OPM Disability Retirement under FERS: Empathy and Pain

“I feel your pain” has become a declaration of empathetic character in modernity; but whether born of sincerity or from political expediency, one can never know, precisely because empathy as a subjective phenomena is just as elusive as pain itself remains.

How does one assess or judge, evaluate or analyze, confirm or conclude with any amount of certainty, the extent, severity, reality or even of simple existence of that which is subjective by definition?

Pain, like one’s motive, falls within the realm of a person’s own experiential declaration, and is confined by the boundaries of one’s own body and universe of phenomena within the voices of one’s inner conscience and consciousness.

That is why the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Workers Compensation (OWCP) expends its resources in verifying a claimant’s assertion of pain, limitation of physical activities and restrictions from certain duties, by video-taping hours and hours of a person’s daily activities and recreational engagements — to see whether the subjective claims correspond with the objective participation of external performances.

Why doesn’t the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, for purposes of verifying a disability retirement claim, engage in similar tactics in determining — not “empathy” or the sincerity thereof, and not even necessarily the pain claimed — the extent and severity of medical conditions claimed?

Likely, because the standard and criteria in determining eligibility for the benefits are quite different.

For OWCP purposes, while it is not a retirement system but a means of compensating an injured individual in order to have the ultimate goal of returning him or her back to work, the standard of paying a Federal or Postal worker “temporary total disability” would clearly imply two (2) things.

First, as already stated, that the compensation to be provided is “temporary” (i.e., that it is not meant to remain a permanent feature of earned wage replacement) and Secondly, that a person’s incapacitation is “total” in that he or she is not able to engage in other meaningful employment and, furthermore, that the totality of the disability likely also impacts other areas of his or her life, as well — i.e., leisure activities, recreational participation, or even being able to take out the garbage (a familiar tactic of video-taping in DOL cases).

In a Federal Disability Retirement case, however, under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a person who is receiving a Federal Disability Retirement annuity is allowed to also work at another job, so long as it is identifiably distinguishable from the former Federal or Postal job from which the FERS Disability Retirement benefits are received, and so long as one remain’s under the “80% rule” that caps one’s earning potential.

Empathy aside, the pain that limits and restricts is often under a cloud of suspicion by the Department of Labor, precisely because “feeling one’s pain” is seen from the side of OWCP as the criteria for paying out benefits, whereas under OPM rules, it is merely a lesser standard in order to remain productive in the private sector.

Sincerely,

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

 

Federal Disability Retirement: The Socratic Method

It is a lost art; a contribution from the vestiges of Western Philosophy which was once the pinnacle of an admired approach.  It is a cousin of another from a quote attributed to that “first philosopher”: That an unexamined life is not worth living.  Together — of an internal examination coupled with an external analysis — they constitute the basic foundation of knowledge and the pursuit of truth.

High schools have abandoned the approach; colleges avoid it as being too time-consuming; and in the end, we have just become a polemical society drowning in our own indoctrination of thoughtless regurgitations of convenient soundbites.  For, the Socratic Method is that which the child first begins with: Why?

It is the question based upon curiosity, of a natural desire to seek the Truth.  It is, furthermore, a refusal to accept an answer of why and how we do things, of what we assert to know, “just because”, and instead, to keep pushing to the outer limits of knowledge until certainty and certitude are attained.

That is why, for Federal and Postal Office employees 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 job, a call to a competent attorney will result in being subjected to a form of the Socratic Method: Questions in order to ascertain whether or not you are eligible and entitled to Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

For, in the end, the truth of your Federal Disability Retirement case must be able to overcome the obstacles which the U.S. Office of Personnel Management will be placing in your pathway.

Contact a FERS Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and begin the process of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS by engaging in the ancient methodology of the Socratic Method.

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.

 

FERS Medical Retirement from the OPM: The Intersection of Hostility

Is the cart before the horse?  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Such idioms have their appropriate meaningfulness — as asking the question of sequence and priority in a given circumstance.

For a Federal or Postal employee who suffers from stress leading to other conditions — perhaps of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, etc. — the question involving the intersection of workplace hostility, or what is often termed as a “Hostile Workplace” — comes into the picture.  It is an issues which must be carefully addressed when the intersection involves preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Why?  Because a further legal issue — that of “situational disability” — can defeat a Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS.

Certainly, the intersection of hostility can and often does play a part in a Federal Disability Retirement application, but it should be characterized merely as a “trigger point”, and not the sole and exclusive basis of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the OPM.

How one formulates a Federal Disability Retirement case; the description of the intersection of hostility; whether one’s medical condition is “situational” or “all pervasive” — these should be considered by an OPM attorney who represents the Federal or Postal worker in a Federal Disability Retirement case under FERS.

Contact an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and do not put the cart before the horse, or argue that the egg came before the chicken, before consulting with a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

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.

 

Postal & Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Distorted Mirror

Have you ever looked at yourself in a distorted mirror?  You know, those which we encounter by chance — at an antique shop; an old hotel where the lobby hangs a mirror where the face expands horizontally while the body stretches vertically; or in one of those “fun houses” at a carnival — of distorted mirrors throughout as giggling children pass by with gleeful gibberish while wives and other women fret about how their reflections fail to flatter.

The distorted mirror is an object lacking objectivity, and is often deliberately meant to obfuscate the reality surrounding and instead to influence the subjective perspective in the very perceiving of the universe through a lens that misinterprets our surroundings.  We recognize the distortion of the distorted mirror; yet, we fail to recognize the distortion of our own subjective perceptions through error of thought.

Outside influences often help to distort our own thinking — like medical conditions which distort our perspective of the world in the same way that the distorted mirror contorts our own self-image.  With medical conditions — whether of physical or psychiatric — we tend to view the world in a more negative manner.

Contact a lawyer who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law under FERS, through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and don’t let the distorted mirror of a medical condition rob you of your future security because of fears of the unknown which can contort one’s view like watching one’s self in the distorted mirror.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Attorney
Federal Disability Retirement Lawyer

 

Medical Retirement Benefits for US Government Employees: Divided, Denied

We have all heard the various phrases and mottos — of being united as opposed to divided; that a house divided cannot stand; and in infantry logistical terms, of dividing the enemy, then conquering, etc.

It is a tactical maneuver which is well-tested — of doing a spear-headed attack and cutting enemy forces into separate units, then beating them independently by outflanking the divisions; or of dividing by cutting off communications or supply lines and denying opposing forces those vital support systems, etc.

OPM uses the same tactic — of dividing, then denying.  Often, Federal and Postal employees suffer from multiple conditions, and it is the aggregate of the conditions which prevent a person from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  But OPM will isolate and minimize each medical condition and say, “See, that condition in and of itself does not prevent you from performing your job.”

Such a tactic is similar to denying another well-worn quantity — where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  When a Federal or Postal worker must deal with multi-faceted health problems, don’t fall into the trap that OPM tries to set — of accepting their denial by dividing each individual medical condition into separate and divided parts.

Contact a FERS Disability Lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law, and rebut an OPM denial which fails to understand the well-known truths of unity, aggregation and the greater whole.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Human Nature

There are other “natures”, of course — of a dog’s or a cat’s; or of a vulture’s, and perhaps of lower order species which we barely give notice to: of spiders (except when they crawl near to us), mice, grasshoppers and frogs.  For species we deem to be less intelligent or possessing the capacity for “free will” (i.e., making decisions and performing acts outside of a predetermined view of what they are “supposed to do”), we tend to have an opinion of, “X does Y because that is the nature of X to do Y”.

Thus, when we read about a traveler who went to a game reserve and got mauled by a lion whom the traveler thought — just a moment before —was “friendly” enough to approach and take a close-up picture of, we shake our heads at the fact that the individual ignored the clear and visible sign which read: “Caution —Do NOT leave your vehicle. Dangerous Animals” or some similar preemptive warning.

Then, of course, there is “our” nature — of Human Nature.  What is it?  We are an animal species which is able to adapt, possess the talent for a thousand things but remain mediocre in all of them.  We cannot run as fast as a cheetah, nor have the ferocity of a lion; we cannot fly like the birds, nor have the venomous bite of a snake.  Yet, we can build cars which can outrace a cheetah, create weapons that do greater damage than a lion’s claws; we can build airplanes that travel greater distances than birds and manufacture bullets that pierce flesh beyond what a snake can deliver.

Of course, we like to think of “human nature” as being, as Aristotle would put it, “rational” first, and vicious somewhere down at the bottom of the list.  But wars, the devastating trails of what we leave behind — they attest more about Human Nature than our rationality.

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 job, the issue of Human Nature as one comprised of cruelty, retribution and back-stabbing is probably not a surprise.  As your medical conditions worsen, you may have noticed a lack of empathy and a growing sense of animosity and contentiousness from your Agency or the Postal Service.

Chalk it up to “Human Nature” and the capacity of human beings for lack of qualities which — while we may like to think of as comprising the essence of humanity — comes out at the worst of times.

Consider, at such a point, whether filing for Federal Disability Retirement might not be the best option available, and consult with a FERS Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: Overload

This is a perilous time we live in.  Some would counter that it all depends upon one’s outlook and perspective; that for those who have an adventuresome spirit, a sense of excitement for the future, and a fearless attitude in facing challenges, such times as these are for the bold and independent-minded.

Youth, of course, has its advantages; having nothing to lose, they race blindly ahead without concerns for the consequences left behind.  Nostalgia for a time gone can be infectious and wasteful; there are too many things happening in modernity to allow for reminiscences to crowd in.

This is an Age of Overload.  We read about and watch popular series about a time past, of horses and buggies, of simplicity in living, and wonder how in the world did we become what we are today?  Is it all a grand illusion?  Were there as many problems, worries, concerns and angst-ridden days as these days?  Was life ever really simple where children danced daily through fields of wildflowers during summer months of lazy and carefree memories, like wistful shadows wilting on a rainy day where no one spoke in fearful whispers beyond the day’s journey of time?  Or was it always like it is today — of overload and constant flux, of working beyond hours assigned and never seeming to meet the day’s obligations or responsibilities?

Then, of course, those beset with a medical condition have an exponential effect beyond the human capacity to endure.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, where the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s position, the overload that occurs because of the impediment of the medical condition itself can be overwhelming and irreconcilable.

Federal Disability Retirement may not be the most optimal solution in all circumstances, but it is often the only choice remaining.  Either that, or the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position will have to simply endure, and often face the consequences of workplace harassment, increasing pressures and continuing deterioration of one’s medical conditions because of the added stresses.

In the end, it is this overload of stresses that defeats and destroys, and preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is the only way to avoid the inevitable results of a society burdened with overload.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

FERS & CSRS Medical Retirement: Counting coup

It is not always in the outward and very-public display of emotions, in which a battle is fought and won; often, it is the restraining of a capacity and potential to reflexively counter, but held back just at the point of harm, that determines the pinnacle of gaining prestige.

Acts of bravery for a Plains Indian did not necessarily require harm inflicted upon an enemy; counting coup and the subsequent rise in respect and prestige could involve the mere touching of an enemy, while escaping unharmed despite that close encounter with the savage face of danger.  It is not always in the completion of an intended act that the standard by which the success or failure of the act is judged; rather, just at the point of fulfillment, the holding back or the deliberate withdrawal can be the penultimate evidence that one could have, but by sheer will of grace of self-control, did not.

In Western Civilization, perhaps the parallelism can only be embraced with an analogy of sorts; of the subtle remark with a duality of meanings, placed just at the right time in response to an otherwise untamable tongue wagging about with destructive force by its aggressive tone, ugly words and offensive remarks.  Or, of the realization that one is now a prisoner in an “enemy” camp, and the escape out is to stealthily retreat in the quiet of a proverbial night, without harming the members who may once have been counted as friends and colleagues.

This is often the situation the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker finds him/herself in, when a medical condition arises and the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job.  Suddenly, the Federal or Postal employee is treated as an “enemy”, and the initial reaction is to counterattack, as the initial onslaught by one’s coworkers, supervisors, managers, etc., was neither deservedly received no invited by any act or statement by the innocent Federal or Postal worker.

But is the battle – the actually harm inflicted and the legal imbroglio ensuing – worth the hassle?  Or, is it better to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, submitted (ultimately) to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and like the warriors of past in the battles fought in the far-off Plains of the American West, before the white settlers came to decimate and exterminate with the modern technology of weaponry unheard of in its efficiency as a killing machine – is it preferable by counting coup and withdrawing unharmed, in order to secure a future brighter for tomorrow, and less left with the residue of bloodstained wounds harboring lasting pain in the essence of one’s soul.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Rhymeless Poems

When did it happen?  Certainly, by the time E.E. Cummings came upon the scene, with his oddity of typographical stream of consciousness, the acceptance of it had already come to fruition; or, perhaps it was in the translation of foreign such vehicles of linguistic amalgamations – when the first frustrated translator threw up his hands in disgust at a Japanese Haiku or a German verse of too numerous a compendium of throat-clearing consonants, that the advent of the rhymeless poem reached its fulfillment and pinnacle of public acceptance.  Or, maybe we just ran out of words.

Words are funny vehicles of communication.  With facial expressions, the scent of another, the movement of body or a sense of fear, anticipation and the adrenaline of life, one can discern an endless eternity of subtleties that, in their inexhaustible divining of messages sent and received, can further be conjoined, compounded and confounded by the essence of human complexity.  But words are limited to the meanings of each; and in the finite world of vocabularies existent, the rhyming words are that much more delimited.

It is not, as Wittgenstein would point out, something that we can just create out of whole cloth; for, there can be no “private language game” of one, as the very essence of it would be lost in the creation of a singular language game – communication, which is the purpose and teleological livelihood, cannot be justified if no one else understands the word, the greater concept, or the linguistic artifice intended.

Sure, sure – words are created everyday, especially in order to accommodate the growing technology of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.; and the abbreviated forms of linguistic devices necessitated by text messaging, as well as the diversity of communicating through emoticons, etc., only prove the point:  All such such inventions and convoluted conventions of acceptability have a finite basis in any algorithm created.  In the end, we are just left with more words, and the inability to find that perfect rhyme in a verse of poetic need.   And that is the point, isn’t it?

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker, having a medical condition is similar to reaching that point in writing a poem, when the rhyming word can no longer be found.  Life itself is like an endless verse of poetry; we flow along and rhyme from word to word, with a cadence found in maturity of experiences; then, one day, a medical condition develops, and the rhyming verses suddenly pause.  We don’t know what to do.  Search as we may, we cannot find that perfect word, or that acceptable cadence of living life.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not be that discovery of the perfect word to end the silence of a rhymeless poem; it is, however, the last word in the verse of a Federal or Postal employee’s career, which may save the day from leaving the empty space blank, and instead, allowing for the next cadence in this continuing drama of verse-filled experiences, to take a leap into a future of security and new beginnings.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Ruins

We take extraordinary steps just to visit them; of the Parthenon, the Athenian Acropolis; of the Great Wall of China; of unspeaking relics where life once bustled, and still does but in a different way; of mere onlookers to a civilization once vibrant, but now twice removed — first, in the incremental abandonment of a society no longer relevant, and second, by the implicit concession that tourism establishes the death of the substantive content of any collection of structures.  Or of Aleppo, where modern-day devastation intersects with the ruins of old, and where actual suffering echoes throughout the ancient cascades where antiquity overwhelms the current screams of flesh and blood.

Why visit ruins when they are mere shadows of a former civilization unable to speak of its gradual decay and deterioration?  For, it is not the crumbling structures of haunting architectural tenacity which represents the truth behind the concealment of that which we visit to observe; it is the hidden narrative of human suffering which fails to utter the words in silence.  And what of lives untold?

What “ruins” have we failed to visit, right in one’s home, in one’s neighborhood, or just across the street?  Why be a world traveler, when the devastation imposed upon those who depended upon the promises given and assurances uttered mean nothing but some slices of memories of a yore-time of laughter and gaiety?  Is that what life is all about — of a good time here, a shared cackle of laughter in drunken states of unspoken ruination?

In the end, it matters not of crumbling structures and photographs taken of cavernous hollows in distant places where footwears matter; we trample great lengths to ooh and ahhh, and snap shots to send back to the origin of our trail of selfish devastation; but it is the ruins of human lives which touch upon the essence of a human soul, and not the marble and concrete which we gather to observe.  Flesh and blood rarely bespeak of decay and crumbling, but for the wrinkles of time which gather around the furrows of brows and corners of unsmiling lips.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who feel the devastation of a medical condition, such that the medical condition cuts short the career of intended purposes and teleological foundations of a future untold; the consequence of other actions, the worker sitting beside, or the supervisor behind the private door of an office uninviting, can exponentially increase the devastation already felt by the disabling condition itself.

The tendency is to become a tourist of sorts, by standing about like so many detached onlookers — when, in fact, the solution is to become a part of the society itself.  Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, takes you out of the realm of mere tourism and into the arena of actual living.

Visiting the ruins of another culture is one thing; allowing for the ruination of one’s own career, future and livelihood is quite another.  To be ruined; to visit a ruin; to allow for ruination; all such forms of linguistic allowances become stalwarts of reality unless you take the necessary steps to advance forward.  Preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application to be filed with OPM is the first step towards ensuring that one will not become another ruin to be photographed, but a living, vibrant entity who has escaped the devastation of an ahistorical context.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire
OPM Medical Retirement Attorney