OT

Ten hours of OT this week.  My co-workers are schizzy and are taking sick leave and annual.  No real bother, the greater bulk of the work can get done without them and I need the money.  But boy, it is hard to gather energy toward the end of the week.  When I was a younger, 50-60 hour weeks were no problem.  Hell, in the past I even threw out some 80-100 hour weeks without even missing partying after work.  Those days are gone.

So, I'm awake and sucking down a coffee and writing in the journal.  The reason that the co-workers are pissy is because the agency that writes the paychecks has figured out (years too late) that the folks in my position are overpaid.  During the go-go days of the 90's and early 00's, the folks within the VA padded up the job descriptions of a group of folks to build little empires and pay them more.  Considering what this group of folks does, the pay scale is wayyyyy generous for a fairly substantial group of the folks who are getting downgraded.

 So the guvmint is doing the right thing and downgrading all of the positions.  Even at the downgraded scale, the folks will be paid as well as similar positions in the private sector (hell, I even argue that the downgraded position is fairly generous).  But the federal workers have some kind of consensual mass hallucination that they are underpaid and work really hard.  I can't say as either of these thoughts have any particular merit.

We do some pretty good things where I work.  There are a lot of folks who work hard and we provide good service.  I think that fixing the government system to provide fair pay to and ensure hard work from it's employees is paramount.  The current process I am personally participating in is a decent first step.

Now if we can just figure out how to get the lazy bastard tenured employees off their ass and contributing, we will be on to something