OPM Medical Retirement Benefits: The Inadequacy of Language

Adequacy is determined by comparing the expectation of fulfillment to the reality of what occurs.  For a short period of time in the history of human existence, adequacy was met — for, language as a tool of communication was successful in conveying commands, following simple instructions, purveying uncomplicated thoughts, relating oral traditions of historical facts, etc.

As life became more and more complex, of course, language had to keep up in order to accommodate the greater need.  The development and evolution of language has certainly become more complex, and the discipline of philology reveals such evolving complexities — but the question always remains, Is language adequate?  And the follow-up question by necessity: Adequate for what?

One might avoid the question by criticizing the vehicle of language, of course — that in the end, language is adequate, but it is the speaker of a language whose inadequacy is revealed by the inefficient manner in which it is applied, the inability to choose or recognize the right words, etc.  In the end, it is likely both — for, even a lifetime of studying one’s own language is often not enough to be able to describe the inherent complexities of the world in which we live, especially given the technological expansion in modernity.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition necessitates contemplation of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under FERS, make sure that you recognize: (A) That such an application for Federal Disability Retirement is first and foremost a paper presentation to OPM and (B) that conveying the severity and extent of your medical conditions must by necessity be through the expertise of linguistic formulation.

As such, it is often the inadequacy of language which will determine the success or failure of an OPM Disability Retirement application.

Contact an OPM Disability Attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law, and make sure that the inadequacy of language is not to your disadvantage.

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 OPM: The Technical Application

In every system, specialty, sub-specialty, etc., there is a technical application and usage of a term, concept, acronym, etc.  Wittgenstein, the Austrian Philosopher and the author of “Philosophical Investigations” (as well as Tractatus Philosophicus and other works), discusses the concept of “Language Games” involving such unique and technical applications of word usage within different contexts and circumstances.

Thus, there are “computer software language games”, or engineering language games — where specific words have meanings quite narrowly defined, and which often excludes the general population’s understanding unless you become a “member” of that particular group, society, etc.

In Federal Disability Retirement Law, there are numerous technical applications within the language game of “Federal Disability Retirement under FERS” — and one of them is the usage and application of the term, “Accommodations”.  The term itself is widely and loosely used — as in referring to various work-related adjustments and changes.

Thus, a Federal Agency or the Postal Service might, for example, refer to a light duty assignment as an “accommodation” provided, when in fact — in the technical, legal sense — it is not at all an accommodation under Federal Disability Retirement Law.

The problem with a technical application, usage and misapprehension / misunderstanding terms and concepts used in a “general sense” as opposed to the “technical sense”, is that such failure of comprehending the precise meaning of a term can result in failing to apply and obtain Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS.

Contact a lawyer who understands the technical application of all terms under Federal Disability Retirement Law, and don’t let the language game of Federal Disability Retirement Law mislead you into a failure of filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application under FERS through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

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.

 

Federal Employment Medical Retirement Benefits: Answering

There are a wide-ranging set of rules when answering — whether to a question, a query or the need to rebut a determination of some sort.  Etiquette often plays a large part in social situations; or of common conventions and unspoken rules of interpersonal interactions.  Different situations call for tailored responses, and often we confuse one sphere of responsive need with another. “Do I owe an explanation” often depends upon the circumstances — the status between the query and the deposed; the relationship fostered; whether there would be consequences in failing to provide an answer, etc.  Then, of course, there is the issue of timeliness.

For Federal employees and U.S.Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition prevents the Federal or Postal worker from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, much of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a matter of answering questions — questions posed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Standard Forms 3107 and 3112.  How one answers the questions; what answers are formulated; when to file a response; where to file the response — they are all relevant in preparing an effective FERS Disability Retirement application.

Consult with a Federal Disability Retirement Attorney who specializes in Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Laws and set the path of “answering” not only in the right way, but in an effective manner in preparing, formulating and filing a successful Federal Disability Retirement application.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement Benefits for Federal Employees: The bugle

Unlike its cousins, it has no valves or pitch-altering devices, but must be modified through the movement of the lips, the extent of breath exhaled and the undulating modifications of combined muscles in the lips, tongue and throat.  Perhaps from the days of riding a horse in the cavalry, where playing an instrument while charging full force ahead on a horse stumbling across rough terrain forced the instrument’s player to modulate through strain of keeping one’s self from falling; in any event, its very lack of complexity belies the simplicity of the bugle, as appearances are indeed deceiving.

Whether playing Taps in that mournful tone, or reveille in that jarring sound as the signal to awaken for morning roll call, or the charge to execute a cavalry or infantry advancement — that frightening sound to Indian tribes signifying the destruction of a culture long awaiting death – its class of variety extends well beyond most choices provided.

Trumpets of all sorts may be included in the family – from Piccolo trumpets, slide trumpets and multiple others from A to G and beyond; but the bugle stands alone in its structural simplicity and reliance upon the creativity of the holder who dares to attempt to master its range of pitches by the vocal creativity and lips pursed in controlled spurts of exhaling the intricacies of man’s attachment to inert objects to fill the air with sounds unnatural but for the beauty of music.

That range of pitches – from the morning call to awaken with energy reverberating from a cadence of jolting magnitude; to the charging rampage of a galloping horse; to the sorrowful tears of life’s end represented by the draping of a flag upon the coffin; these, in their collective entirety, depict the spectrum of life:  Of youthful exuberance; to middle-aged hope and faith; to the black veil of a life well lived; the sound of the bugle encompasses all.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who find themselves in that twilight of life’s stages – somewhere beyond the youthful enthusiasm, but well before the illumination reflected by the funeral pyre – perhaps it is the sound of the bugle in the last stages of reveille, before the first note of Taps is emitted; and the medical condition has blanketed the tone, quality and loudness of the music of life, and a further stanza of a narrative interrupted must be composed.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is like the bugler’s call to order, and sometimes the sound of music must be heard at the end of a piece, and a pause must be endured, before the beginning of the next.  That is the challenge and the beauty of the bugle – an instrument for all stages in the pendulum of life’s musical quality.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Medical Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Parting grace in silence

Does grace extend even when the intended recipient is unaware of its attachment?  Can the undeclared withdrawal of revenge justified have its own inherent rewards, without the unsolicited admission left silent by anonymity undaunted?  If given the choice between leaving the scene where injustice prevailed and dominated – of wreaking revenge or parting grace in silence – which would we choose?

Of course, there is a greater contextual awakening to be narrated before such an event would occur – of quietly enduring the daily harassment, the constant criticism and demeaning remarks; of refuting, rebutting and reacting, as against an agency that initiates adverse actions one after another in sequential persistence of unfettered meanness.

From that erupts the natural tendency in thinking:  “They can’t get away with this”; or, “If I have to spend my last dime, I am going to get even with them.”  Yet, is the cost of revenge worth the time, effort and expenditures depleted?  What does it mean to attain “justice” in an unjust world?  If a verdict is rendered or a settlement reached, what is the barometer by which one has regained one’s reputation, reestablished that one was ‘right’ or recuperated the toil of anguish and angst expended?

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is not a surrender of one’s soul to an agency that has not, will not or otherwise cannot accommodate one’s medical conditions.  Rather, it is an admission that there exists an incommensurability between the particular position occupied and the medical conditions suffered.

That is the point made in the case of Henderson v. OPM, in which the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board reiterated the alternative but equally valid approach in proving a Federal Disability Retirement case by a preponderance of the evidence:  a 1-to-1 ratio between a medical condition and an essential element of one’s Federal or Postal position is not the only methodology in establish a medical condition such that the Federal or Postal employee becomes eligible and entitled to Federal Disability Retirement benefits, but additionally, a showing that there is an incompatibility generally between the position occupied and the medical conditions suffered is also a basis for granting a Federal Disability Retirement benefit.

Whatever workplace issues have been a part of the content and context of a Federal or Postal employee needing to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, once that decision is made to prepare, formulate and file for Federal Disability Retirement, one might consider this:  The past has passed; the present must be endured while waiting upon a decision by OPM; the future is based upon the decision of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; and in the meantime, where do you want to expend your energies?  You may want to consider parting grace in silence, instead of spinning the proverbial wheels heaping reactive acts of futile counterpunches upon those who know not the terms of justice.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from Federal Employment: Mansions with many rooms

There is room enough, and the imagery posed by the concept presents the warmth of an open invitation, whether the guest is willing, able or otherwise unprepared for such unconditional hospitality.  Mansions often pose a stoic, cold and unwelcoming façade, and it is always the people who inhabit them and the guests who frequent such expansive and impersonal grounds that make the difference between icy relationships of uncaring attitudes steeped in jealousies engendered and encouraged by competition, envy and mistrust, or the comfort of caring families.

It need not be a steadfast rule that the larger the house, the less amiable the people; or, its corollary, the smaller the abode, the qualitative and proportionate substance involving mirth, laughter and joy.  It is, perhaps, the feeling that geometric expansion and distance between rooms correlates with a certain stoicism that encourages lack of closeness; whereas, if you have to double-up in bunks and share bathrooms, wait upon one another just to get by a narrow passageway, you are forced to tolerate the quixotic eccentricities and foibles of each other, and quick and easy forgiveness is not too far away when you have to live in close quarters where anger, holding grudges and carrying pockets full of resentments simply will not do, as such overloads of unnecessary burdens tend to weigh each other down into a pit of misery that cannot withstand a house full of people.

Once, a local pastor quipped, “Where there are people, there are problems.”  True enough, and one might add:  “And when gathered into close quarters, the ugliness shows through all the more.”  Perhaps it is that the heavenly mansion has many rooms, not because so many people are expected to arrive as permanent residents; rather, because angels and spiritual entities who have crossed the irreversible divide care neither for cramped spaces nor of expansive comfort, but live contentedly wherever they are.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who work for a Federal agency or a Postal facility, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the mansion with many rooms is likened to the particular workplace that one spends so much time in.  Then, when you become the subject of gossip, the trigger point of harassment and the butt of whispered jokes because you have taken so much time off, filed for FMLA protection as well as grievances and EEO Complaints to try and ward off the constant adversarial actions directed against you, it may be time to consider a change of residences.

No, this is not to imply that you should consider the “spiritual” world; rather, to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be filed with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.  For, as with the proverbial mansion with many rooms, it is not the place itself that makes much difference, but the people whom you are surrounded by, and when a medical condition begins to impact your ability to perform the essential elements of the job, it is perhaps time to seek another with many rooms, or a smaller house with friendlier occupants.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement from Federal Government Employment: Imprisoned souls

Do we immediately know of the figurative sense of such a concept?  As the Medieval times of dark, dank and dire dungeons no longer house the tortured detritus of human excrement cast aside upon the nod of displeasure noted by a King, a Prince or a scorned Court of Royal Courtier, so the immediate presumption is that such a term must encompass some cognitive obstacle or encircling of a mind otherwise in agony.  And what of the second term in the concept – does it denote something separate and apart from the whole of a human figure – that essence of a person that tells us that there is something beyond an amalgamation of neurotransmitters and physical presence such that the entity is distinguishable from an amoeba, a flower or those closest of cousins, the chimpanzee?

When a person is looked upon with empathetic concern, is it the image of the individual that gives rise to the sensitivity, or the soul that is embattled within the confines of the exoskeleton that defines the profile like the shadow of an image one sees of a person standing against the lamplight in the dark of night?

When a scream is emitted from the depths of a human uttering, of the physical intonation and shrill cries reverberating through the caverns of a mouth widened in anguished turmoil, do we reach out to provide comfort merely to the physical shape and form of a human being because we can relate to an entity so closely recognizable as that which is reflected in the mirror of our daily lives, or is there that “something” which theologians continue to haunt us with, that transcends the superficial appearance of sense impressions that is discussed from ages foregone, from Plato’s Forms that constitute the “real” reality beyond the appearance of things, and the clinically antiseptic explanations of Hume’s Empiricism that provides a foundation of separation and divide that laid the groundwork for the future of Existentialism a century or more hence?

We are, all, in a general sense, imprisoned souls anguishing in the turmoil of daily angst, but for the Federal employee and U.S. Postal worker who must also contend with a medical condition, such that the medical condition is about to cut short a promising career, the future is often viewed from a bleak perspective, and the daily harassment from Supervisors and Managers only exacerbates the troubled lives we must all manipulate and maneuver through.  Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not an easy process; it may be, however, the only option left and available for the Federal or Postal worker who can no longer perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal position.

In that sense, the Federal or Postal worker who is left with the best option available – of preparing, formulating and filing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM – is considered an imprisoned soul, for it is not only the medical condition that impacts upon the choices left in life’s trials and challenges, but the constraints and curtailments one self-imposes by agonizing over one’s future as he or she steps forward in trying to maneuver through a complex administrative process.

How to free one’s self?  By simply acting; by moving forward, even if the future is somewhat unknown and uncertain; for, in the end, it is movement itself that distinguishes the difference between life, imprisoned souls, and deadened entities that merely survive.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire