Federal Employees Disability Retirement Systems: The Quarantined Mind

From early childhood, the necessity of imposing constraints and conformity produces the positive effect of a well-ordered society.  But corollary and unforeseen consequences often occur, as in the quashing of creativity and mindsets which step outside of the proverbial “box”.

The problem with people talking about thinking “outside of the box” is that such a thought process itself constitutes nothing more than mundane conventional wisdom.  Those who have considered thoughts beyond the artifice of social concordance have already done that which is widely preached, but little known.  Then, along comes a calamity or crisis, necessitating a change of lifestyle and a different manner of approaching the linear and customary manner of encountering life.  The other adage comes to mind:  necessity is the mother of invention.

Medical conditions tend to do that to people.  Suddenly, things which were taken for granted are no longer offered:  health, daily existence without pain; the capacity to formulate clarity of thought without rumination and an impending sense of doom.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit offered to all Federal and Postal employees who require a second chance at life’s anomaly; it allows for a base annuity in order to secure one’s future, while at the same time allowing for accrual of retirement years so that, at age 62, when the disability retirement is recalculated as regular retirement, the number of years one has been on disability retirement counts towards the total number of years of Federal Service, for recalculation purposes.

It allows for the Federal or Postal employee to seek out a private-sector job, and earn income up to 80% of what one’s former Federal or Postal position currently pays, on top of the disability annuity itself.  It thus allows and encourages the Federal and Postal worker to start a new career, to engage another vocation, and consider options beyond the original mindset of one’s career in the federal sector.

In the end, it is often our early childhood lessons which quarantined the pliant mind that leads to fear of the unknown because of changed circumstances.  To break out of the quarantined mind, sometimes takes a blessing in disguise; but then, such a statement is nothing more than another conventional saying, originating from the far recesses of another quarantined mind.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Application and Process: The Foreign Menu

Certain processes and endeavors in life are tantamount to a foreign menu; one knows that, within the undecipherable and incomprehensible letters and symbols presented before one, amidst the evocative smells and provocative sounds emanating from the kitchen in the back, and behind the sounds and voices formed and learned in another land in distant places beyond the horizon of one’s familiarity, there is a dish of choice which one would, if one could identify it, choose for the occasion before us.  But the menu is in another language; the words and symbols are undecipherable; and the waiters, waitresses, cooks and managers speak not a word of one’s own; and all attempts at describing the wants and desires of the moment have failed, because food is an appetite of desire, and not one which finds its core in the rational basis of words and conceptual constructs.

Can such a scenario occur?  Can one find oneself in a restaurant unable to relate or communicate?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find themselves unable to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, and who must therefore engage the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the similarity to the scenario described, and the familiarity of the circumstances conveyed, can be frighteningly reflective of the reality experienced.

Perhaps it should not be such a complicated process.  Considering the circumstances — of an injured or medically debilitated Federal or Postal worker who must concurrently contend with both the complexity of the bureaucratic process as well as the confounding and discomforting issues of the medical conditions themselves — one would think that the gathering of evidentiary sufficiency, the legal pitfalls to be maneuvered, the standard forms to be completed, etc., would all be simplified to fit the onerous circumstances requiring submission of a Federal Disability Retirement application.  But the fact is that Federal Disability Retirement is a complicated and complex administrative process with no “short cuts” to fruition.

It is a bureaucratic procedure which much be endured — much like the untenable situation of the man who walks into a restaurant thinking only of the satisfying meal to be ordered, only to find that the menu set upon the table is in a foreign language, undecipherable and incomprehensible, except to the proprietors and those who prepare the dishes of choice, in a clattering kitchen far in the background where echoes abound but confusion compounds.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire