Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer: Cartoons & Carnivals

In exclusively representing Federal employees and Postal workers to obtain Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the stories that are shared, the frustrations felt, and the tales left untold, collectively boggles the fragile mind.

Yes, by now, perhaps it is a truism that nothing under the sun can further be revealed that is of a surprising nature; but it is often just the sheer cumulative absurdity which, in their aggregate compendium of events, could only have occurred in cartoons and carnivals.  By contrast, there is the seriousness of the medical condition itself.

That is always the starting point, and the essence of why Federal and Postal workers contact an attorney who handles OPM Disability Retirements, based upon whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.  Eligibility rules must first be met; then, the issue of entitlement must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence.

The comical relief and the sense of a carnival atmosphere, where cartoonish characters collide with the sobering reality of one’s medical condition and the potential end to one’s career in the Federal sector, arises inevitably through the actions of the agency, and their complete lack of empathy or concern.

Yes, agencies must continue to remain efficient; and yes, they must continue in their mission and course of work; but in the end, all we have left is family, community, values and vestiges of human interaction, and the littered graveyards of silent skeletons where marked graves and unmarked cemeteries speak not of efficiency, meanness and uncaring residues, but only where fresh flowers and wreathes of caring surround the frozen ground of time; yes, only in cartoons and at carnivals do people act with the absurdity of loss of humanity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: Conceptual Relationships

Word associations are revealing.  When once a word is uttered, the immediate association of another concept provides a prelude to the cognitive perspective of an individual.  Conceptual relationships are forged through upbringing, personal experiences, and memories fulfilled through impact, trauma, significance of meaning, and attribution of value.  The thinking “I” within the subjective realm of a personal universe, is made up of ghosts of the past, goblins of present fears, and gadflies yet to swarm.

Medical conditions, and terms associated with diagnoses and disabilities, whether physical or psychiatric, tend to engender fear and loathing, precisely because of the limitations they impose, the havoc they wreak, and the problems they present.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact the ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the option of choice to resolve the impending problems of unbalance — of the growing and magnified inability to juggle work, medical care, and physical/cognitive/emotional health — is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

No, it is not a perfect solution.  Yes, it is an option which is final, in the sense that one is retired from the Federal System.  But when alternative courses of actions are delimited within the purview of pragmatic choices, conceptual associations must be tempered within the objective realm of reality.

The moon may well be made of blue cheese, and such conceptual associations can be wrought within the realm of Platonic Forms and cognitive gymnastics; but in the real world, conceptual relationships must by necessity be forged within the iron ore of a witch’s cauldron brewing the germinations for future discourse.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: The Purposeful Statement

Some narratives are written for the pure beauty of style and art; quiet in tenor, like the bamboo hollow whistling in the serenity of a morning breeze as the sun reaches the crest of the distant mountains, the place where wizards and warlords gather in solemn conferences around a fireplace of cooling ashes.  Then, there are informational pieces — direct lines of communication, shot at the reader like an arrow and with words to pierce the intended audience.

One’s Statement of Disability, written for purposes of inclusion in a Federal Disability Retirement application by the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker, and whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset; the admixture of history, story, situation and persuasive argumentation, constitutes the purposeful narrative.  Stories reveal a truism; in the classical sense, a conflict, and an unfolding until it reaches a pinnacle of a resolution.

A statement of disability, written in response to questions posed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Standard Form 3112A, may not yet have a resolution; otherwise, the need for filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits would be somewhat meaningless.

But be not fooled; the narrative as delineated on SF 3112A, in the Applicant’s Statement of Disability, is a story filled with compelling drama and mixed with facts, circumstances, and contextual significance, no less than the great works of literature or the purposeful articles in technical journals and compendiums of esoteric writings; it is just that the particular narration as detailed on SF 3112A pinpoints a select audience, and is written from the soul of a Federal or Postal employee,  reaching out to a nameless bureaucracy in a world where numbers are assigned to faceless and nameless workers who have toiled for years without accolades and ceremonies, but where need is the basis of the written statement submitted for an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement: External-Internal Linkage

Thoreau’s observation that the mass of men lead “lives of quiet desperation” holds a profound place in daily acquiescence to the stresses of modernity; the influence and linkage between the internal workings of biology, psychology and the interplay upon health and wellbeing, and the greater macro-impact from the inevitable encounters with the external, objective world of phenomena, cannot be ignored or otherwise avoided.

The rise of self-help methodologies, of yoga, meditation, exercising and diversionary activities, is merely a reflection of the exacerbation of the internal connection as directly impacted by the external world; the linkage is there; we simply fail to otherwise recognize or acknowledge it.  Stress in the workplace is an accepted part of one’s employment; it is when stresses rise to the level of a hostile workplace that the law allows for some form of alleviated responsiveness.

But filing lawsuits, confronting the obvious, and publicly decrying boorish behavior and actions constituting illegal harassment often compounds the internal turmoil fraught with stresses upon one’s psyche; and one wonders in the end, who wrote the laws governing the litigation of such employment disputes, as special interests from trial lawyers to employers, union conglomerates to corporate lobbyists all had a hand in writing up a statute to protect the singular employee of limited means.

“Quiet desperation” infers resignation and defeat; and for many, the image of the rugged individual who stands alone to fight until death or destruction is the standard to compare one’s own limited power and actions to be employed.  But as the internal linkage to the external world cannot be denied, so health and well-being can be destroyed by the interplay with a continuing hostile workplace.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, insistence upon continuing one’s chosen career is often a choice to the detriment of the internal affairs of man, with little impact upon the macro-efficiency of the agency.

Federal Disability Retirement is an option of choice for the Federal or Postal worker who is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS-Offset, and is often mandated by the deteriorating health of an individual (internal), necessitated by the inability to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties (external), and by showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the former impacts the latter (linkage), one can qualify for the benefits and salvage the quiet desperation enveloping and engulfing the insular life of an individual seeking help in the dark meanderings of a lonely outpost, where the echoing howl of a single wolf reaching out to the eclipsed moon on a cold and windy morning represents not an animal in distress, but a recognition that the wider world out there is part of man’s destiny for things greater than showing up for work to follow the demands of a bureaucracy lacking of empathy or concern.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire