Poor Wittle Babies

Thursday 3 October 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

It looks like somebody’s got their panties in a bunch. WaPo:

Don’t call the federal workers waiting to buy lunch from downtown Washington’s food trucks “nonessentials.” It’s like being branded with a scarlet letter N, or ending up the punchline of a late-night comedy bit that’s actually not that funny when there are bills to pay.

Essential. Nonessential. These are the terms commonly, although not officially, used for employees who find themselves in one of two controversial categories: starting players or benched, during a partial government shutdown that is being threatened.

For the government workforce there’s increasing frustration over the labels — officially known as “excepted,” as in allowed to work, as opposed to those sent home or “non-excepted,” long-standing vocabulary that’s part of an effort to destigmatize what are considered offensive labels.

Whatever the terminology, the labels are raising anxiety levels inside government offices with supervisors starting to inform employees Thursday about which category they are in, said federal workers who were eating together in L’Enfant Plaza.

In Washington, where jobs often define a person’s sense of self-worth, people eating lunch talked about their prospects and eyed one another, laughing nervously about which group they would find themselves in.

“It’s like a stab in the back. Like being told in high school that you’re average and not in the honors classes,” said Steve Ressler, 32, who worked in Homeland Security for six years and now runs GovLoop, informally known as Facebook for Feds. “But it matters, because we need the most talented people to work for government on issues as important as food stamps or Syria. We don’t want the best being driven away by all this beating up on federal workers.”

Yes. I’d say the whole operation is like being in high school. You don’t want to be labeled as non-essential? Get a job that actually contributes to society and the economy rather than being a paper pusher at a bureaucratic organization. Because when the government labels your government job as non-essential, you know that you’re job exists only because government is a jobs program.

2013-10-03  »  madlibertarianguy