< 30 year government employee. Everything she said is true and it's true across numerous government agencies. If you care about your job and are idealistic, you are practically punished and pushed out. The internal promotion process is a joke.
Who is your fishing parter, who is your golf buddy or what quota are you filling?
I became an employee who eventually didn't give a shit and fell into the classic government employee everyone complains about. I retired as soon as it was made available and took an extreme cut in pension and it was like leaving a bad marriage. Worth the loss of every penny.
So if our government is slow, inefficient, and outdated, we need to ask, who designed it that way and why? DOGE has its work cut out for it... it's not just waste and inefficiency that DOGE needs to fix, it's an entire culture of lazy and stupid people that has set up like concrete for the past several decades.
I can vouch for your position too. I saw so much waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq during our occupation there. I was an employee for the U.S. Navy (Program Manager for Fixed Site "cell phone" jamming systems) and while on rotation there, I will never forget the time I was going to one of the many mess halls for lunch at Camp Victory and while scanning in with my ID card I observed an individual from the big gun contractor Haliburton swiping his ID card through the scanner. I said something and asked what he was doing? Without missing a beat and swiping his card he said that the more this scanner gets hit, the more Haliburton can charge the Government. WTF??? Oh yes, who was the CEO of Haliburton and was then the VPOTUS? Dick Cheney.....
Yep! Each swipe of the card registered a "cusomer" and Haliburton would charge the taxpayers.... this was a tactic that was being done at all the mess halls if you knew what to look for...
.
So what do you suggest ? Can such a system be reformed or do we just need to gently push people out and keep downsizing, automating and consolidating the "work".
There is no control on the number of employees. Cause or invent a problem, get a budget to "solve" it, like 87,000 more IRS agents?!?
In real life, you cannot pay employees if you don't earn the money. In government, there are no metrics to prove that a job is worth its pay. If the problem persists, obviously more spending is needed! /s
Result is bloated, unresponsive, inefficient bureaucratic state.
Like paying employees to work remote, while paying leases on expensive empty office space??
The federal government needs pruning, root and branch. There is NO WAY all the employees, agencies, and expenditures accomplish a fraction of the purpose for which they were created! And [feature not a flaw] make the problem worse and more unsolvable.
I remember, before DOGE, RFK Jr recommended a hiring freeze, he said the problem would largely work itself out as people retired and moved on.
That may be partially true but I think there is much more that needs to be done. I remember when my brother left the private sector and went to work for the VA. He claimed the administrative staff was mostly just hacks, hanging out at the cafeteria and playing games on their computer. Then he got used to the laid back do nothing work place and now he claims he could never go back to the private sector as it would be much too difficult. Lol. Good thing he's within a stones throw of retirement.
This is true for county government as well..and this is why I left after 11 years as a Detention Deputy to start a business. I couldn't stand that the "powers that be" would enact policies that made the job (which is inherently dangerous on its own) even less safe but would then try to blame inefficiencies on staff. I would tell supervisors all the time that these were their policies and that they were never going to work, but I was met with a brick wall every single time. So I gave up my position as a Field Training Officer and started working towards building a business. The whole "If you don't like it, leave” didn't quite work on me. Challenge accepted... Hold my badge. 😂
i had eight years in a county job and i hated every minute of it.
when i got hired, they were two years behind and i got them caught up in six months and i was called a brown noser and a suck up.
before i worked for the county, i worked 16 years at a bank. very strict work ethics at the bank, it was like working for Nazi's, supervisors every where checking to make sure you didn't talk to your co-worker longer than a minute or two and all your breaks were timed.
many got laid off from the bank due to a merger. when i started at the county all they did all day long was talk BS about everything except work. was like they were all on an eight hour break, every single day. i finally quit, i couldn't take it there any more.
As a fed employee for many decades, I saw bad employees. But I also saw a lot of great employees. I think it's wrong to dump on all of them. I think a scalpel is needed rather than a hammer.
True. I worked in govt healthcare. Girl technician in rx got caught selling cocaine out of the pharmacy. Got busted.
Punishment? Sent to work in medical records.
In private sector we had to do an online Continuing Education test/affidavit yearly, stating that we did not participate in any FW&A (fraud, waste and abuse) in dealing with Medicare patients med billing.
Was told that no-one was immune from being blamed and could not score 100% on the test.
Set us all up as scapegoats.
So glad to be out of my once noble chosen profession. It all changed about 1995 when rx chains and insurance companies took over.
Not exactly a secret. I was representing a client who had been audited by the IRS. The auditing agent straight out told me she preformed maybe two days worth of work a week. The rest of the time she worked on private income tax returns for her own side business.
She said you had to work at this pace or you would stand out and the slugs would make your life very difficult. She complained but she gladly stayed on waiting for her retirement. To her credit she came in out of high school and took advantage of all the free training, got a BS and became an Enrolled Agent. So she methodically worked her way up the ranks. She said she did three things right, she came to work on time, never questioned the bosses, and got those 16 weekly hours of work done meticulously. So honestly she was probably one of the better ones.
I was intrigued, so I basically did the audit for her out of her private 400 square foot office while she spilled the dirt on how the system was used to target certain people and more importantly ignore instances of obvious fraud. She was quite the chatterbox, must have been a "non work" day.
A friend of mine who works for the government says already receiving calls about where they are working remote. A coworker falsely said he was working in a state that compensates for higher cost of living. That person is living in a state that has a lower cost of living. Thousands of dollars. Fraud.
Now that person now has to prove he’s living where he claimed. Winning.
Good!!!!! A lot of people justify lying/stealing. Some will straighten up just hearing about this happening. Unfortunately, many basically good people cheat the system; everyone else is doing something unethical, right? I need it to survive. People on Disability sell their medications to pay bills.
It's such an easy fix; just one low level worker being convicted of defrauding the gov't, and the work force may weed itself out. Kind of like "self-deporting.
We used to get timesheet audits. What a joke. The auditors go golfing with Sr. Management after a glowing report?
I can't wait for the abuse to be dealt with. Seen it all my 45 years of work.
It's just like seeing government employed utility workers...one person digs a hole and all the others stand around watching him and drinking coffee...we've all seen it, so of course it's happing in every aspect of our government.
< 30 year government employee. Everything she said is true and it's true across numerous government agencies. If you care about your job and are idealistic, you are practically punished and pushed out. The internal promotion process is a joke. Who is your fishing parter, who is your golf buddy or what quota are you filling? I became an employee who eventually didn't give a shit and fell into the classic government employee everyone complains about. I retired as soon as it was made available and took an extreme cut in pension and it was like leaving a bad marriage. Worth the loss of every penny.
POSIWID: The purpose of a system is what it does. If a system produces inefficiency and waste, THAT is the purpose of that system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
So if our government is slow, inefficient, and outdated, we need to ask, who designed it that way and why? DOGE has its work cut out for it... it's not just waste and inefficiency that DOGE needs to fix, it's an entire culture of lazy and stupid people that has set up like concrete for the past several decades.
I can vouch for your position too. I saw so much waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq during our occupation there. I was an employee for the U.S. Navy (Program Manager for Fixed Site "cell phone" jamming systems) and while on rotation there, I will never forget the time I was going to one of the many mess halls for lunch at Camp Victory and while scanning in with my ID card I observed an individual from the big gun contractor Haliburton swiping his ID card through the scanner. I said something and asked what he was doing? Without missing a beat and swiping his card he said that the more this scanner gets hit, the more Haliburton can charge the Government. WTF??? Oh yes, who was the CEO of Haliburton and was then the VPOTUS? Dick Cheney.....
So...he's eating at the mess hall..for free? And his company charges the govt for feeding him?
Yep! Each swipe of the card registered a "cusomer" and Haliburton would charge the taxpayers.... this was a tactic that was being done at all the mess halls if you knew what to look for... .
So what do you suggest ? Can such a system be reformed or do we just need to gently push people out and keep downsizing, automating and consolidating the "work".
There is no control on the number of employees. Cause or invent a problem, get a budget to "solve" it, like 87,000 more IRS agents?!?
In real life, you cannot pay employees if you don't earn the money. In government, there are no metrics to prove that a job is worth its pay. If the problem persists, obviously more spending is needed! /s
Result is bloated, unresponsive, inefficient bureaucratic state.
Like paying employees to work remote, while paying leases on expensive empty office space??
The federal government needs pruning, root and branch. There is NO WAY all the employees, agencies, and expenditures accomplish a fraction of the purpose for which they were created! And [feature not a flaw] make the problem worse and more unsolvable.
I remember, before DOGE, RFK Jr recommended a hiring freeze, he said the problem would largely work itself out as people retired and moved on.
That may be partially true but I think there is much more that needs to be done. I remember when my brother left the private sector and went to work for the VA. He claimed the administrative staff was mostly just hacks, hanging out at the cafeteria and playing games on their computer. Then he got used to the laid back do nothing work place and now he claims he could never go back to the private sector as it would be much too difficult. Lol. Good thing he's within a stones throw of retirement.
This is true for county government as well..and this is why I left after 11 years as a Detention Deputy to start a business. I couldn't stand that the "powers that be" would enact policies that made the job (which is inherently dangerous on its own) even less safe but would then try to blame inefficiencies on staff. I would tell supervisors all the time that these were their policies and that they were never going to work, but I was met with a brick wall every single time. So I gave up my position as a Field Training Officer and started working towards building a business. The whole "If you don't like it, leave” didn't quite work on me. Challenge accepted... Hold my badge. 😂
She's so right! I worked for the State of AZ fo 6 years and the mentality was the same.
this goes for state and county levels as well.
i had eight years in a county job and i hated every minute of it.
when i got hired, they were two years behind and i got them caught up in six months and i was called a brown noser and a suck up.
before i worked for the county, i worked 16 years at a bank. very strict work ethics at the bank, it was like working for Nazi's, supervisors every where checking to make sure you didn't talk to your co-worker longer than a minute or two and all your breaks were timed.
many got laid off from the bank due to a merger. when i started at the county all they did all day long was talk BS about everything except work. was like they were all on an eight hour break, every single day. i finally quit, i couldn't take it there any more.
Well, this explains a lot! The back to workplace order was sorely needed!
Then they'll just do nothing in the office haha
Long lunch breaks, three martini lunches.
Except for the fake employees who don't even exist. Those will be outed.
She is so sick of her coworkers. I bet she is the 20% that does 80% of the work.
As a fed employee for many decades, I saw bad employees. But I also saw a lot of great employees. I think it's wrong to dump on all of them. I think a scalpel is needed rather than a hammer.
Often the great employees are doing their best in a completely ineffective system. Not their fault. May the best ones survive the pruning.
Great comment fren
True. I worked in govt healthcare. Girl technician in rx got caught selling cocaine out of the pharmacy. Got busted. Punishment? Sent to work in medical records.
In private sector we had to do an online Continuing Education test/affidavit yearly, stating that we did not participate in any FW&A (fraud, waste and abuse) in dealing with Medicare patients med billing.
Was told that no-one was immune from being blamed and could not score 100% on the test. Set us all up as scapegoats.
So glad to be out of my once noble chosen profession. It all changed about 1995 when rx chains and insurance companies took over.
Burn the whole thing down and start from a Republic/Patriot foundation!
Not exactly a secret. I was representing a client who had been audited by the IRS. The auditing agent straight out told me she preformed maybe two days worth of work a week. The rest of the time she worked on private income tax returns for her own side business.
She said you had to work at this pace or you would stand out and the slugs would make your life very difficult. She complained but she gladly stayed on waiting for her retirement. To her credit she came in out of high school and took advantage of all the free training, got a BS and became an Enrolled Agent. So she methodically worked her way up the ranks. She said she did three things right, she came to work on time, never questioned the bosses, and got those 16 weekly hours of work done meticulously. So honestly she was probably one of the better ones.
I was intrigued, so I basically did the audit for her out of her private 400 square foot office while she spilled the dirt on how the system was used to target certain people and more importantly ignore instances of obvious fraud. She was quite the chatterbox, must have been a "non work" day.
This was 20 years ago guys.
yes, I totally believe it
Any organization that does not have to compete to survive will become fat and filled with laziness.
This is government. Reduce it down to part time work for people who love our country.
True it's really a systemic problem .
Elon Musk call your office.
DEI hires for many more years than we know......
A friend of mine who works for the government says already receiving calls about where they are working remote. A coworker falsely said he was working in a state that compensates for higher cost of living. That person is living in a state that has a lower cost of living. Thousands of dollars. Fraud.
Now that person now has to prove he’s living where he claimed. Winning.
Good!!!!! A lot of people justify lying/stealing. Some will straighten up just hearing about this happening. Unfortunately, many basically good people cheat the system; everyone else is doing something unethical, right? I need it to survive. People on Disability sell their medications to pay bills.
It's such an easy fix; just one low level worker being convicted of defrauding the gov't, and the work force may weed itself out. Kind of like "self-deporting.
We used to get timesheet audits. What a joke. The auditors go golfing with Sr. Management after a glowing report?
I can't wait for the abuse to be dealt with. Seen it all my 45 years of work.
Someone get this video to Elon. DOGE should hire this woman.
Hire her for DOGE!
The biggest mistake was allowing government employees to unionize.
Underrated comment
Or allowing gov't to get so big it could have unions.
Gov't workers think "showing up" is work! 🤣
me too, sister, me too… its sad.
It's just like seeing government employed utility workers...one person digs a hole and all the others stand around watching him and drinking coffee...we've all seen it, so of course it's happing in every aspect of our government.
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1883743075220222353