Government waste & employees -Rant

mogley98

One of my clients owns a medical office building that he leases to the VA for a primary care office. I got a call from the administrator that she smelled gas ( I know they have no gas service to the building) while on my way to console her and knowing it is a BS call, I get another call from her boss who insists that someone MUST check it out now and call him back to let him know the status. Then I get another call from VA and he needs this to be checked immediately and call him back and let him know. LOL (I'm thinking a lot of things I couldn't say to them) Finally I get a call from another boss and she says I need to check it out ASAP and get back to her. I got on site, no gas smell, no meter no gas service. Explained to Admin who now says yeah I don't smell it now either. I told her to let Trump and the rest of them know that they don't have a gas problem and that IF they ever really did calling the utility would probably be best.

The BIG problem is the VA (our tax dollars) has WAY too many morons working to do the same damn job!

nmyers

I always handle "odor of gas" complaints by calling fire dispatch.

If it's really natural gas, better to have an engine there to find & correct the problem.  Always CYA.

Neal

dunbarboyz

The best thing about the govt is there are a dozen people that make more money than you want you to fix the problem.

bpost

It sounds like somebody ripped a big SBD fart and did not want to own up to it.

yoshmyster

Suits. Too many of them wanting to stay home and "work" from there. I reckon next will be a bomb scare.

bpost

I could cut government by 30% and the only people that would notice would be those that live off of the bureaucracy.

SW0320

Try this one.  I know one government employee who their usual duty station is his home.  Because his home is in the general NY City vicinity he has to quarantine at home he is not allowed to work even though his home is his usual duty station.

Butchdog2

Lots of rain? High humidity? Sewer gas venting out he roof vents then traveling back down to ground lever. Stinks to high heaven and of course it is methane.

asop

bpost-I believe that's the % Obama increased the Fed. payroll . And why with all the public paycuts haven't any governors offered to cut payrolls to help out the situation  Especially all the Dem. complaining ones?

Mobuck

"Try this one.  I know one government employee who their usual duty station is his home.  Because his home is in the general NY City vicinity he has to quarantine at home he is not allowed to work even though his home is his usual duty station."

My agency went to the opposite extreme. We normally travel the area doing face-to-face interviews. Of course that ceased but the know-it-alls decided we could work from home by phone. Guess what? The majority of our pay comes from the travel vs the actual interviews so now even with more interviews, our pay is 25% of normal. In addition, the computer system used to collect the information was not designed to handle the level of input so now it fails regularly. All this "adapt and make do" has alienated both employees and those we collect data from.

nmyers

We have some misconceptions about the federal government.

There are only about 1.1 million federal civilian workers.  That's down from 1.5 million 20 years ago, when the US population was much smaller & we had annual limits on immigration.  The problem is, there are now 10.5 million contractors working for the federal government.  Millions of contractors live & work in the DC area, so-called "beltway bandits".  While federal employee compensation comes from a pay chart, contractors can be paid any amount.  There are no limits.

The way contractors make money is doing work that really should be done by federal employees.  Ever phone Medicare?  You can call & call, but you will never speak to a federal employee who works at CMS; their phone directory is not available to the public.  You only speak to contractors.  If you are unhappy about a decision they make about paying your medical bill, you can file an appeal (which will be handled by a different contractor).

Why would Congress permit such waste?  MONEY.  Note that most Members of Congress are millionaires, even those who were broke when they were elected.  They take care of their campaigns, their friends, & their post-Congress employment.  The Swamp hasn't even had a ripple.

There are still some federal employees who are dedicated to their job & to the country.  They work hard, & deserve a little gratitude.  Those of us who get monthly checks generally find that our checks are sent on time & in the correct amount.

Neal

mogley98

Neal, 

My brother retired civil service as well as my Dad, I know both consider themselves hard workers.

On the other hand my brother never carried a cell phone and still doesn't have one, he never got called in for an emergency, he always got paid and retired with a very generous pension and healthcare for life. My Mom is still drawing half Dads pay for life and has healthcare equal to Senators.

My point was that the VA has a on site Admin, a leasing specialist who works for the Office of Strategic Planning & Analysis, a manager of OSPA, a Chief at OSPA, and a person who is apparently over all of them that didn't put all their initials or department info on the Email. Civilians that DONT work for the Feds and have to make a profit would have one person who reports to one person, Period.

All of them called me about the same non gas leak, when one is out the others obviously cover. WAY too many people and layers of people in Government, probably why those checks always come on time, even if five people are out of the office the few left can still get the job done. That's just one example, I am sure their are 1.001 million more.

Okie

AND I'm jealous of them overpaid Gov't workers  sandbaggers.
We need at the very least term limits and age limits on all of them, even the USPS employees.

mogley98

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us55840 said:

I'd like to know, with all the local VA Clinics closed because of the chinese virus, what are all those federal medical doctors/nurses doing besides collecting their paychecks? 
 The VA Clinics around here have been closed to veterans since back in Feb. or March.

Perhaps in your area, the VA clinic here has been open by appointment only the entire time. Many of the elective and non emergent stuff canceled but even primary care has been open. That said they see about a tenth of the patients a civilian Doc does even before the pandemic