FERS Disability Retirement for Federal & Postal Workers: Light Duty

“Light duty” is a term often associated with Worker’s Compensation cases, and rarely has significant relevance in a Federal Disability Retirement case.  It can, however, be a temporary form of an “accommodation” — but one which still does not prevent a Federal Employee or Postal worker from obtaining and becoming qualified for FERS Disability Retirement benefits.

Light duty can range anywhere from the physical to the administrative — of allowing for work without performing some or many of t he essential elements of one’s positional requirements.  Thus, in the “physical” area: Of allowing a person not to have to stand, walk, lift heavy parcels, etc.  Or, to limit travel.  In the “administrative” area: Perhaps a limited and reduced time on the computer; allowing for more frequent breaks during extended periods of sedentary work; of working half-days and allowing for use of SL, AL or LWOP.

These are all generic examples of what may constitute “light duty”.  A Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service may allow for such light duty even on a permanent basis.  However, understand that even if the Federal agency or Postal Service allows for “permanent light duty” (which, in conceptual terms, is somewhat of an oxymoron), such an allowance does not preclude a Federal or Postal employee from being eligible throughout for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Contact a Federal Disability Lawyer and become informed about your right to Federal Disability Retirement benefits.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement for Federal Employees: The Before & After

In once sense, there can always be the identifiable spectrum bifurcated into the “before” and “after”, and the conditions, the context and the significant differences characterized by each.  There is the time “before” the 1929 stock market crash, and then the “after”.  There is the “before” period in Nazi Germany, and the “after” timeframe subsequent to defeat.  There is “before” television and “after”; there is the time period before X-presidency and after, and before the advent of the computer, the laptop, the smart phone, etc. — and after.

How can we identify and bifurcate based upon relevant contexts?  For example, one can point to the legendary bank robbers — of “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Pretty Boy Floyd”, “Baby Face Nelson”, etc. — and it is much fun to watch movies romanticizing such characters.  But how would they fare today in the era of cellphones and electronic tracking devices, modern technologies of security apparatus, etc.?  Could a person “get away” these days using the same tactics and strategies, or would any of the famous bank robbers have been smart enough to change tactics and adapt to this world of technological intrusion? Are the old bank robbers of “before” the new cyberspace hackers of “after”?

Before the Great Dust Bowl and the Depression was a country that was mostly agrarian and independent of the Federal Government; after, we became a nation where the greater populace looked to a more centralized nation.  Good or bad, we tend to view contexts upon a spectrum of “before” and “after”, and the same is true of individual lives.  “How” we view it all depends upon which events we consider as significant enough to posit as the bifurcating dividing point that separates the “before” and the “after”.

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 “before” is quite simple: Before the onset of the medical condition.  It is the “after” that becomes problematic, and filing for Federal Disability Retirement is the next step in completing the process of the “after” so that you can go on to the next phase of your life and make the “after” the next “before” in a life that doesn’t remain stuck in the “before” of one’s medical condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement from OPM: Holding a grudge

Doesn’t holding a grudge imply a certain level of intelligence?  Do other species have the capacity for holding a grudge?  Certainly, some breeds of dogs do — of getting into a growling match, or one of those “baring the teeth and gnarling sounds”, but with very little harm done; but if it is not “finished”, will come back and engage in some more noisy combat until one or the other is satisfied that neither a grudge nor a kiss will any longer be necessary.

“Having a grudge” can last a moment or a lifetime; “Holding a grudge” is comprised of the tenure of the grudge being held, and not as to its intensity of feeling.  Some grudges may be sweet and delicious; others, a gnawing sense that does greater harm to the holder than to the one for whom it is held.  There is, in the end, a difference between a grudge and a sense of resentment, although the former may include the latter, but the latter does not necessarily entail the former.  Siblings and best friends are famous for holding grudges; it reveals the level of hurt and care that becomes deep-seated when once betrayal cuts and bruises.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to prevent the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, it is often an easy path to find oneself on where one was once the Federal Agency’s “star employee”; then, a medical condition sets in, and suddenly the congratulatory accolades become silent, and unilateral actions are taken by the agency which begins to foment resentment…and a growing “grudge match” begins.

Administrative sanctions are imposed; a PIP is initiated; perhaps, even removal from Federal Service.  Yet, all along, you are thinking: “I have a medical condition; why are they treating me this way?”  Grudges, indeed, often are held because of mistreatment or maltreatment; and it is often worse when there is no face or name to be placed with the grudge, but merely a large Federal Agency or the Postal Service that cares not a twit about your medical condition.

The best thing to do in such circumstances is to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and “move on” beyond the sense of resentment and grudge-holding that can destroy a life further than the medical condition itself.  Yes, holding a grudge does imply a certain level of intelligence, but to hold one for too long shows a significant level of stupidity, as well.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement: “I would rather. . .”

The ellipses that follows is from the Ancient Greek that denotes “omission” or “that something which follows which is left blank”, and allows for wandering thoughts and meandering reflections to complete the lack.  What is the range of an acceptable addendum?  Does it matter what the prefatory statement allows for, and does the logic of its completion depend upon the spectrum of grammatical technicalities that confine and maintain boundaries of meaningful discourse?

For example, what if a person was asked to complete the incomplete sentence, and the response is:  “I would rather [red, blue, pink and all of the flowers in the universe].”  Would we say to the person, “Wait a minute, I asked you to complete the thought and you have provided me with gibberish.”?  And he/she comes back with:  “That’s how I would finish the sentence, because that’s how I feel.”   Would that be allowable?  Or, should the rules of grammar confine and restrict, so that the formality of completion should reflect a coherence that is expected and anticipated, such as, “I would rather [be at the beach than going into work today]”?

In the insular universe of private thoughts, of course, we can add whatever fanciful thoughts that infringe upon the uncertainty of our subconscious minds; but when the breach between private/public dichotomy occurs, suddenly we are thrown into an arena that restricts and confines, and compels us to follow the rules of conversational efficiency, including grammatical rules, traditional sense of coherence, logical consistency and meaningful conceptual constructs.  Exiting the arena of private thoughts right into the concentric complexities of the public world alters the rules of engagement.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact, prevent and block the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal job, the critical point of departure — from breaching that dichotomy between the insular world of the “private” and stepping over into the “public” — begins when first there is an admission that a “problem” exists.

Preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted ultimately to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is likened to completing the fanciful thought that begins with, “I would rather…”.  The replacement of the ellipses can have many forms, restricted and delimited by grammatical constrictions and  restrictive contexts, but no Federal or Postal employee who begins the process ends such a sentence with, “I would rather … [be on disability retirement than be healthy and continue to remain in my chosen career].

Those who believe that there is a scintilla of coherence or meaningfulness in such a sentence do not know Federal and Postal employees.  Instead, it is a choice resulting from limited options, but sometime the best one available, as filing for an OPM Disability Retirement may be the only alternative where other such contingencies have already been exhausted.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Dissipated Dream, Delayed

It is an enjoyment and pleasure of the highest order, and yet costs nothing; if remembered, the visual residue can be stored in the safety deposit boxes of one’s memory, “as if” it actually occurred; and retrieving the memories can be as vividly regurgitated in the virtual reality of its existence, as that of having actually been there.

Dreams, if remembered, can be as real as memories of experienced events.  No, they cannot be videotaped (at least, not yet); and the money exchanged, the actions engaged or the people we meet in the fantasy realm of our self-contained consciousness, do not translate well in the harsh reality of everyday life.  And then we open our eyes, and unless we deliberately try and remember the images so vividly splashing upon the walls of our eyelids just before the flutter of opening them, they dissipate into the ethereal universe of some mysterious universal consciousness.  But what of the other sense of a dream — that of youth’s future endeavor and plans of greatness?  Of the many places desirous of visiting, the encounter with a kindred spirit yet to be fulfilled, and the pleasures of momentary categories of accomplishments?

Medical conditions have a tendency to dissipate such dreams, to scatter them across the cold and harsh tundra of reality, and to stamp them into the frozen plains of time.  But a dissipated dream need not be destroyed; it may merely be delayed.  Federal Disability Retirement can allow for that eventuality.  What others deem to defecate, one need not accept as the final word.  No, it is not the monetary payment of a Federal Disability Retirement annuity which will burst forth with riches of dreams delayed; rather, it is the opportunity to attend to one’s medical conditions, such that the medical conditions may be somewhat resolved, the nightmare put behind, and linear progression of life’s plans restarted.

For the Federal employee or the U.S. Postal worker, filing for OPM Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, should merely be a bump on the road.  While some Federal and Postal employees may consider the entire bureaucratic process of filing with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to be akin to a nightmare of sorts, it is the path out of one’s rut of dreamless nights.

Dare to dream; never believe that the dream dreamed is a dissipated dream; rather, dreams of one’s subconscious, just as the childhood one of unrealistic plans for the future, should merely be a delayed embracing of that which is larger than the smallness of our fears.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Scent of Decay

Animals steer clear of it; the growing stench is a warning, a harbinger for the wary; it is only an attraction to vultures and other scavenging birds of prey; civilized societies deal with it by slapping an FDA food label on items, long before the bacteria of decomposition begins to cannibalize and self-immolate.

The reality of the olfactory response is to curl up one’s nostrils; the metaphor encapsulates the recognition of weakness and vulnerability, and the herd mentality of attacking the weakest in the evolutionary race of disseminating one’s greater gene pool by diminishing the population of the weak, thus providing a justifying basis for extermination and dominance.

In the microcosmic context of a Federal workplace, the scent of decay compels a reconstituting of loyalties and forgetfulness of past accomplishment; what you did yesterday, matters little; what you have the potential to do, matters most; what you can no longer do, destroys all mattering.

For U.S. Government employees and Postal workers, the time for change comes not necessarily with the seasons of nature, but when a medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties.  Medical conditions represent vulnerability; and whether the Federal or Postal employee has the best of relationships with one’s supervisor, coworkers or the agency and department as a whole, the scent of decay immediately follows upon a diminution of productivity and potentiality.

The evolutionary human instinct to follow the dominant and ignore the vulnerable is one which defies replacement by artifice and societal niceties; suddenly, the star employee has found disfavor, and it matters not whether the fault can be attributed to laziness, incompetence — or a medical condition which cannot be controlled or helped.

OPM Federal Disability Retirement is an employment benefit which accompanies all Federal and Postal employees who are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset; it allows for Federal and Postal employees who can no longer perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, because of a medical condition, to obtain an annuity in order to move forward in one’s life.  Once obtained, there is a possibility for a second vocation, and to earn up to 80% of what one’s (now former) Federal or Postal position currently pays, on top of the Federal Disability annuity itself.

As man lives no more in the wilds of pure survivability, where beast and burdens of hunger have been replaced by white collars and polite salutations of meaningless vacuity; so the appearance of empathy and magnanimity of intent may mask, for a time, the scent of decay; until the pounding hoof prints fade in the settling dust of that herd which sensed the vulnerability, where the howling pack of wolves and wild beasts come gathering in the twilight of snarling tensions; and standing still in a forest of wild beasts will not save the doe from the savagery of civilized society; for, while headlight hunting may be outlawed, it is the frozen deer in the headlights which waits upon a desolate tundra while the scavengers await the reaching arms of the scent of decay.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire