Which is code for:
"We need more and bigger research grants, and a better pension plan, a company car, 30 minute coffee breaks and a hour and a half for lunch because traffic is getting bad and we can't go watch a stripper, eat a double cheese and fries, scarf down a couple beers and make it back to the lab to snooze.. er watch particles collide in an hour."
In my experience, the scientists and technicians that work at these national labs put in full work days, and at least 90% of the staff are very hard working. The office and support staff do their jobs and do it efficiently and well. Hourly workers put in full work days. Technical staff are tops in their field, and usually underpaid. Scientists and engineers work well over 60 hours a week on average, and many put themselves on call 24hrs a day for troubleshooting purposes.
With the exception of the support staff, excellence is hyper-emphasized since a single technical error for example: the grease from a fingerprint on a high vacuum part; a cold-solder joint in electronics; a failure in a pipe fitting due to over-tightening or lousy soldering,, will bring the experiment to a screeching halt and repairs have an opportunity cost of $10,000-$100,000 per hour of expermentation. No one wants to be responsible for such an occurrence, so all hands really try to do top quality work.
In fact, all the staff is usually underpaid compared to their counterparts in business and remain there because we are in love with doing the research and contributing to the advancement of humanity’s understanding of God’s universe.
The employees at national laboratories are NOT your typical “government drone”
I agree with #18; scientists and technical staff are generally at work 7 days a week if something interesting is going on. They would have lunch brought in by an intern or delivered. Nothing in your semi-sarcastic (I think) comment resembles anything I saw in a National Lab.