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

 

Federal Disability Retirement: Of Monsters and Magicians

Childhood is characterized both by fraughts and fantasies; of imagined universes filled with the realities of the unknown, tempered by admonishments balanced by a world of adults who reassure, mixed with warnings and counsel of what could be. This is a complex, complicated world; to maneuver throughout it all is to first survive successfully the caricature as depicted in one’s imagination, and to match that against the objective world replete with dangers beyond mere bumps in the night.

Monsters are creations of fictive activities, and the child is told they are make-believe; yet, at the same time and almost in the same breath, warnings ensue about the world of bad people who may offer candy and toys to lure the unwary; and of magicians, what can we say? With computer-generated imagery complete with trolls and tyrannosauruses, where cuts evoke merely a wince and levitation occurs by mere whim of fancy, can the mermaid with golden braids be far behind?

To “grow up” is to leave behind both monsters and mermaids; but what we are often left untold, is that while the linguistic designations may change, the reality of the harshness of the world beyond the mountains filled with trolls and ogres, still remains filled with adversity, evil, harm and harrowing harbingers of hopeless encounters.

Medical conditions are real. Whether spoken of as monsters within, it may provide for a more simplistic paradigm of understanding, but is just as effective as viruses, virulent infections and bacteriological encounters.  Or of trolls and ogres?  Do we not know of Supervisors and Managers who put on masks of societal acceptance when others are around, but show their fangs and claws of flea-bitten gnarls when alone with you?

Federal and Postal workers who must confront a medical condition, where the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, encounter by necessity of circumstances a world once left behind in childhood dreams; but the reality of the situation, however designated and whichever way described, often reveals a universe of unreal reality just as trolls and mermaids are; but it is still a battle which must be fought, fraught with monsters and millipedes of myriapodous anthropods crawling in the night.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits, filed through one’s own agency but ultimately with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is an avenue revealed through necessity, of reaching a plateau of existence in order to rehabilitate one’s self from the world of adversity. The benefit is available for Federal and Postal workers who have the minimum time in-service requirements within the Federal Sector.  It is a benefit which must be fought for, proven, and protected, just as Sir Galahad did as the brave son of Lancelot.

Whether the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS-Offset, the world of medical conditions and debilitating diagnoses can only be successfully countered by securing a semblance of a present need, as well as a future hope for continuation in order to rehabilitate the devastating effects of the medical condition.  It is similar to the battle in childhood, only more real than the reality of monsters and magicians.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

USPS & OPM Federal Employee Disability Retirement: One of Those Days

There are “those days”, so characterized because of the micro-calamities which, in their cumulative impact, disproportionately reveal a compendium of aggregated irritants amounting in totality to a forgetful epoch of one’s life.

By contrast, a medical condition of an insidious nature, progressively deteriorating, chronic in persistence and debilitating in severity, magnifies tenfold — nay, a hundred, a thousand, a ten-thousand-fold impact of exponential consequences — the remembrances of pain, psychiatric turmoil, and the bitter acknowledgment that life’s meaningful embrace has lost its luster.

The vibrancy of youth, of formidable tolerance for reckless antics and disregard of forbearance and calm rectitude of reasoned behavior, now replaced with caution and trepidation, lest the excruciating pain explodes unmanageably and coworkers can see that you are one of the ones who are now an “outsider”, like those of old, isolated, quarantined and banished to the leper colony, no longer extolled of the talents and virtues once possessed.

While microcosmic calamities can be shrugged off with an excuse of blaming some external circumstances, the problem with medical conditions is that it is tied singularly, inextricably, and undeniably, to the person “possessing” the medical condition; and like siamese twins who share a vital organ, one cannot extricate from the consequences of a medical condition as one can from a spilled cup of coffee.

For the Federal worker or Postal employee who suffers from a health condition, such that the medical condition constitutes a daily cup of spilled coffee, the choices are quite clear: remain in the same capacity and bear the brunt of the daily calamities; resign and walk away with little to nothing to show for one’s lifetime efforts; or the more viable option, to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS or CSRS.

One can sit and sigh, and resign one’s self to accepting fate as characterized as “one of those days”; or fate can be controlled, maneuvered and manipulated, to where those days of calamitous casuistry can be relegated to forgettable events of days bygone, and where the Federal or Postal employee can begin to rebuild a future based upon an OPM Disability Retirement annuity which allows for a base annuity, along with the potential to earn up to 80% of what one’s former position currently pays.

Thus, just as a cup of coffee spilled can be cleaned up; so the hallmark of “one of those days” can be merely an isolated event in an otherwise greater spectrum of life’s potentialities.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire