DGS49
Diamond Member
Having worked 8 years in the Department of Defense (3 military), I would like to suggest that the biggest single problem of the Federal Government does not really fall within the definitions of those three issues.
The biggest problem is a lethargic, lazy, self-adulating workforce.
Allow me to elaborate. My experience as a civilian DoD employee was, I believe, typical of that of generic administrators like me. Our work day was theoretically 8am to 4:30pm, with a half hour for lunch. But that's not exactly how it played out. We would take half hour to start work in the morning, take a half hour break at 9:30, and hour-long lunch break, and another half hour break at 2:30, stop "working" at four or so, and walk out of the office promptly at 4:30. And I mean EVERYONE walked out at 4:30. Staff, management, "professionals" (accountants and engineers)...everyone.
Later, they introduced "flex-time" which meant that you could come in anytime from 0700 to 0900, work your eight hours, and go home. You can only imagine how this was manipulated to minimize work time. Suffice it to say that almost no work was done before 0900 (when the "late people" arrived) and no work was done after 3:30 (when the "early people" left).
In my office of a hundred or so people, there were maybe a dozen who were competent and conscientious, and 20 or so who made it their mission in life to do as little work as possible. Everyone else was simply mediocre, doing the bare minimum so as not to draw attention to themselves.
Parenthetically, the worst of them were the retired military officers, who were skilled at doing nothing and making themselves look great in the process. But most of their time was spent calling their military friends around the world using the "AUTOVON" network.
And everyone got outstanding performance reviews. The remarkable thing about the reviews was this: Whatever work pattern you established when you started - that was the work pattern on which you were evaluated forever after. My workload was about 200 active contracts, and I had peers who started literally on the same day who were handling 50...barely. And my performance reviews never even considered that I was doing 2 or 4 times as much work as my peers, while their reviews never considered that they were doing the bare minimum. As long as they didn't slack off from their already-low standard.
And this is why the DOGE folks might be eliminating a lot of jobs and people who appear to be productive Federal employees. The fact is that in many office, if not most of them, every hundred typical employees could be replaced by 25 conscientious employees, with no loss of effectiveness.
Is this phenomenon fraud, waste, or abuse? I'm not sure, but it certainly points to massive amounts of bloat.
The biggest problem is a lethargic, lazy, self-adulating workforce.
Allow me to elaborate. My experience as a civilian DoD employee was, I believe, typical of that of generic administrators like me. Our work day was theoretically 8am to 4:30pm, with a half hour for lunch. But that's not exactly how it played out. We would take half hour to start work in the morning, take a half hour break at 9:30, and hour-long lunch break, and another half hour break at 2:30, stop "working" at four or so, and walk out of the office promptly at 4:30. And I mean EVERYONE walked out at 4:30. Staff, management, "professionals" (accountants and engineers)...everyone.
Later, they introduced "flex-time" which meant that you could come in anytime from 0700 to 0900, work your eight hours, and go home. You can only imagine how this was manipulated to minimize work time. Suffice it to say that almost no work was done before 0900 (when the "late people" arrived) and no work was done after 3:30 (when the "early people" left).
In my office of a hundred or so people, there were maybe a dozen who were competent and conscientious, and 20 or so who made it their mission in life to do as little work as possible. Everyone else was simply mediocre, doing the bare minimum so as not to draw attention to themselves.
Parenthetically, the worst of them were the retired military officers, who were skilled at doing nothing and making themselves look great in the process. But most of their time was spent calling their military friends around the world using the "AUTOVON" network.
And everyone got outstanding performance reviews. The remarkable thing about the reviews was this: Whatever work pattern you established when you started - that was the work pattern on which you were evaluated forever after. My workload was about 200 active contracts, and I had peers who started literally on the same day who were handling 50...barely. And my performance reviews never even considered that I was doing 2 or 4 times as much work as my peers, while their reviews never considered that they were doing the bare minimum. As long as they didn't slack off from their already-low standard.
And this is why the DOGE folks might be eliminating a lot of jobs and people who appear to be productive Federal employees. The fact is that in many office, if not most of them, every hundred typical employees could be replaced by 25 conscientious employees, with no loss of effectiveness.
Is this phenomenon fraud, waste, or abuse? I'm not sure, but it certainly points to massive amounts of bloat.
