I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

crazy4carrots

Happy Sunday to all our pooch lovers:

kira1234

Don't you just love how dogs just let us know they want the toy thrown. My Kira brings her squeak as we call it to me every time I sit on the couch. One of these days I really need to learn how to up load pics. I would love to put one up of her!

208sandy

Just wanted to comment on the threads about the AIs and their se's - the se's are the reason I ever came to BCO and honestly after a couple of months I stopped posting on those threads - there are some people who I refer to as the "cheerleaders" and they know who they are and they are anything but.....

I was told more than once to stop posting about my se's as it "might scare some of our members away", I also had to read constant postings from one of them, always coming back to eating prunes and soaking raisins in gin as cures for the bloody awful pain that some of us experience on these god awful drugs - there is also a group that cycles and runs, etc. miles and miles and miles per day, per week whatever - good for them but posting once would be enough not everytime one of us questioned the latest se - I can barely walk some days and no, on those days, I am not "just thankful to be alive" so I haven't posted or read on those threads in months and I have had to go back on the dreaded AIs because I am now Stage IV so I can understand if anyone feels like they are being bullied - it's just another se we have to put up with (or not).

Jumping down from soapbox now, rant over!

RetiredLibby

Watching a 2006 documentary called, "Why We Fight." Nothing I didn't already know, but it might be very eye-opening to some. Of course, it is fact-based so it will not appeal to a certain segment of the population.



Kam, I have never heard of any government employee getting "free" daycare for their kids. My agency has a daycare center, but you pay for it. It is on a sliding scale based on grade, but everyone pays.



The people who complain about government salaries are the very people who scream the loudest when they don't get things or servicrs from the government that they think they deserve. Remember - nobody works for free, and you get what you pay for. You want to pay fast food wages and benefits, you get fast food sevice.



L

QuinnCat

HL - see what happens when you just read something (on that "government benefits about.com" site) and assume, well it must be one of those "perks" (i.e. free childcare for fed employees).  We never had it at my work site, so no knowledge of it, but if I had put my thinking cap on, I would have never assumed it was free.  We get zero perks.

RetiredLibby

Yep, Kam -- people just make up crap and other people assume it is true, especially about those overpaid gummint employees. They post it and repost it on websites when all they have to do is go to www.opm.gov and read for themselves what government salaries and benefits are. And quite honestly, re: the daycare -- after Oklahoma City, I wouldn't want my child in a daycare center in a government building. There are too many people who hate government employees for me to want to put my hypothetical child at risk.



Yep, zero perks. And as for the allegedly munificent travel benefits -- try traveling to your post in Lahore, Pakistan in tourist class with a seat pitch of 32 inches, without a rest stop and changing planes in Frankfurt and Karachi. And because they now have city-pairs, you cannot even pay your own money to upgrade to business class - you have to pay the difference between the government fare and full-fare economy and then pay to upgrade -- the cost is more than if you bought your own business -class ticket. No perks.



L

1Athena1

(((sandy))) jump back up on the soapbox whenever you want to. I would love to put a "like" next to your post.

I think people who respond to someone's complaints about mobility from treatment with "well, I just ran a marathon/biked/walked" and do not say how lucky they feel and how bad they feel for others are simply being heartless.

Also worth noting that some people's reaction to treatment is not wanting to be alive -that's how bad it is. So if treatment is working for you and makes you appreciate life, I think that's wonderful. I wish we all had that reaction, but we don't. Each side needs to be sensitive to the other.

Blue, I love your pictures!

alexandria58

When I worked for the Attorney General, there was a day care center on site, but we had to pay for it and there was a two year waiting list. 

When I went to work there, i took a salary cut, two thirds less than I was earning as an attorney in the private sector. 

When I worked as a teacher, I got  to school by 7:15, came home and worked until 9 or 10 every night on grading, and class preparation. I worked every weekend, and of those widely envied "holiday breaks" such as christmas and thanksgiving, i worked a good percentage of those as well.  The only time i was actually 'off" was the period from late June until the beginning of September - when I wasn't getting paid but was expected to take classes or otherwise continue to improve my teaching skills over the summer. 

I was far from unique in the hours I put in, too.

I am so sick of hearing people slam public servants as overpaid and lazy. 

1Athena1

I think Jackie may have been coming from a vantage point we all have to be sensitive to. Also, she reacted in good faith from information she read - it's just that the sources weren't exactly the most trustworthy.

alexandria58

Didn't want to attack Jackie.  I am way behind in comments and didnt know where that came from, as I went to visit elderly relatives all of yesterday and haven't read all the pages i missed.  i do think that there has been something of a campaign against public servants in the media, generated by certain political elements on the right, and those attacks do make me angry.  But not blaming it on Jackie.

kira1234

Well I'm not a public servant, but close, I'm a teacher, and we are in no way over payed for the work we do!!!

lassie11

Sandy - I giggled when you mentioned the gin soaked raisons. My brother thought they might be a help for arthritis. My father, then in his 90s said it was a darned waste of gin. I have tried it and see no appreciable difference but it sure does taste good!

RetiredLibby

I'm not attacking Jackie either, but I am interested in continuing to debunk myths overpaid and underworked civil servants. I know there are people who read here who don't comment (as well as others who read and comment elsewhere). If people's minds are made up and closed about public service, nothing anyone here says will change them, but if there are people who genuinely don't know, then I am interested in having factual info out there.



L

1Athena1

HL - you explained things better than I could have.

The overpaid, lazy myth is so, so old that the people saying that today have got to be desperate to change the subject. They would rather people turn their attention away from the fact that the GOP is a party in name only. That Boehner is not a fit leader. That there are some people on the right who routinely put Country Last despite their protestations to the contrary. And that some folks are giving the GOP an after-the-fact alibi by pretending the Sandy bill was full of pork.

So these are just ruses -old stories-- intended to cover up what is really going on.

When you have no arguments, some people chose to make up the facts, appeal to myth and hope people get distracted enough.

Having said that, considering the way in which the republican House leadership has wasted the country's time to fatten their political bellies, people might be excused for wondering, just for a second, whether all this you hear about GUV'MINT employes being overpaid and pampered might not be true.....(sarcasm oozing)

QuinnCat

While we're on the subject of gubmint employment, and from one whose pay I wouldn't want to try and support a family on.  I remember during the go go 90's, people making money hand over fist.  About that time, the size of federal government was really retracting (under Clinton) - with lot's of downsizing and unexpected/undesireable moves for employees.  Our salaries pretty much go up with Presidential colas, no set formula (other than promotions or step increases), usually less than those received by Social Security recipients.  Our salaries never went up like the private sector or were comparable, during the good times, nor were there offers from the public to give us raises commenserate with those goodtimes or bad inflation!  Nevertheless, during bad times, the public makes us the scapegoats.  It's kind of the story of the tortoise and the hare.  The hares need to save during good times to get through the lean times and the government employee takes their lumps during the good times, but expects that sacrifice to be worth it during the lean times.

My father was self-employed in the building industry.  He worked at home, so I saw it first hand.  Forty years ago he was making more than I make now (he did well), but when we were in recessions, sometimes he didn't work at all.  He saved his money though and used those times to take vacations - long ones, like a 4 month trip to Africa once.  Those who work in the private sector and didn't plan for the lean times, well, that is how the business and economic cycle works.  There is higher risk and higher reward in the private sector...a government employee takes a smaller salary and the reward is a modicum of stability.  (There are other worthy reasons for being a government employee, but I'm addressing the economic side, only.)

There are also some kinds of employment, one can only find in the government sector.

RetiredLibby

Yes, Kam, I remember the 90s well. The people in the private sector called us suckers for staying with the government. When I left the Foreign Service, I was offered a job at a booming public relations firm for almost triple my salary at the time. But there were things that I could be asked to do based on my background and education that I would have found personally repellant and completely counter to my beliefs. I thanked them nicely and declined, opting to stay in the government. Some of those who called us suckers are the angriest now that we planned better.



And what do people who inveigh against government spending imagine happens to the money? Do they think it evaporates? Do roads build themselves? Do children teach themselves? Does cancer research itself? Do the cells inject themselves with agents to see if they die? Do federal laws enforce themselves? And does the government do all of its jobs without spending money in the community and buying things that the private sector produces? And do government employees just live on sunshine and air, floating through the ether without consuming goods and services produced by the private sector?



When DH and I were watching the 2006 version of "Why We Fight," he commented that the people who are so hysterically against defense cuts (esp. Congresscum in their own districts) don't get that the money will be spent on other things like roads and bridges and research and other things that will benefit the country. More fighter airplanes means fewer roads.



L

1Athena1

The other thing that often goes unmentioned is how HARD it is to get a job in government. Those jobs are some of the most competitive around. You really, really have to be qualified. This doesn't mean that there aren't incompetent feds -of course there are. Incompetents about everywhere. But generally speaking the level of preparation and qualifications demanded are much more stringent than in the private sector. In almost every sector, the country's most brilliant minds have, at one point, passed through government.

Generally speaking, the private sector is usually much less demanding, exacting and competitive than the government, as employment goes. Elected officials being the notable exception here, of course.....any twit head can get elected to represent a gerrymandered district, it seems.

YramAL

I'm a gubmint worker-I'm a paraeducator(teacher's assistant) in a public school district.  If I tried to raise a family on what I'm paid, I'd qualify for government assistance. I get paid more as a government worker, though,than a private school worker in my position. In the private education sector, aides get paid even less than I get paid. 

Come back, Jackie! 

Mary

pupmom

Yes, Jackie, come back!!! We wub you!

Wabbit

Jackie didn't say anything bad.  She just gave us an opening to start ranting

And how in the world did we get to the point that people are seriously trying to pretend that teachers are overpaid??  Or police officers or firemen?  Crazy talk.  My niece was a high school English teacher.  She went into another field after she had children because it took way too much of her time.  School day + making lesson plans + grading papers + sponsoring clubs + being expected to go to all kinds of after school activities.  Where do people get the idea it is some kind of cushy 6 hour a day job? 

rosemary-b

Athena

Twit head is good. I will have to remember that one.

YramAL

I think the tragic shooting in Connecticut got teachers some briefly earned respect, but now that some time has passed, that's going away(for some). Now we're all supposed to carry guns.

Mary

IllinoisLady

Ok I'm back so you must all stop picking on me now.  I'm not truly upset really as one of the reasons I so love to be here is that no one is afraid to fill in the blanks.  I admire this thread because REAL answers come.  Hmmm, I'd like to appear less 'dumb' than when I first started ranting, but then as it is one of the biggest reasons I'm here, I'll have to be content with knowing a lot more now which suits me fine. 

Someone did mention I think About.com.....and I confess I think I heard something of the description given long time ago and forgot it.  That is definitely on me.....I was so annoyed by that program I think my brain cells ( what there are left ) were just ganging up on each other and doing me little good. 

I also must learn go to sources for more reliable info. 

This afternoon my bil wanted to meet my daughter and sil so after we went to the store we stopped at his house.  Got treated to a Adele concert while there so the short stop-over turned into much longer than I intended and lots to do here to get ready for work tomorrow. 

See you all later.

Jackie

QuinnCat

Jackie - never wanted you to feel I was beating up on you.  As WR said, you gave some of us an opening.  There are so many misconceptions out there and it was nice to vent.  Thank you!

IllinoisLady

Kam...thanks.  I'm really ok and really don't feel like I was being ganged up on.

Someone mentioned about the raisins and gin. My dh tried it and did get some results, but he had to do it for a long time.  Also, the difference made was fairly meek and mild.  He generally only noticed if he left off doing it for a couple of days.  He had to take a lot of drugs in his earlier days for a very severe car accident and we worked together to wean him off of them quite a few yrs. ago.  He still attempts to steer clear of drug therapies when possible.

Jackie

Wabbit

bluedahlia

Alyson

Have had lots of pages to read. Have been helping DD1 get her Doctoral thesis ship shape. I was on checking the bibliography - what a job making sure all cited correctly. DD2 who has PHD in English did the proofing. It is now handed in and she has to organise her final recital - she is a singer.

I was a 'Public Servant" - a teacher who in the last year I taught put in a minimum of 10 hours a day and often more, then had to attend evening meeting and other things on weekends. There were some who seemed to work school hours but I never understood how. Can remeber one of DH's staff being very surprised when he heard that I was back at school three weeks before start of school year. Thought I would just use lessons from previous years. Had fun explaining that wasn't how it worked and that I made sure all my staff prepared for each class they taught. I miss the teaching but not all the other stuff that a teacher has to do. 

I was called away and it took me a couple of hours to get back to the computer. Going to have a quiet night.

GatorGal

E - loved the photos of you and Samson. Had all grandchildren this weekend so lots of laughter in the house. Have read the pages of the thread I missed. Yeah, I was a gov't employee, too. Although I was a teacher, my official title was level IV reading interventionist .... So I got paid even less than teachers. If I had relied only on my salary, we wouldn 't have made it. Thank god DH works in the private sector and made more $ which allowed me to do what I loved doing. Scuttlers .... Loved your positive remarks. I'm tickled to be here, too, but I wouldn't say tickled "pink". LOL!!!

IllinoisLady

Winter blues.  Just a little.  This whole week here is due ( if weather predictions are close to correct ) warm a bit more each day til' almost 60 degrees by Saturday.  That means some rain for sure.  It wll rid us of the now long present snow which has become old and not really pretty any more.  Hoping it happens -- old snow needs to go into the water table.  Otherwise, I'm sure it is going to be a good day today. 

Jackie