wasn’t legally sufficient on its face.
That’s the cruelest part of the system: the thing that was most true about your experience — that the supervisory culture manufactured reasons to discard people — is not a protected class under federal EEO law. You can only win an EEO complaint if the mistreatment was because of your age, race, sex, disability, or other protected characteristic. Mistreatment because a supervisor is a petty tyrant isn’t actionable on its own.
What your own documents prove that the EEO process ignored
Your personal statement made a strong point the EEOC glossed over: if your work performance was truly poor, there should be written disciplinary documentation — PIPs, counseling memos, written warnings. You asked them to produce that paperwork. They never did, because it doesn’t exist. What exists instead is exactly what you documented in that Excel spreadsheet: perfect attendance pay period after pay period, until a supervisor did something unreasonable, and you walked. That’s not poor performance. That’s a reasonable person responding to unreasonable treatment.
You also mentioned something significant: while working under Randy Dirling, you were offered a WL-2 Work Leader position — a promotion — which you declined because you had a private software job offer. You don’t decline promotions if you’re a poor performer.
The EEOC appeal you filed in July 2023
You filed the appeal to EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations (EEOC Appeal No. 2023004244) on July 20, 2023. That was acknowledged and docketed. Based on the documents here, there’s no final OFO decision included, which means either it’s still pending, was dismissed, or the decision came after this zip file was created in August 2023. The OFO takes anywhere from one to several years to issue decisions and typically upholds the agency in cases like this where there’s no direct evidence of discriminatory intent.
The honest bottom line
The EEO process was not designed to fix what happened to you. It was designed to remedy specific acts of discrimination based on protected characteristics. What happened to you was a combination of an abusive supervisory culture, a system that used your own dignified exits against you as evidence of unreliability, and a federal job ladder where the only entry point for someone with your background was the bottom rung — and the bottom rung was controlled by people like Marcie, who you note was eventually fired or forced out herself.
The fact that the supervisor most responsible for the turnover was ultimately removed is actually validation that your assessment was correct. You were right about the culture. You were just using the wrong legal tool to try to fix it.
The $450 military deposit refund question is still valid and separate from all of this. That money is yours regardless of how the EEO came out.