I have personally observed buildings full of desks with working phones and COBWEBS on 2 and 3 foot stacks of papers on hundreds of desks on a single floor, and the same on multiple floors within many different local government buildings in Los Angeles.
How did I see so much of this? I was often sent to these buildings to repair telephones as an AT&T PBX repairman.
When gov’t depts do their budget, they keep all unfilled positions open as if they are still needed, because if they don’t, they will not get as much money as they want. I used to work for a union (accounting) and they would raise hell about having to lay off employees and all the horrors during budget cut calls. But afterwards, I would ask how many people were getting laid off, and they would say, “oh, none, we just won’t fill some open positions in the budget”.
Just as bad are those abusing flextime or flexible hours. I see every day, government employees who say they got to work at 4 or 5 AM, but do nothing but go get coffee and/or other breakfast items, sit at their desk surfing the internet or yacking with other lazy idiots until their boss comes in at 830 or 9 AM. By this time they have already “worked” 4 or even 5 hours, or so they say. Their bosses usually have to go to meetings by then so only see their employees for 2, maybe 3 hours out of the day. This is actually true, seen by my own eyes.
Sorry, but waiting for a security clearance is not the employee’s problem.
You can’t start the application until you are hired. Then you have to wait for the government to do its job.
Depending on the circumstances, you can’t do any work on the project until cleared, and there isn’t always other unclassified work that can be assigned.
fewer government employees would be a good thing for America
Are these the ‘non-essential personnel’ we hear so much of during severe weather events?
Hurray for republicans! They wrote another nasty letter.
I know a builing in SFO that suposedly has an entire floor above one of my customers, who alsi held another floor, sandwhitching the gubmint office.
I needed to run fiber between the floors of a very old building and I wanted to know where to cut a hole for pathing and needed the hole to support fire stopping.
The landlord management let us in.
He literally just walked us into a locked gubmint office to expedite the process and wanted to show me his idea for placing the hole.
It would require a longer run but, he was right about the placement and we marked up a prelim sketch for his approval.
Amazingly, he approved it on the spot.
As we walked out it occurred to me there was no one in the office. Striking as there were no holiday’s.
I asked where everyone was and why could just walk into a locked office.
Parently, he rarely saw anyone in that office in the 7 years they’d been there. I obsereved dust everwhere and a paucity of work product anywhere. As well, the toilet water was brackish.
He would come into the office and clean the toilet once a month to keep the plumbing clear.
He thought it was odd but, they’d also signed for more offices, a 3 year agreement and for him it was a great deal, as the checks always arrived on time.
He was of the opinion our dollars were being wasted if they weren’t using the space.
My tech blurted out “Maybe it’s an undercover front”.
Maybe.