Experiential Responses: Medical Retirement for Postal & Civilian Federal Employees

Life’s garbage is supposed to teach us lessons; that is what we are taught from a young age.  Thus, long lines allow for an opportunity to test patience; insults and ingratitudes, self control; imprudent behavior, an antipathy towards it; lengthy battles, allowing a lesson to forge on while others give up; and similar encounters which provide ample revelations for altering one’s natural instinct of regressive responses.

But the other force which powers its way in an insidious and countermanding manner, is the very negation of lessons learned: of finding security in habitual and repetitive behavior; of responding in a known manner, because past actions of an established quality provide a zone of comfort in contrast to an unknown future.  But medical conditions in and of themselves are unknown factors which impede, intrude, and interrupt.  Sometimes, not acting is as deleterious as proceeding against life’s lessons, learned or yet unachieved.

For Federal and Postal employees who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition not only impacts one’s ability and capacity to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties but, beyond that, has already impacted the extent of experiential encounters with one’s agency, supervisor, coworkers, etc., it may be that one must reconstitute and consider changes which may be anathema to one’s very nature: patience for long-term treatment may not work, as one’s agency may be impatient; self-control towards the ingratitude manifested may not be enough; and imprudent behavior engaged in by one’s agency may be an acceptable norm of standards to follow.

Federal Disability Retirement benefits are meant to allow for the Federal and Postal employee to attain a level of livelihood in order to attend to the most important of life’s experiential encounters: one’s health.

While filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS or CSRS, may feel like one is “giving up” instead of forging forward despite adversity; the reality of it is that filing for OPM Disability Retirement does not constitute defeat or surrender, but rather an affirmative move to change the stage of the battlefield.  Further, in life, it is not always the “good guy” that wins. Sometimes, the guy in the white hat must walk away, only to see another day to engage the greater battle of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

FERS & CSRS Disability Retirement for Federal and USPS Workers: Coordinated Steps

When a toddler first learns to walk, what is apparent in the awkward initial attempts is the lack of muscular control, coupled with an innate awareness of potential failure; and that compound look of surprise, fear and lack of comprehension when the first fall of failure occurs.  It is, in a sense, a “failure”; not for lack of trying, or of applying the elementary mechanics of “how to”.  Rather, it is precisely because the various elements must coalesce to create a tripartite approach which has not yet come to fruition:  muscle strength and control; a sense of balance; a coordination of mind and body.

Similarly, in preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, the Federal or Postal employee who first attempts to enter into the universe of administrative law, and specifically into the world of bureaucracy culminating in an encounter with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, must contend with the following:  coordination of efforts.  For, in the end, the tripartite elements in a Federal Disability Retirement application must also come together:  The medical condition; one’s positional duties in the Federal sector; the nexus between the two, with a legal argument as to the impact of one upon the other.

The requirement of coordination does not cease merely because one learns to walk; it is a life-long endeavor which only becomes more sophisticated, with greater demands and requirements, upon those very members of society who continue to grow, mature, and become adults.  Those first baby steps only represented the beginning; once mastered, the universe of man, which includes all forms of technological absurdities and complex human behaviors, must be understood, incorporated, and ultimately engaged, in order to begin the process of mastering the coordination of life.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire