OPM Disability Retirement: Problem of the Lowest Common Denominator

What is wrong with going to the essence of the matter, skipping the process, and reducing everything to its lowest common denominator? Doesn’t efficiency demand such an approach? Isn’t the most effective method of attaining an end, to identify the units of measurement which determine the outcome of a potential formula, then to focus upon developing such units and discarding the ancillary components?

The problem with such an approach, of course, should be self-evident: it ignores the meticulous procedural steps which comprise the importance of process. “Process” is often ignored by the second and subsequent generational leaders. It is likened to doing away with the social courtesies and rituals surrounding an activity.

In religious contexts, it represents the sacred steps which one must embrace in order to complete the ritual itself; and, in some societies, the process itself is of greater importance than the completion and attainment of the objective for which it is engaged. To ignore the process and merely piece together the lowest common denominators, is to undermine the relevance of the activity itself. Sequence of ritualistic application is important; how one does it, is often of greater relevance than what one does.

For Federal and Postal employees 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 time for consideration in filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether one is under FERS or CSRS, has come to a critical point of fruition. But filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is not merely a matter of filling out forms (SF 3107 series for FERS, along with SF 3112 series; SF 2801 series for CSRS, along with SF 3112); for, if that were the case, one should simply do so post-haste.

But that would be a self-defeating proposition; and once the U.S. Office of Personnel Management receives that Federal Disability Retirement application based upon the approach of the lowest common denominator, they may well respond with a similar unit of division: one which takes into account merely the numerical efficiency of a denial, and not the human reality of one’s medical condition.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire