Federal Employee Disability Retirement: Of Camels and Corsets

Both represent anachronisms in our modern, technological society; the former as still somewhat distant and antiquated, with images of pyramids and times of colonialism; the latter of a time when the secrets of the body were hidden by shame, left to lust and imagination.  They no longer fit into the common usage of everyday language games, whether because of being relegated to uncommon reference or to irrelevance.

Similarly, that is how castaways are treated in a society which relishes productivity and promotional positive thinking.  Time is rarely a marking of empathy; though we feign the importance of community, we are simply too busy to regard those less fortunate, except perhaps with a deductible donation.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s job, the sooner the recognition that inclusion and accommodation are likewise foreign concepts, the better in planning for one’s future.  Federal OPM Disability Retirement is an employment benefit which was negotiated as the greater package for Federal and Postal employees.  It allows for the Federal and Postal employee, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, to remain productive in society in another capacity, yet, receive a base annuity from the Federal government.

The formula is set by statute, ultimately filed through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and one must prove one’s entitlement after meeting certain eligibility criteria; but like camels, corsets, and even castaways, the arcane anachronism of the administrative system and bureaucratic process may require the strength of a camel, the mystery of hidden knowledge as only subsumed by corsets, and the thick skin of being treated as a castaway.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Postal and Federal Employee Disability & Injury Compensation Laws: Decisions & Complexities

The complexities inherent in modern technological life, and the methodologies of arriving at a decision-making process, make for a consciousness counterintuitive to one’s natural state of being.  Rousseau depicted a romanticized version of man’s state of nature; but the point of his philosophical thesis was to provide a stark contrast to the civilized world of social compacts and the justification for societal intrusion into liberties and rights reserved exclusively and unequivocally.

In what epoch one was born into; whether one ever had the deliberative opportunity to accept or reject the social contract of today; and the greater historicity of man’s cumulative unfolding of unintended paths of social consciousness; these all provide the backdrop as to why life has become so complicated.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal Service worker, there is the added issues of multiplicity of bureaucratic layers, and the decisions which must be made in the greater context of the microcosm of another civilization of administrative facets:  what choices one is faced with; VERAs, MRA+10, Social Security Disability requirements; deferred Retirements; injuries on the job which may prompt an OWCP/DOL filing; and the seemingly endless avenues which the Federal and Postal employee may have to face.

For the Federal or Postal employee who is confronted with a medical condition, such that the medical condition impacts the Federal or Postal employee from performing all of the essential elements of one’s job, the option which should always be considered is Federal Disability Retirement.  If a medical condition exists, Federal Disability Retirement from the OPM is often the best and only option which will attend to the needs of the moment.

In the end, it is not the complexity of life which wears upon us all; rather, the capacity to engage a rational methodology of arriving at a proper decision, which cuts through the peripheral irrelevancies and provides a real-life, substantive basis for the meaningful values underlying the superficialities of daily fluff.

OPM Disability Retirement for the Federal and Postal employee, whether under FERS, CSRS or CSRS offset, may be the option of solving that greater conundrum when a medical condition begins to impact daily living.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquir

 

The Self-Image of a Postal or Federal Employee after a Disabling Injury or Other Medical Condition

Thurber’s Walter Mitty is not an anomaly; each of us carries a fiction within our insular souls, of lives extended into a world of fantasy, trespassing between daydreams and thoughts of heroic deeds beyond the mundane routines of daily living.  Perhaps there are those in the world whose lives are so adventure-filled that such retinues of alternative parallelism within universes of imaginations becomes unnecessary; but that is a rarity, as human beings are partly unique because of the creative outreach beyond the present circumstances of life.

It is only when such creative imaginations directly encounter and contradict the reality of life; where one begins to imagine beyond the imagination, and talk and act “as if” the virtual reality constitutes the real reality, that problems can occur.   The fragile demarcation between sanity and insanity may be arbitrarily imposed by an unforgiving society, but it is a boundary wide enough to entrap the unwary.  Medical conditions have a tendency to stretch that line.  Whether because of the stresses encountered in this age of modernity and technological complexity; or perhaps the inability to adapt, where evolutionary tools have not been able to keep up with the pace of change; whatever the reasons, medical conditions force the facing of reality, the starkness of our mortality, and the need for change.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, the primary need is often the time of recuperation.  But the unforgiving nature of Federal agencies and the U.S. Postal Service will often refuse to grant that necessary time in order to reach a plateau of recovery.  Federal Disability Retirement benefits, filed through one’s agency (if you are still on the rolls of the agency, or have been separated but not more than 31 days has passed) and ultimately to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a means to an end.

Often, one thinks of “disability retirement” as an end in and of itself; but because Federal Disability Retirement allows for, and implicitly encourages, the Federal and Postal worker to consider employment opportunities outside of the Federal Sector after securing Federal Medical Retirement benefits, it should instead by seen as an intermediate component of one’s life.

Making a living is a challenge enough; the loss of one’s self-image through the impact of a medical condition can be a devastating interruption to the challenge; but for the Federal and Postal employee who can secure a Federal Disability Retirement benefit, the interruption can be seen as a mere interlude, for greater opportunities extending into the future, and thereby allow from the daydreams of Walter Mitty to be enjoyed as mere reflections of pleasure, instead of wishful swan songs of a closing chapter as the curtain descends upon the epilogue of one’s life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire