Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Happy New Year!

Today is the 3rd day of the new year. For government employees at least. The Federal fiscal year, unlike the corporate fiscal year, runs from October 1st - September 30th. There's probably some fantastic reason for choosing these dates (just like there's a fantastic reason for daylight savings time...), but I don't know what it is. All I know is that working in a program based office, September was my "busy" month.

I wouldn't say that I was particularly busy though. I had more work than usual, but nothing that I couldn't accomplish during my 40 hour work week. However, everyone around here freaks out during this time of year. They always think that we're on the verge of getting completely hammered with work. Management gives blanket approval for overtime pay, and boy do I seize that opportunity! (Side note: Federal law states that government employees must be compensated for every second of overtime that they are forced to work). I was "forced" to work an extra hour or two almost every day. They even made me work on my day off (9 hours of overtime!). In the past month, I think I logged close to 25 hours of overtime pay, which at time and a half is a pretty sweet deal.

Some of my investment banker friends on Wall Street would be jealous of only having to work 25 extra hours a month. I visited some friends up in NYC this past weekend, many of whom log 80-100 hours every single week at big banks and hedge funds. They grind themselves to death because "the pay is great" blah blah blah... Out of curiosity, I just calculated what my annual government pay would be if I had to work 80 hours every week (40 regular, 40 paid overtime) for an entire year. According to my calculations, I would rake in $131,310.40.

Who says it doesn't pay to work for the government?