Experiential Responses: Medical Retirement for Postal & Civilian Federal Employees

Life’s garbage is supposed to teach us lessons; that is what we are taught from a young age.  Thus, long lines allow for an opportunity to test patience; insults and ingratitudes, self control; imprudent behavior, an antipathy towards it; lengthy battles, allowing a lesson to forge on while others give up; and similar encounters which provide ample revelations for altering one’s natural instinct of regressive responses.

But the other force which powers its way in an insidious and countermanding manner, is the very negation of lessons learned: of finding security in habitual and repetitive behavior; of responding in a known manner, because past actions of an established quality provide a zone of comfort in contrast to an unknown future.  But medical conditions in and of themselves are unknown factors which impede, intrude, and interrupt.  Sometimes, not acting is as deleterious as proceeding against life’s lessons, learned or yet unachieved.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition not only impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties but, beyond that, has already impacted the extent of experiential encounters with one’s agency, supervisor, coworkers, etc., it may be that one must reconstitute and consider changes which may be anathema to one’s very nature: patience for long-term treatment may not work, as one’s agency may be impatient; self-control towards the ingratitude manifested may not be enough; and imprudent behavior engaged in by one’s agency may be an acceptable norm of standards to follow.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits are meant to allow for the Federal and Postal employee to attain a level of livelihood in order to attend to the most important of life’s experiential encounters: one’s health.

While filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS or CSRS, may feel like one is “giving up” instead of forging forward despite adversity; the reality of it is that filing for OPM Disability Retirement does not constitute defeat or surrender, but rather an affirmative move to change the stage of the battlefield.  Further, in life, it is not always the “good guy” that wins. Sometimes, the guy in the white hat must walk away, only to see another day to engage the greater battle of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: To Resign, or Not

The question of whether a Federal or Postal employee should (or should not) resign from the job is one which cannot be answered in a vacuum.  Various considerations should be taken into account, but generally speaking, the rule of thumb which the undersigned writer poses in any circumstance is:  What is the compelling reason to do so, such that by resigning, one triggers the Statute of Limitations on filing for Federal Disability Retirement?

Certainly, there are dire circumstances which may necessitate a resignation: being able to access TSP funds because one cannot work because of one’s medical conditions, and one has no other means of support during the process; a pending non-medical adverse action which cannot reasonably be argued against, which may collaterally impact a Federal Disability Retirement application, with a settlement choice to resign for “medical reasons”; and some similar factual scenarios which may indeed warrant and dictate a resignation.

On the other hand, by remaining on the rolls of the Federal sector job, there are multiple advantages which may unfold for the future, including the assertion of the Bruner Presumption when the Federal Agency realizes that the Federal Disability Retirement package clearly shows an inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job and proceeds to remove the Federal or Postal worker based upon the medical inability to perform; a lack of triggering the Statute of Limitations, thereby extending the timeframe for multiple future attempts in filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits; and other issues which need to be considered.

Resignation is an event of certainty, with no reversal; and in all such certainties, it should be done only if compelled by circumstances, facts and considered thoughtfulness.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire