FERS Disability Retirement from OPM: Hope Quashed

It is by hope which people live and civilizations thrive; without it, the will to advance is replaced by the desire to concede.

The educational theory which became entrenched decades ago was based upon the assumption that if children possessed that ephemeral thing called “self esteem”, that one’s sense of hope would flourish and the whole society would benefit as a result.  This was combined with America’s utilitarian background in philosophical foundations — that if X is good, then the more of X is better, and the most of X is best.

The comparative/superlative step ladder is always a dangerous endeavor, especially if there is not a solid foundation upon which to place the ladder to begin with.  If eating ice cream is good, is more of it better, and is an unlimited supply best?

Self esteem is all well and good, but there has to be a substantive basis upon which to build one’s self esteem. You cannot fake “winners”, where everyone gets a trophy and no one is better than another.  You cannot say, “Well, Johnny here can make 3-pointers all day, but Susan over there can barely hit the backboard, so let’s just say that if anyone touches the ball, you automatically get 4 points.”  Kids are too smart for that; they can tell when compliments are dished out — no matter with how much added exuberance — as to whether it is well-deserved or merely a superlative for ego’s sake.

Society mistook hope quashed for needed building of self esteem, and the result has been somewhat disastrous.  Yes, hope quashed is also a recipe for disaster, but it cannot be replaced with artificial cheering.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition where hope is being quashed that you can continue in your present course of living without making major changes to your lifestyle, then you may want to consider preparing, formulating and filing for FERS Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

If you cannot make it to retirement, whether regular or early, and you certainly don’t want to simply resign and walk away with nothing, then OPM Disability Retirement is the best alternative.

Contact an OPM Disability Lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of going beyond hope quashed, but not to the land of empty superlatives.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer exclusively representing Federal and Postal employees to secure their Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

 

OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: The Race to Weekend

When younger, we vowed never to view it that way.  Every day was one to cherish, to tackle, to energetically pursue. “Living life to the fullest”; “Seize the day — if not the hour, the moment, the present existential moment”; “Whether Monday or Saturday, it matters not” — and other pablums of personified penchant for pacifying problems.

The reality is the race to weekend; for, with the stresses of modernity, it is the weekend which provides the relief needed from the stresses and concerns of the week.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the race to weekend means that the 2 days of truce — actually, more like a day and a half, for most of Saturday is spent on doing the chores neglected during the week — are for rest, respite and restoration.  “What a way to live”, we tell ourselves.

If your medical conditions do not even allow for restoration on weekends, it may be time to consider Federal Disability Retirement.

Contact an Federal Disability Lawyer who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law, and consider the options where the race to weekend is not the only — or primary — focus of your life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

Federal Employees with Chronic Medical Conditions: What to Do

It is the universal question which confronts us all: The next steps; how to react; what sequence of actions to take; and, in the end, it also involves any verbal or written responses, as well.  For, the “doing” part can involve both actions and words.

From the little boy confronting a bully who asks the question, “What are you going to do about it?” — to the adult who is faced with a crisis which may involve other family members, where the question is somewhat altered: “What are we going to do about it?” — the answer is not always clear; the response, not always known.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, “What to do” is the question posed, the problem confronted.

We are never expected to know everything, although all of us would like to think that we have an answer to most of life’s problems.  But this is a unique circumstance, a special order, a confrontation of unknown proportions.  And when you are faced with the unknown, it is best to contact someone who is experienced in the “What” and the “Doing” in response to the “what”.

Contact a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and begin the process of confronting the “what” — as in, What to Do?

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement: Who I Am & Who Am I

One is a question; the other, a declarative statement.  The latter of a more subjective nature; the former, perhaps a composite of observations by third parties together with self analysis.  Both must begin with a query — of analyzing a statement “about” myself, through others who are well-known as well as of opinions rendered and judgments passed by acquaintances and passersby strangers barely acknowledged.

“Who I am” is often answered in response to a preceding query by a third party: “Who are you?”  It might be answered with fairly objective and short statements which are incontestable: I am X’s brother in-law; I am the husband of Y; “Oh, I am Sarah’s father” (in response to Sarah’s classmate who sees you standing outside of the classroom); or, “I am nobody”.  This last statement, of course, has implications well beyond being an unresponsive nullity; for, it goes to the heart of one’s own assessment of one’s self, one’s consequential impact upon the limited universe of one’s role, and the very essence of an ego left abandoned.

The other — Who Am I — is often followed by the grammatical punctuation of a question mark.  It is often a self-reflective query — one which causes a pause, a momentary furrowing of eyebrows raised, and then a regrouping of having just previously been taken aback by a question which stabs too closely to the essence of one’s being.  Perhaps a soliloquy follows.  One will normally cast the question off with a shrug and answer the self-query with, “I am X” and then move on to take out the garbage, watch a movie, see a documentary or engage in what Heidegger refers to as an activity which allows us to forget our mortality.

Will the question inevitably haunt us and force us into facing ourselves at some point in our lives?  Perhaps.  Can we avoid the question entirely?  Maybe.  It is the former, asked by others, which fails to have the force of the latter, and merely because of the placement and substitution of positions of the two words after the “Who” that makes all of the difference.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition and who must face the prospect of facing the question, “Who I am” in reference to one’s position and role in the workplace, it is often the medical condition itself which prompts the second, more incisive query of “Who Am I?”

Does a medical condition define a person?  Certainly, the Agency or the Postal Service makes it the primary issue by questioning one’s competence or capabilities based upon your condition.  Both questions go to the heart of the issue in a Federal Disability Retirement application; for, in the end, the Federal Agency and the Postal Service treat both questions with a foregone conclusion of an answer: You are Nobody if you are no longer part of the “Mission”, and that is why filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes a necessity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Distractions

They are the projects of life of which Heidegger recognizes, allowing for avoiding the inevitabilities of life’s challenges; of fate, mortality, future insecurity, and death.  What quantifiable slice of one’s life is governed by distractions?  Must it always be less than 50% in order to remain so, and if it exceeds that halfway point, does it then become something substantive and not merely the peripheral meaning of what it means to “be distracted”?  If a distraction is considered to be an aside – that which waylays a person’s attention by focusing upon a central project of life’s endeavor – what then defines an inversion of that perspective?

Take, for example, the following:  A mechanical engineer is working on a technical project that consumes one’s focus, concentration and attention to detail, but has a unique and eccentric ophthalmological condition, whereby the eyes are compelled to follow any and all red objects that pass by.

Now, the company has attempted to accommodate the medical condition by requesting that no employee shall enter into the mechanical workshop wearing red, but on this particular day, some investors are visiting, and a man in the troop of intruders is wearing a red tie, and a woman in the entourage is sporting a red sweater.  They go from bench station to the next cubicle, within the purview and arc of dimensional periphery of the eccentric man’s attention, and with each movement, every sidelong blur, his eyes are “distracted” by the red moving objects.

Out of every minute of work, fully 45 seconds are spent on focusing upon the red objects that detract from the necessary mental acuity attending to the project at hand, and indeed, while they are far enough away such that from an objective viewpoint, the objects are mere inches in proportion and are of a distance as to almost be unnoticeable to others in the group of engineers, for the eccentric mechanical engineer, it is the focal point of his attentions.

The distraction is such that it disrupts the sequence of testing conditions and interrupts the validity of the technical precision required, and a coworker finally declares, “You’ve been too distracted and the project has to be scrapped.”  Would we agree that, because of the numerical disproportionality of concentration attributable, “red-object observation” takes precedence as the primary project, and it is the engineering project that is the distraction?  Or, because it is a medical condition of which he “cannot help it”, do we excuse the distraction in its entirety?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal positional duties, the central point made here is precisely how the Federal agency and the Postal facility views the issues significant in a Federal Disability Retirement application.

Federal Agencies and the U.S. Postal Service possess a myopic view of “work”, and even if the Federal or Postal employee is able to continue making valuable contributions to the workplace, they often see the differentiation between “work” and “distractions” as one quantifiable by time alone.  This is too bad, but a reality that must be faced.  For, medical conditions are not mere distractions; they are life’s interludes that can often be faced and overcome, if only outmoded ideas about what constitutes workplace contributions are set aside, and realize that even distractions delaying the central mission of a Federal agency or Postal facility are not the most important, or even of much significance, when it comes to the worth and value of a human life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The leaked information

Most “secrets” are well-known; it is the combining of a multiplicity of the unknown, which constitutes the importance of leaked information.  Thus, it may be disseminated as to the “what”, but until it can be connected to the “when” or the “who”, the irrelevancy of the data remains in its isolation of significance.  Or, perhaps what will occur is revealed, and by whom, and even the destined time and place; but if caution delays the planned event for another day, hypervigilance can only be maintained for a limited period of time before exhaustion of focus, concentration and attentiveness wanes by profound fatigue.

There is, then, that old hippie dictum:  What if a tree falls in a forest unoccupied; did it make a noise?  Similarly, and in parallel format:  What if information is leaked, but no one took notice; is it relevant?  Does signification of data require acknowledgment?  Why is it that, in certain crime cases, concurrence of telling is important, even if no action is filed?  Why do decades-old cases suddenly come alive merely because impromptu declarations are made, or do underlying motives undermine the validity of such reenactments of crimes committed but neither solved nor investigated?

One often assumes that information begotten through nefarious sources is somehow less reliable; but it is more likened to the man whose leg gets bitten off by a shark while swimming in the midday sun – he hardly becomes comforted by the statistical limitations of an event that has already occurred.  Yet, we constantly obsess over leaked information; data which may be sensitive; constructs that can be pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle but in the realm of real life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, there is first the fear that one’s inner intent may be “leaked”; that discussion over the telephone may be overheard by those whose intent and motivation may not be as pristine as the proverbial snowfall the night before; and that, once filed, personal medical information may be disseminated without the privacy protection accorded by law.

In the end, the best that can be done remains twofold:  (1) try to restrict access to a Federal Disability Retirement application by providing fair warning as to the legal consequences if violated, and (2) to realize that the ultimate goal should always be kept in sight – that of getting an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and once that is done, all of the leaked information around the world will become irrelevant, as the focus always was, and should be, to reach that level of rest and restorative peace in order to attend to the real issue at hand:  One’s own medical condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Abridged Joyce

The extraction and extinguishment is done by unnamed others, sometimes in teams of unknown quantities, and certainly of dubious qualification of insight.  In a similar vein, writers have always complained of the artistic ineptitude of editors, and editors of the quaint verbosity detracting from the plot, narrative and captivating flow missed by writers in pursuit of “Art”; but is there ever a “middle ground” when it comes to the integrity of the soul?  But how can you cut away the content of the work, when the process itself is part and parcel of the substantive construct of the whole itself?

It would be like removing the heart itself, or perhaps even the human brainstem from the spinal cord, thereby violating the vertebral contiguity and effectively separating thought from movement, material from the spiritual, and soul from the activity which defines life itself.  Can Joyce, Tolstoy or even Scott Fitzgerald be abridged?  One can imagine the journalistic brevity of Hemingway, where incisiveness of narrative is reflected in the economy of words, but even to that, isn’t the stronger argument that the great Papa’s works are already so edited to the core that any further amputation would render the body functionally illiterate?

Yet, we accept the Reader’s Digest version of works for want of time saved and the capacity to declare a reading conquered; and others would quip, but surely it is better than just reading the Cliff Notes, isn’t it?  Not sure about that; as such cottage industries serve a different purpose — of understanding the content and context of a thing, as opposed to the enjoyment of the work itself.

But if quantity of linguistic captivation is so interwoven with the rhythmic balance of the entirety and aggregate of the whole, can an abridged Joyce be justified, ever?  Or have we accepted that, as life itself can be cut short without demeaning the relevant historicity of its linear heritage, so reading the partiality of an excised edition is just as good, somewhat as acceptable, and ultimately a pragmatic decision in terms of time saved and effort expended?

As Art reflects Life, so for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers whose careers and lives are interrupted by a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal employee from continuing in the chosen field and career, preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management allows for the abridged Joyce of a hyphenated accentuation.  For, in the end, the quip that Life mirrors Art is a limited proverb.

The Federal or Postal employee never asked for the interruption of the medical condition, but there it is — a bump in the pathway of life itself, with very little “art” to show for it.  But the narrative of one’s Federal or Postal career must be written in the Statement of Disability with care and collection of medical evidence to back it up, and the SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability, is nothing but an artful way of deceitful cunning by a bureaucracy which attempts to subvert and deny at every turn, and the life of such a linguistic animal must be prepared well, formulated cogently, and submitted with confidence of purpose to maneuver into the maze of bureaucratic obfuscation.

The abridged Joyce will always be offered in this world of abbreviated concerns; filing for Federal Disability Retirement, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, on the other hand, is the only option remaining for many Federal and Postal workers injured or ill during the Federal tenure of one’s life, and should be accomplished with the care of the expanded version, and not an edited parcel to be cut and sliced like so many narratives in the trashbin of society.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Disadvantage of the I-Thou Perspective

People tend to expect the best results; and when a Federal or Postal employee files for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the applicant who is unrepresented and prepares, formulates and files the Federal Disability Retirement packet on his or her own believes that an approval is forthcoming at the First Stage of the Process.  Yet, often unaware and unbeknownst to the Federal or Postal applicant, the lack of separation between the I-Thou construct fails to provide a proper perspective of objectivity.

Allow me to expand and explain:  As the Federal or Postal employee who experiences the medical condition (the “I”) is the same person who prepares, formulates and files the Medical Retirement application (the “thou” from the perspective of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management), any sense of objectivity is often lost because the I and the Thou are one and the same person, and the Federal or Postal employee who experiences the medical condition is simultaneously the same one who is seeking an approval of the OPM Disability Retirement application.

Of course, that same scenario is repeated even if the application is filed through a Federal Disability lawyer (in the sense that the Federal or Postal employee still seeks to obtain an approval from OPM) with one major exception:  there is another “thou” perspective included and involved — that of the Federal lawyer representing the Federal or Postal employee who is seeking to have a Federal Disability Retirement application approved.

Objectivity is a crucial component of a Federal Disability Retirement application; that is why so many “silly” mistakes are injuriously embraced without self-knowledge or with disengaged awareness.  It is like the cook who loved the taste of arsenic, and thought that everyone else should as well; and so he sprinkled the deadly poison onto his own food and enjoyed the taste of his own creation, only to slowly die from the feed of his own foolishness.

There are many “kinds” in the arena of foolish endeavors:  There is the “quantitative approach” (“I sent them thousands of pages of treatment records”) which fails to ask the question, Who will read it all?  There is the “trusting soul”:  “I just signed a release and had them send it all directly to my Human Resource Office”.  Then, there is the person of naive disbelief:  “How could they not approve it with the medical conditions I suffer from?”

The problem with all of these is the lack of objective perspective; the I-Thou connection is now given the distance, separateness and objectivity necessary to determine the viability and effectiveness of each and every piece of the puzzle needed to put together a proper Federal Disability Retirement application.  Are there ever any guarantees in life?  No.  Can a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement laws make a difference?  Yes.

Fortunately, unlike the metaphor arising from the cook and the salsa of arsenic, there are multiple stages within the administrative process of pursuing Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, and a denial at the First Stage of the bureaucratic pathway is not irreversible, and does not result in the inertia of life rendered by ingestion of substances otherwise tasty but harmful.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal and Federal Employee Disability & Injury Compensation Laws: Decisions & Complexities

The complexities inherent in modern technological life, and the methodologies of arriving at a decision-making process, make for a consciousness counterintuitive to one’s natural state of being.  Rousseau depicted a romanticized version of man’s state of nature; but the point of his philosophical thesis was to provide a stark contrast to the civilized world of social compacts and the justification for societal intrusion into liberties and rights reserved exclusively and unequivocally.

In what epoch one was born into; whether one ever had the deliberative opportunity to accept or reject the social contract of today; and the greater historicity of man’s cumulative unfolding of unintended paths of social consciousness; these all provide the backdrop as to why life has become so complicated.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal Service worker, there is the added issues of multiplicity of bureaucratic layers, and the decisions which must be made in the greater context of the microcosm of another civilization of administrative facets:  what choices one is faced with; VERAs, MRA+10, Social Security Disability requirements; deferred Retirements; injuries on the job which may prompt an OWCP/DOL filing; and the seemingly endless avenues which the Federal and Postal employee may have to face.

For the Federal or Postal employee who is confronted with a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s job, the option which should always be considered is Federal Disability Retirement.  If a medical condition exists, Federal Disability Retirement from the OPM is often the best and only option which will attend to the needs of the moment.

In the end, it is not the complexity of life which wears upon us all; rather, the capacity to engage a rational methodology of arriving at a proper decision, which cuts through the peripheral irrelevancies and provides a real-life, substantive basis for the meaningful values underlying the superficialities of daily fluff.

OPM Disability Retirement for the Federal and Postal employee, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS offset, may be the option of solving that greater conundrum when a medical condition begins to impact daily living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquir

 

Federal Employee Medical Retirement System: Smiley, Ace of Hides

Similarity of consonant alliteration can evoke and prompt collateral thoughts and memories; likewise, phrases which sound somewhat familiar, yet distinctively remain apart.

Historically, spies were the masters of subterfuge, of appearing as that which they are not.  Then, of course, there is the complexity of the “double agent”, where the appearance is twofold in concealment:  acting with apparent fealty to one source, pretending to be diabolically loyal to a second, when in fact reverting back to the first; and the potential play upon an infinite multiplication of conundrums involving questionable ties of patriotism.  Smiley was the ace of them all, as the fictional character of unperturbed and unflappable creation by John le Carre.

In real life, as in the world of imagination, it is indeed the facial characteristic of the smile which hides; and it is that much more pronounced with the addition of the electronic smiley face that is thoughtlessly pasted whenever deemed appropriate.  Because the smile covers all defects, hides much reality, and conceals deportments of denigrated despair, it remains the choice of frozen acceptance.

People with medical conditions often attempt to smile more than usual, if only to hide the reality of the pain and despair of life.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents them from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the veil of a smile is often what the agency expects, and nothing more.

Agencies rarely show a fealty towards an employee who no longer can perform as days of yore; and help, guidance or assistance by a Human Resource Office should be viewed with suspicion and pause, leaving aside the question of whether actions are taken for the best interests of the Federal or Postal employee, or for the benefit of the agency.

Smiles hide realities; they can mask pain, and also present a picture of friendliness when in fact the knife has already been readied for the backside of an unsuspecting victim.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits, filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FER, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is something which should be considered by any Federal or Postal employee who is experiencing the two-faced subterfuge of an agency which purports to support, but in fact has shown signs of a hostile working environment.

Smiles are nice, and can sometimes be genuine signs of a person’s demeanor; but, more often, they hide the true deportment of intent; and while George Smiley could alter the character of the geopolitical sphere of power shifts and the passing of state secrets, it is the state of the ordinary Federal and Postal employee that is most impacted by actions of agencies which show no loyalties.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire