Federal Government & USPS Disability Retirement: The Volume Appearance

It cuts both ways; and we all do it.  The “substance” of X can be either qualitative or quantitative, but rarely both.  If it lacks in substance, we believe that it can be made to look good by increasing its volume — i.e., heftiness = substantive relevance.  If it possesses inherent substance, on the other hand, it rarely requires greater volume.

The disjunctive rule is often applied here: Things rarely contain both.  Modern novels are a testament to the rule: Hundreds of pages with little to say.  Then, look at Hemingway’s greatest work — The Old Man and the Sea.  A short book; a masterpiece.  Shakespeare is the best example of containing both — quality of work, quantity of work.

In modernity, volume gives the appearance of substance, even when there is very little of it.  In a FERS Disability Retirement case, don’t think that gathering your decades-long medical records is sufficient to qualify for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  A qualitative medical report is often necessary.  The converse is true, as well: OPM will write a long and meandering denial letter which has no logical or substantive input.

It is, again, the “Volume Appearance” — of trying to make it appear as though the volume of their denial letter accounts for its validity.  It does not.

Contact a Federal Disability Attorney who specializes in OPM Disability Retirement Law in order to counteract the volume appearance — both for yourself in preparing the Federal Disability Retirement case, as well as in preempting OPM’s attempt to bamboozle you with a Volume Appearance Denial Letter — and no, the term “bamboozle” is not a legal/technical term, but it is what it is, as the modern colloquialism goes.

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.

 

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Disability Retirement: Don’t Be Fooled

This is a legal process.  Don’t be fooled with the following: “Yes, it is just a matter of filling out a few forms.  Get your medical records, complete the forms and submit it all to your Human Resource’s Office”.  But what about the decades and decades of case-law and legal precedents surrounding the Federal Disability Retirement process?

Don’t be fooled — The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not in existence to merely rubber-stamp each Federal Disability Retirement application submitted by Federal and Postal employees under FERS.  Rather, OPM is determined to find an excuse — any excuse — to deny the claim and to make it appear as though you never had a chance at qualifying.

If your attendance has become a problem, OPM will argue that your medical conditions are not serious enough to warrant your inability to make it into work.  If you have stellar performance reviews, OPM will point to them and argue that, See?  Your Agency says you are doing a great job, and therefore your medical conditions are not serious enough to preclude you from performing your job duties.

If “conduct” is ever an issue, OPM will point to it and say, So you got into trouble with your agency and now you are trying to fool everyone into believing that you have a medical condition.  Again — don’t be fooled.

OPM Federal Retirement is a serious legal process, and you should be forewarned that you will need an attorney to argue your case for you.

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.

 

Long-Term Disability Federal & Postal Employees: The Discouragement Factor

It is the sense of dispiritedness which paralyzes — of the loss of enthusiasm for something.  It is a palpable loss, one which can be discerned and calibrated, and is as real as the tree which cracks open upon being struck by lightning.  It can happen within a wide spectrum of issues and individuals — to the optimist as well as the cynic, to the perennial happy warrior and the pessimist; no one is spared.

Marriages can be destroyed by it; youthful vigor can be constrained and dampened; the tyranny of depression can be exacerbated by it; in the end, the discouragement factor often plays a greater role in failure than we often give credit for.  It can come by word or tone; by a look or a lecture; and when fragile egos are involved, the quiet face of silence in a storm of enmity may be the sullen face of discord not told.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who receive a denial from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for a Federal Disability Retirement application, or for a termination of benefits already previously approved, contact a lawyer who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law.

Don’t let the discouragement factor overwhelm you.  OPM’s intention is deliberate: They want you to be discouraged, and to give up the fight.  But fight on you must, and the best strategy is to contact an attorney who specializes in FERS Disability Retirement Law.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Lawyer

 

FERS Employees with Disabilities: Implicit and Explicit

Say a person is playing golf, hits the ball badly and yells out loudly, “Fore!”  In his mind, however, the individual has the word spelled wrongly — say, as “Four” or “For”, or any number of alternative ways.  When first heard, he had thought that it was spelled in the commonplace, conventional way.  Does it matter?  Doesn’t the fact that homophones exist become an issue of “right” or “wrong” only if the implicit clashes with the explicit? (What a terribly and awkwardly stated question).

Homophones not only “sound” the same, but may also be spelled differently.  They are in the “family” of homonyms because they sound alike but have different meanings; similarly, there are words that also sound the same, are spelled the same, but have different meanings, as in: “She rose from her seated position to smell the rose.”  Here again, what if the person repeated the sentence but thought that the first “rose” was somehow referring to the flower while the second rose concerned the manner of posture (if such transfer of meanings is even possible) — would it make a difference?

The “implicit” world of understanding encapsulates the privacy of our insular world; the “explicit” brings forth and unveils that previously-unrevealed universe, and tests it against the objective world of contending ideas.  It is somewhat akin to pain — that subjective phenomena which may or may not be capable of being ascertained, verified or confirmed by diagnostic testing or reactive muscle spasms.

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, it becomes necessary to make the “implicit” explicit in order to qualify for Federal Disability Retirement benefits.  Gathering the necessary information in order to formulate properly one’s Federal Disability Retirement case is to make explicit that which may have remained deliberately implicit.

That is where consultation with an experienced attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law becomes crucial in properly making explicit that which remained implicit, in order to “test” the viability of a very private and confidential matter.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Retirement for Mental or Physical Incapacity: Problems

We all have them; some, more than others; and by either quality or quantity, we often judge as to the burdens overloaded in our lives, comparing to others by contrast the significance of the impact of each, whether large or small, tragic and grandiose or irrelevant like a speck of a fly upon a windowsill in the basement where no one visits, anyway.

Wait long enough and they will sometimes go away; wait too long, and the little bothersome inkling may turn into an insurmountable gargantuan of a magnified adversity beyond human tolerability; and in the end, we are left with either being resigned to live with them, to solve them, or to simply survive them.

Problems are inherent to human living.  A wise pastor once said, “Where there are people, there are problems.”  This statement was a recognition that human interactions, relationships and the mere bunching up of personalities that conflict and become adversarial, in a world of limited means but unlimited emotional upheaval, by necessity invites problematic encounters.

We often think that, “If only I had…” — then, what?  That all problems would simply vanish?  Hardly, and most unlikely.  For, history has shown that in every endeavor that requires effort; in every relationship no matter the matching of perfection as to personality, temperament and compatibility; in the end, whether by external influences or internal derangements, conflict will erupt and problems will abound.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition such that the medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s Federal or Postal job, the necessity may arise for filing a Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS offset.

In such a state of affairs, problems already are inherent — the medical condition itself.  The key, then, is not to compound the problem by trying to maneuver through a complex administrative process without legal expertise, but rather, to engage an attorney who specializes in Federal Disability Retirement Law.

In the end, it is the compounding of problems that can be controlled.  Problems will always be with us, but for the Federal or Postal employee who must contend with a medical condition and must file a Federal Disability Retirement application, always remember that it is the next step beyond the original problem that will often determine the future course of problems, and whether they can be limited or allowed to fester and boil over into a compounding of further problems.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Disability Retirement under FERS & CSRS: The Kokeshi doll

They are wooden dolls that are colorful, with expressions painted upon that remain frozen except for the change that naturally occurs when viewed from differing angles of sight, reflecting altered perspectives and modified vantage points depending upon one’s own emotions.  They sit on tabletops, shelves and can be a child’s playmate, though parents often view them more valuably as display items rather than taking the chance that the little brother may play them as reenactments of a prior war imagined to be fought by banging pieces of wood and throwing them against the yet-undamaged wall.

The heads are often disproportionately larger than the remainder of the body; and the rest and remainder, often just a block of smoothed wood with hands painted in a one-dimensional pattern, revealing no motion but straddling limply alongside the rectangular shape, like a submissive figure shuffling down life’s difficult trials in the daily struggles we all face.

The Kokeshi doll never complains, but always delights; never talks back, but eternally agrees; and never fails to bring light into a dark corner, but forever allows for a reminder that it is the trivial joys of life that make for worthwhile endurance in times of misgivings.  We are all, in many ways, expected to be like these inanimate objects that we have projected our own emotional well-being upon.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact the Federal or Postal employee’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of the Federal or Postal employee’s job, the fact that you are no longer able to remain impassive, implacable, disaffected and unmoved by the manner in which the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service has begun to treat you, is not an extraordinary insight to possess and be suddenly enlightened by.

Though we may enjoy the delightful colorfulness of a Kokeshi doll, we cannot expect to be nor act like one.  It was always the productivity released, the competence revealed and the level of contribution inputted that made the Federal or Postal employee “valuable” to a Federal agency or a Postal facility; but when a medical condition hits a person, it is simply “not right” that the Federal agency or U.S. Postal Service should treat the Federal or Postal employee as merely another Kokeshi doll who should remain quiet and unperturbed standing in a corner.

Thus, when the Federal agency or Postal facility fails to treat the Federal or Postal employee as something more than the inanimate object a Kokeshi doll ultimately is, it may be time to prepare, formulate and file an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, before that rough-and-tumble younger brother comes along and really begins to mistreat that block of wood.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Disability Retirement Benefits: Escaping reality

In some sense, everyone does it; in another, no one can.  For, in a general, generic meaning of the term, to “escape reality” is to merely engage in an activity that allows one to take a break from the ordinary and mundane, as in going to a movie, watching television, playing a video game or engaging a game of chess. In the same vein of meaning, however, one could argue that such leisurely pastimes constitute a reality no less real than working, dealing with life in other ways and attending to one’s daily duties and obligations – it is simply in a different “form”.

Daydreaming, getting lost in an imaginary world through reading a book, of even sleeping – these also constitute a form of “escaping reality”, if the term implies a narrow meaning manifesting the daily grind of work, family and surrounding obligations.  Going to school, surfing the internet or concocting plans for grandiose schemes – these, too, can be considered “escaping reality”, inasmuch as they do not put food on the table or pay bills; and thus do we face the reality that people possess different meanings when they make critical remarks that are triggered to demean an activity by making the charge that engaging in X is nothing more than an attempt to escape reality.

There are, of course, true escapes that are harmless, and those that, if entertained over too long a period of time, can become an entrenched harm that may be irreversible.  Taking a dream vacation to an isolated island deep in the Caribbean Isles can be a healthy escape from the daily reality of work and exhaustion; imagining a life different from one’s own, through a limited period of daydreaming, may be an acceptable form of transcending the turmoil of a day’s trial; but creating a world where one’s loved one, lost from the reality of this mortal world, is still present through one’s imagination and will of existence, may be considered a sickness when it begins to impede the ability and capacity to take care of one’s own needs.

There is a fine line between healthy escapes and detrimental plunges into the surreal world of the imagination.  How one takes upon the challenges of a medical condition is often a delicate teetering amidst the boundaries of health and unhealthiness.  We would all like to will away medical conditions, but the reality is that the real-ness of the injured, sick or otherwise deteriorating body, mind or both, cannot ultimately be avoided.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers, the idea of preparing a Federal Disability Retirement application is often a step towards recognizing the reality that there is no curative power that will allow the Federal or Postal employee to continue to work in one’s chosen career, and that preparing an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be ultimately submitted to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, is merely a matter of inevitable time.

Delaying the process, procrastinating the preparatory steps, or avoiding the issue altogether – all are a form of escaping reality.  Whether such an escape is a healthy precursor to the reality which must be faced, only the Federal or Postal worker who is engaging such an escape can tell, as the reality of one’s future may rest upon the very escape afforded by filing a Federal Disability Retirement application through OPM.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Of possessions and possessives

Does a noun transformed into a possessive form transfer deed of title, or is it merely a declarative mechanism of grammatical ascription, de-linked from any fact in reality?  If a person points to an individual in a photograph and states with certainty, “That is Edna’s sister in-law, the fourth cousin of King James III” — and thus implying some relationship with royalty and a connection to a very narrow uniqueness of historical lineage — does actual possession occur, or is the grammatical possessive merely an empty claim with no “real-life” consequence?

And, what if it turns out that the woman in the photograph is in fact not the person or heritage claimed, but merely a stranger whose presence in the one-dimensional format was simply a convenience whose image happened to defy the momentary identification?  What, then?  Does the discovery of this new set of facts expunge the previous claim, or was the initial declaration null and void and of irrelevance, anyway?

It reminds one, and is somewhat parallel to, the issue of names and their historical derivatives.  Take the name, Wilson, for example, which is a variant of the surname, Williamson — derived from the conjunctive, “Son of William” — from a time in history when lineage, direct descendants and being “X of Y” established a certain identification mired in simplicity of relationships.  Yet, today, the connection is entirely lost, and one no longer implies or denotes from a name the relational connective inherent in such linguistic designations.

Of course, the name itself can attach to the female gender, rendering the connective tissue of such language meaningless; and perhaps that is just as well, as antiquity founded in bias and discrimination is in modernity thought to be the greatest of sins.  But that is precisely the point, isn’t it?  We still cling to the nominative case in habits formed longed ago, and refuse to give up that which we are comfortable with.

Take titles of workforce significance, for instance — we cling to them as identifiers with substantive content.  That is why, for many Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are intending to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through their Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service, the thought of giving up one’s self-identification by moving on to a Federal OPM Disability Retirement annuity means that one has lost one’s “self” in conjunction with the Federal agency or the U.S. Postal Service.

Thus, the “letter carrier“, the “Supervisor”, the “Air Traffic Control Specialist”, and the “(fill in the blank)” — that is the nominative case which goes well beyond mere grammatical form.  It gives us the false sense of purpose, derivation of who we are and what is of relevance in a society which has lost its collective connection to lineage and relationships.  Is this “brave new world” any better?  Does the Federal or Postal employee who may now become a “Federal Disability Retiree” or “Federal Disability Annuitant” change the substance of the person, the content of his or her character, or even the essence of who he or she is?  But then, discovery of “essence” has also been expunged and extinguished from this antiquated mode of thinking.

In the end, for the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who is considering 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, it is not of possessions or possessives which should determine the course of future actions, but rather, the prioritizing of health and human happiness — those ingredients which have always made for a better tomorrow, whether in past times, the present, or in preparation for the future.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Disability Retirement: Of things (which should be) hidden

Perhaps it is a moment of repose, when relaxation allows for an unflattering silhouette or an act with hands which reach for things not publicly accepted; or of an insight into the depths of a soul, better left concealed, congealing unexpectedly before one’s eyes despite best or better attempts to suppress or repress.

We all assume certain aspects of a person’s life, and when they appear not within the slice of images presented to the public eye, we do not take notice because the presumption remains throughout.  Thus do bathroom scenes remain irrelevant throughout most of the history of film, and have only made their debut as titillating artistry masked as prurient creativity encroaches in subtle increments upon our sensibilities (with the obvious exception, of course, of Hitchcock’s scene of the curtained shadow).

Somehow, despite our incessant clatter of protestations to the contrary, the privacy of our lives become exposed and elevated to a pedestal of a declarative rumination, like the child-actor who accepts the adoration of public applause in place of the denied love of a parent.  The lowest of our essence tends to congregate in bunches of time, place and people; perhaps, as like attracts like, and similarities of venturesome teleologies aggregate for symbiosis of common causes, so the ugliness of humanity seems always to find its way where innocence abounds and the naive output is counterbalanced by the depravity of so many soulless zombies.

So it is in the workplace, where the ugliness of human character tends to reveal itself.  But that we wish for privacy, and for the sheer meanness of the human spirit to remain hidden.  The skin is an organ which covers, and for that we may be thankful — as the inner organs of man were never meant to be exposed for viewing where beauty is replaced with the stark reality of who we are.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must continue to go to work despite the deteriorating and progressive presence of 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 positional duties, the persistent exposure to things which should remain hidden, often becomes a constancy of unrelenting corridors of shame.

Just as divorce merely widens the microscopic fissures of that which the child already sensed, and the secrets leading to wars were already well-known by enemies and allies alike, so the facade which allowed for amiability and camaraderie suddenly crumbles, and the ugliness of humanity exposes itself.  Why is it that of those things once hidden, they suddenly become public and unconstrained?  And in the very midst of medical conditions and human plight which should engender empathy and consolation, the increase in harassment and progressive punishment exponentially facilitates.

For the Federal employee or U.S. Postal worker who finds him or herself in such a situation, filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management becomes not merely the least of options remaining, but the best alternative to a deteriorating circumstance.

And of those things which should have remained hidden?

Like vestiges of timeless reruns from an era veiled by innocence, the reels of fading images defy the reality of our day, and the best course of action is to prepare an effective Federal Disability Retirement application, to be submitted to OPM so that the escape hatch can invite a gust of fresh air where once the stuffiness of a stale and toxic environment was suffocating the very life out of our soulful existence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal & Postal Employee Medical Separation: The abstract concept of “the other”

Existentialism could only have arisen from the ashes of nihilism; Western Philosophy, spanning the spectrum of metaphysics, epistemology, Rationalism, Empiricism and the tradition of questioning origins, essences and the compendium of who we are and what it all means, does not lead to the natural annihilation of intellectual curiosity.  But Existentialism, does.  Why?  Because Existentialism is an emotional reaction, rather than a rational rebuttal.

From the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and the denigration of human dignity reduced to mere abstractions, the philosophy of negation of which it is characterized, is more of a “sense” approach than a logical methodology of comprehension and understanding.  Thus, while traditional philosophy was always denoted by a curiosity towards abstraction, Existentialism was pulled back by a retractive revulsion because of the alienating impact of conceptualization.

That is why the most powerful explication of the philosophy of Existentialism is found in a novel by Camus (reference, The Stranger or The Plague), and not in reading Sartre’s meandering explanation (Being and Nothingness) of a confused attempt to systematize the emotive side of man.  Thus, in reading Camus, one gets the “sense” of separation, abandonment, distance and alienation of man from the community of others; whereas, in reading the traditional philosophical works — take any page from Plato, Aristotle or the Medievals — one enters an universe of order, systematized approach, and methodological rationalization emanating from curiosity and questioning.

The two approaches, however, are not unrelated; for, it is precisely because of the traditional training of discussing concepts in abstract form (and thereby separating the thought-process from human touch and interaction) that disregarding the humanity of a living being could be achieved.  In more provincial terms, it is easier to be cruel to a concept, than to one’s own child or spouse.  And, indeed, that is how we survive in advancing our purposive actions of harassment and sheer meanness; by objectifying “the other”, we can bifurcate our minds and categorize the subject into something less.

Supervisors do it to workers and underlings; no longer is the worker a fellow human being, but “that ## % !!”.

For Federal Government employees and U.S. Postal Service workers who are contemplating filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the lessons learned and gleaned from the reactive lens of Existentialism may be twofold:  First, don’t expect sympathy from the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service because you have a medical condition (that, unfortunately, is probably self-evident and a “given” already), and Second, do not expect cooperation or efficiency to suddenly prevail when engaging the Federal Agency or the U.S. Postal Service, merely because the need to obtain Federal OPM Disability Retirement should in and of itself touch a sense of empathy.

In neither case will a positive response be evoked.

Ultimately, the bureaucratic process of 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 the FERS or CSRS retirement system, is a surreal experience, and one in which the sense of alienation felt by Existentialism is encountered throughout.  That is because, in the end, the Federal or Postal applicant in a Federal Disability Retirement case is none other than a mere “other”, and no more than an abstraction to be gotten rid of, like the distraction you became when once you were no longer fully productive on the assembly line of life’s refuse of illegitimacy.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire