Postal and Federal Medical Retirement: The Concealment of Emoticons

They replace the true face of humanity.  Pasted with a quick tap of a computer keyboard, they allegedly represent the state of emotional being of a person, at a given time, within a granted context, in the course of an interplay accomplished in diatribes of virtual reality.  Contrast such antiseptic encounters with the profound agony felt in Anton Chekhov’s short story, “Grief” (or sometimes otherwise entitled, “Misery”), and one begins to comprehend the depths of distancing depravity that people have fallen to in an attempt to bifurcate humanity from personal contact.

Whether the emoticon truly represents the state of one’s psyche at the time of pasting the cartoonish face upon a screen, or it merely conceals an underlying turmoil otherwise safely hidden, is besides the point; the encounter of exponential removal is determined, and unlike the sadness felt by Iona Potapov in attempting to relate the story of his son’s death, it can be quickly posted, expediently dismissed, and immediately turned aside to engage a different topic altogether.  But human history finds few factors new to the universe; the young always believe that human innovation and articulations of deceitful demarcations of denouements in the linear chains and linkages of human endeavors are only recently discovered, when in fact artifices built to conceal the true nature of a person’s state of being have always been constructed, for reasons left to guessing and implication.  Individuals who suffer from medical conditions become adept at such masking.  In Japan, the Noh players wear masks which reveal various emotions; yet, depending upon the angle of view, the lighting upon the mask, and the perspective of the audience, the emotion itself can be altered from scene to scene.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must daily conceal the authenticity of their state of turmoil, whether because of the lack of empathy by their agency, or because societal norms dictate the extinguishment of any open display of human states within the context of a workplace, know well the trauma of conflicting contradictions between the public face and the private reality.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS-Offset, is a viable option to consider when the cumulative impact of hiding one’s pain, concealing the daily turmoil, or overstepping one’s welcome has passed the pinnacle of surface meanings.  There comes a point when work loses its meaning at the intersection of a medical condition impacting the value of health, family and future.

Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers have a choice in the matter; the option is to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; and like pasting an emoticon as a farewell wave as one is departing the Federal or Postal sector, so the telling of one’s grieving story as Iona does to his horse, is the true framing of human value, where one’s worth is determined not by virtual reality, but the evocation of a touch of warmth in holding one’s hand.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: The Emotional Quotient

To “walk in another person’s shoes” is a sentiment which attempts to foster empathy for the plight of another.  We tend to believe that if the “other person” had an understanding of the entirety of one’s circumstances, that there would awaken an altered perspective.

“Feeling”, of course, is quite different from “knowing”, and thus do we have, in this era of modernity, that which is identified as one’s “emotional quotient”, as distinct from the traditional “IQ” criteria.

For the Federal or Postal employee considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, the conceptual distinction between “feeling” and “knowing” is one which should be considered throughout the course of putting together one’s Federal Disability packet.  For, it is ultimately a third party — a stranger in a gargantuan bureaucracy, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — who must be “touched” in order to approve one’s Federal Disability Retirement application.

What is said; how it is said; the compliance with the legal criteria applied; how persuasive; whether the emotive content follows and reinforces the factual delineations; and the extent of the logical nexus created between one’s Federal position and the medical condition suffered; all of these in their complex intersection and combination serve to create a picture of a person’s medical condition, and the impact of that condition upon one’s ability/inability to perform one or more of the essential elements of one’s job.

One can approach the entire endeavor and simply say, “The only thing that matters is whether you meet the legal criteria or not”.  On the other hand, you may consider that, as human beings are fallible creatures, and not mere automatons, there may well be an emotional quotient which must be factored in, and in order to tap into such a vast resource of non-objectivity, one must consider one’s words carefully; for, in the end, it is language which creates the picture, as in the very picture of “walking in another’s shoes”.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

CSRS & FERS Disability Retirement: OPM May Say So, But… (Part 2)

Then, of course, there are the multiple “other” issues which the Office of Personnel Management “says so”, such as failure to pay the full amount of back-pay due; failure to compute the average of the highest-3 consecutive years correctly; reinstating the full amount of FERS once a person becomes no longer eligible for Social Security Disability benefits; arbitrarily and capriciously deciding that the medical report is not “good enough” in answering a post-disability approved, Medical Questionnaire; failing to compute the earned income in any given year properly, and thereby informing the disability retirement annuitant that he or she earned over the 80% limit of what the former federal employee’s former job currently pays; and a host of other issues.  My specialty is in obtaining disability retirement benefits for my clients; I only selectively get involved in post-disability annuity issues, but the point here is that the Office of Personnel Management has a track-record of being in error, in multiple ways, on multiple issues, in volumes of cases. 

It is thus important to recognize that the Office of Personnel Management is not an infallible agency.  Far, far from it, they are merely made up of people who are subject to error, but often stubbornly so — unless you counter their denial in an aggressive, but calm and rational manner.  If a denial comes your way, do not get distressed; prepare your case well, and lay out the groundwork necessary to win.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

CSRS & FERS Disability Retirement: OPM May Say So, But…

I often wonder how many unrepresented disability retirement applicants there are who, having received a denial letter at the First Stage of the process of filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS & CSRS, never file a Request for Reconsideration because they believe what the Office of Personnel Management stated in the Denial Letter.  Sometimes, I will get telephone calls from people who want to file, and during the course of the conversation, it will come out that they had filed a few years previously, and had been denied.  “Did you file a Request for Reconsideration, at the time?” I ask.  “No,” is the answer.  “Why not?” I ask.  The typical answer?  “Because I just thought there was no way to fight them on it.” 

I used to be amazed at such answers, but after some thought, it makes sense.  As an attorney, my first instinct (both trained and natural) is to always take something to the next level, with the firm belief that I will prevail just by pure persistence, and by using the law as “a sword” in the process of fighting for my clients.  But most people are not lawyers (some would say, thank goodness for that, we have enough lawyers in the world), and when the Office of Personnel Management writes up a denial letter, then allegedly cites “the law”, and makes bold conclusions such as, “You do not meet the eligibility criteria under the laws governing disability retirement…”  It all sounds convincing.  It all sounds like any further action will be an act of futility.  But just because OPM “says so” doesn’t make it true, doesn’t make it right, and certainly doesn’t make it unwinnable.  They may say you don’t meet the eligbility criteria; I would argue otherwise.

Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal & Postal Service Disability Retirement: The Level of Objectivity

I was trained in Philosophy, first; obtained my undergraduate degree in Philosophy; then went on to graduate school to study Philosophy.  Somewhere along the line, I decided to switch lanes and go to law school.  However, the training I received in philosophy — of symbolic logic; of the analytical discipline of evaluating the logical consistency, force, soundness and validity of argumentation and methodology of argumentation, has remained with me throughout my legal career.  In recent years, I have found that logic, validity, soundness of arguments, and consistency of argumentation, has become a rare breed.  Whether this has more to do with a greater lack of rigorous education, or the belief that there is little to distinguish between “objectivity” and “subjectivity”, I do not know.  I do know, however, that there remains, even today, a sense of the “integrity” of an argument.  An argument’s integrity is found in an objective, dispassionate description of a case. 

That is the role of an attorney — to give the narrative of the Federal Disability Retirement applicant under FERS & CSRS a sense of proper context, a picture of objective validity, and a substantive presentation of the issues which are relevant:  medical, life, impact, occupation, and the intertwining of each issue with the others, without undue and over-reaching emotionalism which can often undermine the very integrity of the narrative presentation.  

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire