Tag Archives: pay

Early riser…

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I’ve had your sorry ass locked out of the office every morning for three weeks, told you five times that shift starts and 6:30, and still you’re already here when I pull in to the parking lot at 6:15. The hood of your car is cool so I know you’ve been here for a while.

The real question, of course, is why? You’re going to have to take my word for it that wanting to eat breakfast at your desk isn’t a good enough reason for me to want to get sued later because you worked 30 minutes a day longer than you were supposed to and didn’t get paid for it. So seriously, shift starts at 6:30. I’ll unlock at 6:25. If you want to keep coming in and standing in the hall for 30 minutes like a dipshit, that’s all on you.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

It’s still friggin’ freezing in here…

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The thirty-day hiring freeze and 30-day extension are now something on the order of 65 days old. Now of course there’s some logic to waiting to see if the jackrabbits in Congress can actually manage to pass a budget before sending us all home on Friday, but maybe a word of “hey, standby. We’ll let you know after Friday” would be better than the overpowering silence coming from the civilian personnel office. It’s the 10-ton elephant in the room that they refuse to address other than referring back to a memo put out over two months ago.

If you’re going to extend it, just announce that already so we can get busy retooling our resumes for jobs outside DOD. If it’s going to be dropped, how about a scientific guesstimate of when they machinery of civilian hiring might start moving again. Even with the cynicism that I usually bring to the table when discussing issues of competent leadership at pay grades above reality, I can’t believe that the decision hasn’t already been made somewhere about whether it’s time to fish or cut bait. Of course I could be completely wrong about that and the denizens of that five-sided concrete cobweb could be even more jacked up than I thought possible.

The total tonnage of backlog that’s going to exist after continuing to make announcements and conduct interviews, but not make selections is certainly going to be enough to stun a mule team in its tracks… Especially considering that mules are a damned sight easier to work with than the personnel office. Let it run another month or two and I’ll be dropping retirement papers before they manage to get it cleared up. Pay freeze, hiring freeze, and no budget in sight… It’s getting very hard to love working for Uncle.

Fingers crossed…

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I just found out I’m in the running for a new job/promotion. Actually it’s the job I was doing before I moved into my current one. They finally got around to opening it at the right pay grade and in the parlance of the HR pukes, I was “referred” for the position… Which basically means I should get the chance to interview for the position. I’m a little torn because it’s not an “emergency” job, which is what we all know I really want to be doing, but it’s more money, a straight 40-hour work-week, much less chance of getting called on a Friday morning to fly off to cover one crisis or another, and it puts me one step closer to wearing the gold keystone that’s been my goal since coming to work in government.

Basically, if they offer me the position, I don’t know that I can really turn it down. I’d have a better sense of things if I knew a promotion in my current assignment would be coming up, but since there’s someone currently sitting in the job I really want, this seems like the next best option. A la Woodward and Bernstein, my plan is to “follow the money..”

However, I’m putting the cart way before the horse here, so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and see where I land when everything shakes out.

I’m no slut…

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Unlike a lot of people who work for a living, I’m freely admit that I’m a whore. It’s very simple, really: I trade my time for someone else’s money. I’ll do anything, anytime, anywhere, and although I am easy, I’m not cheap. I absolutely don’t believe in giving my time away for nothing. Not for God. Not for Country. Not for the satisfaction of seeing a job well done. I work for one reason: You pay me. Next time you ask me to do a job in an afternoon that would usually takes a couple of people a couple of days, let’s keep in mind that the clock is running. I’m lucky to enjoy the work and I’ll give you as much time as you want. Just remember that it’s going to cost you.