Postal & Federal Employee Disability Retirement: What to Do

It can be a statement or a question; in either event, it is inextricably entangled with a concept of inquiry — of next steps; of solutions; of advice and guidance.  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, or who have felt the impact of an injury or some traumatic medical event, the question of “what to do” is a natural next step.

Have accommodations been requested?  Is reassignment possible?  Can you continue to perform your job at a satisfactory level?  Or, has the medical condition or injury impacted you such that you should consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, and perhaps seek another kind of work in the private sector — or even in local or state government?

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law and consider the next steps in the natural questions of what to do.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Applying for FERS Disability Retirement Benefits: Balance

It is what we want to maintain, whether on a tightrope, a ledge high above in an apartment complex, or just walking from the living room to the kitchen.  For, without it, the silent agreement we have made with the objective world would suddenly topple, and we would be lying horizontally and seeing the world from the ground up, as opposed to the vertical manner in which we ambulate, and observing the world from above.

In our lives, as well, in addition to the manner in which we walk about, we talk about maintaining a “balance” — a metaphor, surely, about the proper coordination between work, personal time, family interaction, activities with or without relations, and the healthy engagements needed in order to perpetuate a semblance of sanity.  We also talk this way about the medicines we ingest; of dietary balance, chemical imbalances and a more Aristotelian view of remaining in the “middle ground” where the two extremes are avoided.

Life itself is a force to contend with; for, it is “life” in general which is in a constant battle against us, trying to tip our equilibrium and mess with that “balance” that we all strive to maintain.  Medical conditions, as well, suddenly tip the balance with gale-force winds that irreverently disregard our wants and needs.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who sense this “out-of-balance” world because a medical conditions has tipped the scales and made everything out of whack, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through OPM may be the answer you are looking for.

Medical conditions themselves have a way of making life “out of balance”, and it may be that a Federal Disability Retirement annuity is what is required in order to bring things back into their proper order and balance. Consult with an attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law; for, in the end, it is balance maintained which allows for the regaining of one’s health, while all of the “rest of it” is trying to perpetuate the chaos of imbalance.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Answering the question

What constitutes “answering the question”, and more importantly, how does one determine when its opposite occurs — NOT answering the question?  Does the former occur if the questioner fails to follow up, and does the latter become an issue if the person asking responds with, “That doesn’t answer my question,” or some such similar declarative assertion?

Take the following hypothetical:  Person A asks Person B, “So, where do you come from?”  Person B answers, “The skies of Normandy were grey on that June day in 1944.”  Now, Person A could have various responses to such a statement, as in:  1.  “No, no, I asked where you came from.” 2. “Are you telling me that you come from Normandy, France?”  3.  “That doesn’t answer my question.”  4. Or, silence, with no follow-up.

Person B, of course, could similarly respond in variegated ways, as in:  A.  “I just told you.”  B.  “Yes” or “No” (in response to the follow-up question, “Are you telling me that you come from Normandy, France?”).  C.  Silence, or “Yes it does.”  D.  Nothing further.

It may be that Person B simply has a poetic bent, and from his perspective, the mundane query was answered in a metaphorical, literary manner.  More to the point, however:  Who determines if a question has been answered (leaving aside the further query of whether the answer itself has “sufficiently” or “fully” been responsive to the question) — the one who asks, or the one who answers?

In a normal conversation, of course, the issue rarely comes about; in an argument where one or the other side, or both, are trying to get answers and defeat the other side, the heat of the moment may determine the answer to the question; and the penultimate paradigm of the question, “Who determines whether the question has been answered?” occurs in the highest form during a deposition or cross-examination in the legal arena.

Observing what occurs during a court proceeding is an interesting experience of human behavior; of the back-and-forth between counsels and the witnesses being deposed or examined, as in:  “You didn’t answer the question.”  “Yes, I did.”  “I asked you…”.  “Asked and answered.”  “Objection, the question has already been asked and answered.”  And on and on until a singular point is pursued to an exhaustive level ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

Is the issue of what constitutes an answered question somewhat akin to the question or “original intent” — i.e., that just like an author’s original intent as to the meaning of a written document is what should rule, similarly, the person who asks the question has the sole power to determine whether or not the question asked has been answered, and moreover, adequately and sufficiently answered?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are beginning the process of preparing, formulating and filing 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, these questions concerning the “answering of questions” will and should come to the forefront when confronted with the questions asked on SF 3112A, Applicant’s Statement of Disability.

Inasmuch as the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has promulgated the questions in a carefully-crafted manner, there are some inherent pitfalls and dangers in what constitutes an adequate response, a sufficient answer and the complete delineation that rises to the level of a satisfactory statement.

SF 3112A is replete with unanswered questions within the very substance of each question, and the answers you provide are best guided by an attorney who has had the experience of legal encounters previously, and who specializes in the Law of Federal Disability Retirement.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Information: The mysterious spark

One may never be able to pinpoint the precise time of day, the hour or minute that it occurred; but at some point, it developed, matured and became a certainty.  It is that mysterious spark or connection that occurs in every relationship, whether between members of the same species, or even of other ones; of that mysterious spark that elevates a relational connection to one not merely encompassing casual friendship, but of a special, unique and singular symbiosis that becomes identified as mysterious and unexplainable.

It is characterized by a “look” between the two, shared by no one else, allowed entry by exclusive invitation only and zealously guarded by the two who share it.  It is that special spark, the glint in the eye, the knowing stare and the longing look; and it can be shared by two young lovers, a couple of old codgers or with a cat or a dog, and maybe some other species besides.  It is by the shared joke, the exclusive laugh, the hinted metaphor and the crazed reaction; but of whatever the elements that make it up, the two who share it know when it happens, that it exists and that the mysterious spark remains unless violated by one or the other by committing some act of treachery or deceit that breaks the silent code of friendship and fidelity.

Can such a mysterious spark exist between a person and an inanimate object — or an event, a career or even a place?  Perhaps.  Think about the career one has embraced — where, once you awoke with a spring in your step, an anticipation of joy and even of rushing to get there just to immerse yourself in the day’s project, the afternoon’s conference, and even looked forward to the often-wasteful time spent in “coordinating” with coworkers and others.  And then — something happened.  The energy is drained; the joy is depleted; the profound fatigue sets in.  A medical condition can certainly do that to a person.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who have lost that mysterious spark that once pervaded each morning as one prepared to go to work, it may be time to consider 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.  If the medical condition is preventing the Federal or Postal employee from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, you likely meet the legal criteria for becoming eligible to receive a Federal Disability Retirement annuity.

For, in the end, the mysterious spark that formed the relationship of special significance between any two entities — including the one between a Federal or Postal employee and his or her job and career — was always based upon a presupposition that necessitated a contingent agreement involving a silent understanding: the continuation of one’s health.  And, when once that becomes damaged or destroyed, the mysterious spark is replaced with the ugly reality that the quality of life depends upon the health of an individual.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The leaked information

Most “secrets” are well-known; it is the combining of a multiplicity of the unknown, which constitutes the importance of leaked information.  Thus, it may be disseminated as to the “what”, but until it can be connected to the “when” or the “who”, the irrelevancy of the data remains in its isolation of significance.  Or, perhaps what will occur is revealed, and by whom, and even the destined time and place; but if caution delays the planned event for another day, hypervigilance can only be maintained for a limited period of time before exhaustion of focus, concentration and attentiveness wanes by profound fatigue.

There is, then, that old hippie dictum:  What if a tree falls in a forest unoccupied; did it make a noise?  Similarly, and in parallel format:  What if information is leaked, but no one took notice; is it relevant?  Does signification of data require acknowledgment?  Why is it that, in certain crime cases, concurrence of telling is important, even if no action is filed?  Why do decades-old cases suddenly come alive merely because impromptu declarations are made, or do underlying motives undermine the validity of such reenactments of crimes committed but neither solved nor investigated?

One often assumes that information begotten through nefarious sources is somehow less reliable; but it is more likened to the man whose leg gets bitten off by a shark while swimming in the midday sun – he hardly becomes comforted by the statistical limitations of an event that has already occurred.  Yet, we constantly obsess over leaked information; data which may be sensitive; constructs that can be pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle but in the realm of real life.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, there is first the fear that one’s inner intent may be “leaked”; that discussion over the telephone may be overheard by those whose intent and motivation may not be as pristine as the proverbial snowfall the night before; and that, once filed, personal medical information may be disseminated without the privacy protection accorded by law.

In the end, the best that can be done remains twofold:  (1) try to restrict access to a Federal Disability Retirement application by providing fair warning as to the legal consequences if violated, and (2) to realize that the ultimate goal should always be kept in sight – that of getting an approval from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and once that is done, all of the leaked information around the world will become irrelevant, as the focus always was, and should be, to reach that level of rest and restorative peace in order to attend to the real issue at hand:  One’s own medical condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Survival

The struggle to get through a given day can be overwhelming.  The complexity of the human phenomenon is beyond mere comprehension; and, as some mysteries are simply unsolvable, so the accepted view of evolutionary will for survivability is defied daily.  Can it really be explained by a language game encapsulating “instinct”, “genetic determinism” and “innate desire to propagate one’s species“?

Such a language game is tantamount to Popper’s falsifiability axiom; it falls into the category of a nice story, and even believable, but no historical data to test its veracity.  Each day is an extreme test of Nietzsche’s calculus of one’s will to live; and, by the way, it is always other people who truly compel the test.

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 worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the endurance of survivability is a test of daily will.  What makes it tougher?  It is a question of relativity, of course.

The increasing pressure from the agency for greater productivity was barely bearable before the advent of the medical condition, or its manifested symptoms exacerbated recently; the sudden whispers and glances askance when exiting or entering a room; and the cyclical viciousness of wondering what next the agency will do, is contemplating, or conniving, as the case may be.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, may not look like the “be-all” solution in every case; but where the clash of survivability and the lowering of one’s stature within the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service from one of “golden boy (or girl, as the case may be)” to “questionable”, then the proverbial writing on the wall may necessitate the preparation of an “exit strategy” from the war zone of predators.

In the end, the anthropological account of man as merely one animal among others, and the predatory environment characterized by the paradigm, “survival of the fittest“, is both believable and compelling.

Hobbs, Rousseau and Locke were precursors in their literary genius of bifurcating the condition into that of “state of nature” and “civil society”, and we can still fool ourselves within the surroundings of technology and architectural wonders, that we are somehow above the beasts of burden, and other amoebas and prehistoric entities; but like tumors and other things that grow, survival cannot be the standard of living; otherwise, staying put would be the way to go.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Disability Retirement: The Life We Perceive

The state of having an epistemological privilege in the first-person singular, means that we occupy a unique position of knowledge, cognition, perception and viewpoint.  Concurrently, however, we must recognize and acknowledge that others have a similarly extraordinary vantage point, and that no matter how hard we may try, we will never truly understand the depth and complexity of the “others” who surround us, whom we encounter, and who pass by our field of vision in the greater context of life’s coincidences and happenstance meetings.

That we may never be able to fully understand another human being is not a sin; that we fail to care to at any given moment, is merely a fault; but that we callously disregard despite indicators of greater suffering and turmoil so evident that the trembling whispers of human frailty touch upon tears of sorrow, shows a misuse of that unique position of epistemological privilege.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers 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 Postal or Federal job, the impact is such that one must often consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and thus to end early one’s chosen career in the Federal sector.

One would expect, despite the unique position of epistemological privilege which everyone occupies, that some semblance of empathy or caring could, or should, be expected.  Instead, the Federal or Postal employee in the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits often encounters greater resistance and bureaucratic turmoil than statistically experienced in other similar administrative endeavors; and can this be attributed to mere mathematical calculus of acceptable differentials?

It is doubtful, because it is precisely in the recognition that perversity of intent is also found uniquely in the human animal, and even in cases of suffering and trauma, when medical conditions clearly present to the life we perceive a state of grief greater than simple sympathy, but beyond pain, suffering and turmoil of body and mind; even then, the complexities of jealousy, envy, spite and cruelty, overwhelms the soul who knows not the inner depths of depravity within the human makeup.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: The Calculus of Change

The title itself is somewhat of a tautology, for the branch of mathematics is defined as a study of change, divided into differential calculus and integral calculus; both, concerning the function and limits of mathematical constancy and potential quantum leaps for purposes of analyzing quantitative future applications.

We all assume some amount of change; if there is a differential to be considered, the rate of such change can be significant over an extended period of time, whereas the initial analysis can be a minimal irrelevancy.  It is the exponential rate of change applied over a lengthy period, which can produce change significant enough to enter into the calculus of future indicators.

Change is a recognized inevitability, though human expectation is often one of dependency upon the constancy of habituation and permanence.  We expect, when we open a door into a familiar room, for the interior decoration to have remained the same as the last time we entered; but who is to say that a spouse or family member did not, in the meantime, rearrange the furniture or put up new curtains?

Change has an inherent character of disquietude; it is the constancy of repetitive permanence which allows for solitary reflection and comfort.

Thus, for Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the disruption posed by the change in one’s circumstances — of fiscal, professional, social, cognitive and physical (i.e., the mere act of going to work each day, etc.) — can be tremendous and traumatic.

In preparing and formulating one’s Federal Disability Retirement application, it is always a positive engagement of efforts to consider the calculus of change, and to not leave the alterations in one’s life in dismissive form as mere statistical irrelevance.

For, in the end, the biggest change of all has already occurred, in the form of an impacting medical condition which has prevented the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s positional duties in the Federal or Postal sector; the rest is mere window dressing to the very essence of a changed life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Medical Retirement: The Beast of Burden

Is there a limit to the capacity for a draught animal that engages in the heavy toil so assigned?  Like the proverbial reed of hay which breaks the camel’s back, what is the limit, the absolute capacity, the outer stretches of what the psyche can absorb, the ultimate strain upon the human physical endurance and the will to survive; until the beast of burden crumples upon an exhausted heap of fatigue and loss of hope, a broken mass of bones, organic matter and mindless assemblage of shattered void?

Is that not how one sometimes feels, when the strains of daily toil aggregate to such an extent that stress is no longer merely an acceptable medium of daily work, and information is no longer a tidbit of enlightening accentuation; rather, too much means that the system is overloaded, beyond the acceptable parameters of mere survivability, and enters into the unknown universe of meltdowns and nuclear fissions.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers 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 job, the feeling that the balance of life which was so delicately maintained throughout one’s career, can come careening down an uncontrollable chasm of chaos, when once the medical condition becomes that proverbial piece of hay upon the beast’s back.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits are not just an “out” for the faint-hearted; rather, it is part of the compensation package which all Federal and Postal workers are accorded, whether you are under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.  Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which is filed (ultimately) through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and it is not one’s own agency which makes the determination of approval or denial.

For some, it is the only solution remaining; for others, it may be a godsend; for all, it is merely a benefit which allows the Federal and Postal worker who finally recognizes that priorities in life must include, first and foremost, attending to one’s health and well-being, to actually effectuate the balance of life once maintained, but temporarily lost.

For, in the end, while we all like to think that the beast of burden is some mythical creature on a farmer’s pasture in a foreign land, it is often the one who imagines that about the “other”, who is the subject of toil; one needs to merely look in the mirror on a morning when time, stress and stretching of tolerance exceeds the point of no return, and realize that the beast of burden is the one with eyes looking back at you.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire