Coworker Profile: Frank

There are a ton of fascinatingly strange people who work in the Federal Government, moreso than I have encountered in my private sector work experiences. I think this is caused by the fact that it's impossible to fire anybody in the government. There is nothing to deter federal employees from growing weirder and weirder as the years go by. The most intriguing example of this is my coworker Frank.

Frank works part-time on my team, and part-time on another team. He's been floating around our division for the last 10 years or so - the managers take turns having him on their staff. It's not that he's a bad worker, or even that he's stupid or cantankerous - in all of my encounters with him he has been quite the opposite. Frank's main problem is that he has a horrible short-term memory (which he personally attributes to his heavy drug use in the 60s and 70s). If you tell him something in the hallway, he'll forget it by the time he returns to his desk. The most effective way to get Frank to do something for you is to send him an email. Although he has also been known to forget to check his email for days at a time...

Frank is so intriguing because he has a never-ending supply of amazing stories. Every time I talk to Frank, he reveals another fascinating tidbit about his past. He is easily the most interesting person I have ever met (assuming that everything he says is true, which I strongly believe is the case). I will share the ones that I can remember:

- He was one of the original groupies of the band "ZZ Top", way back before they had beards
- He once worked at a kosher butcher shop and knows all about different cuts of meat
- He was one of the original skateboarders in Santa Monica, California - he used to hang around with the guys from Dogtown and Z-boys
- He worked in a box factory
- He used to drive a truck that delivered live fish to restaurants
- He has an MBA with concentrations in finance and accounting
- He used to write test questions for a standardized test company
- He speaks an African tribal dialect fluently
- He was once a school teacher in California
- He spent 3 years dumping garbage bags of fish (transported by bicycle) into lakes and ponds in the Congo
- He runs a non-profit organization that fights for the rights of Veterans (he is not a Veteran)
- He is close friends with a member of the band "The Monkees"
- He has written a novel about an African tribe where the tribesmen ritualistically pretend to transform into crocodiles (including a sex scene between a woman and a crocodile-man)

Those are just the ones I could remember off the top of my head - my coworkers will chime in with more, I'm sure. He's such an interesting character; it's a shame that he now spends his days lost in a cubicle farm. The only remnant of his free-spirit, Peace Corps. hippy past is his green thumb. Frank is a horticulture fiend - he has covered all of the windowsills in all of the office suites on our floor with cacti and other small plants. He spends at least an hour watering them every day… with water from the water cooler! No wonder it costs $20 a month to join the "water cooler club"!

Other Updates:

- Crazy secretary lady is now selling bootleg DVDs. She has a spreadsheet with hundreds of available titles, many of which are still out in theaters. My staff director bought some.

- I have officially moved into my new cube. It only took 2.5 days to get my computer moved across the hall! In the process, I think I started a turf war between the two IT guys.

- Government-wide 3.5% pay raises went into effect on this week's paycheck! An entry-level employee now makes $39,330!

- My annual performance evaluation is tomorrow. Should be a blast!

Quote of the Week:
"If I worked for a bunch of retarded monkeys, I'd at least be able to train them to give me the information that I need" - coworker, referring to management.

New Job (kinda...)!

Today I started a new job here at FederalEntity. Yes, after doing the same 10 tasks over and over again for 2.5 years, I was finally offered the chance to try something new - I'm going on a detail!

In the Government, such opportunities are called "Detail Assignments" or "Details". Essentially, a detail is a 3-6 month work assignment in another office, (occasionally even at another FederalEntity). You go to that office, learn some new skills, and then return home to your original, miserable job. If you're an ambitious Fed, it's a great way to gain work experience to round out your resume and move up the ladder. If you're an underachiever, it's a great way to underperform in a new setting when your staff director starts hassling you too much about your poor performance. This is the dilemma for Staff Directors when assessing potential detail candidates, because they all fall into two groups: they are either stellar employees or they are on thin ice at their old job and looking to escape for a bit. I'd like to think I'm stellar (although I'm definitely looking to escape)!

My old boss promised me that if I stayed around here for 2 years, he'd let me go on detail to which ever office I wanted. To his credit, he's stuck to that promise even though our team is severely understaffed at the moment. Our team is fully staffed at 7 employees, but with my departure will be down to 3. Sucks for my coworker Kathy...

So how did my first day on the new job go? Well, this morning I showed up 2.5 hours before my new boss so I sat around reading the newspaper all morning. I got chastised by two IT guys about trying to move my computer to my new cubicle (my new desk is literally 50 human paces down the hall from my old desk, but apparently I need a waiver to move my computer or something...). And I've received 6 phone calls and probably 20 emails from people who don't know that I'm on detail and/or still expect me to be doing my old job.

Regardless, I'm still pretty excited and don't worry, I'm sure I'll have some more fun stories to share soon. Like I said in my very first post: regardless of where you work in the Federal Government, it's always the same monkeys running the show.

The IT Guy

This morning I was locked out of my computer for 2 hours. I arrived at 7:05 AM today (almost on time!) and had to sit in my cube staring at the wall until 9:00 AM when the IT guy called me. As I mention in the "Cast of Characters" panel to the left, the IT guy hates me.

Whenever I tell coworkers this, they always say "Qari hates you?? He's always sooooo nice to me!" And indeed, I've seen him interact with other people and he's always nice and friendly and cheerful with them. But with me, nope! He won't even look at me when we pass each other in the halls. He'll speak to me from my coworker's cube rather than come into mine. He responds at the drop of a hat for everyone else, but no such luck for me! He actually got in at 8:30 AM this morning, I know because I heard him come in. I left a huge note on his keyboard requesting his immediate assistance, but he waited until 9:00 AM to reset my password. To kill time, I did both the crossword puzzle and sudoku.

So why does Qari hate me? It all stems back to my 2nd day here at FederalEntity. The computer that was provided for me when I first started in 2005 was a real crapbox. It was a Pentium 3 (Pentium 4 came out in 2000, just for reference) and it had a floppy disk drive. Remember floppy disks?? Anyways, this computer was super old and it was painfully slow. It took almost a full minute to open up simple MS Word documents. PDFs? Forget about it!

I told my boss that my computer was really really slow, and he asked the IT guy Qari if he would look into getting me a new PC. I'm not sure if Qari was just having a bad day, or if he wanted to show the "new kid" who was boss, but upon receiving this request from my boss he completely flipped out. He stormed down to my cube, accused me of lying and exaggerating about how slow my computer was, then went into my boss' office and scolded him for having the audacity to request a new PC.

My second day and I had already been spurned for making a simple and completely reasonable request. Foreshadowing for the rest of my Federal career???

To make a long story short, my boss told his boss about the incident, and Quari (who is a contractor) got into some kind of trouble with his contracting company. I was assured by several levels of management that such an incident would never happen again. And from that day on, Qari has made every effort possible to hate me without verbalizing his disdain.

In general, I'm fine with it, although it's really awkward when I run into him in the men's room.

Blue Shirt Day!!

Today, two of my coworkers and I accidentally wore strikingly similar light blue shirts to work. Of course, this warranted us having our picture taken:

(faces have been changed to protect the bored)

Sadly, this will undoubtedly be the highlight of my work week.

Travel Time

Greetings from America’s heartland! My coworker and I are on a work trip right now visiting one of FederalEntity’s satellite offices. Why are we here? Well, it’s been in our performance evaluation every year that we should visit a branch office and we’ve finally decided to do it. We’re calling it a “learning experience”. I’m not upset though - Government travel is WAY better than sitting back in my cubicle in DC:

1. Per Diem – I get reimbursed $60 a day for food and other expenses. I probably spend $20 a day on food and expenses. That leaves $40 per day in my pocket to waste at a bar this weekend!

2. Sweet Hotels – Fortunately, the Federal Government doesn’t skimp on hotels – the place I’m in right now is totally sweet. Last time I traveled, I had a penthouse suite with views of the ocean and city skyline! Don’t get too pissed off, you silly tax-payer. The Government has some deal worked with the hotel chains. Basically, if a hotel has rooms available and a Fed wants to stay there, the hotel has to book the room at the “government” rate, which is 50-70% less than what the room typically costs. On my first Government-related trip, I stayed at a Ritz-Carlton in Kansas for about $100 a night.

3. Frequent Flyer Miles – I get to keep them for myself! The Government has the same kind of deal with the Airlines for the “government rate” on flights. My flight on Travelocity.com was $500 each way. The government rate was $229. Everybody wins! Except for the Airlines I guess, but they’re used to always losing… If I ever take a flight over 7 hours long, I get to fly business class. Don’t worry, that will never happen.

4. Miscellaneous costs – The government also picks up the tab for all sorts of expenses related to my trip: internet connection fees at the hotel, transportation to and from the airport, airport parking, ATM surcharge fees, hotel taxes, long distance phone calls (assuming they are work related).

So yeah, I don’t mind traveling. It’s a shame I only get to go on 4 trips a year! As always though, there are a million little frustrations that go with every good part about being a Fed. For travel, it’s everything leading up to the trip.

First, I had to convince my bosses to let me take this trip, even though they told me that I have to take it. My justification was: “you told me I should take this trip, so I’m gonna take it”. It took over a year for it to come to fruition from that point. I set up all of the details and was ready to go the second week in December... when the bosses pulled the plug on me. They really wanted me to be at a half-hour staff meeting on the last day of my proposed trip, so I had to reschedule everything. The staff meeting ended up being a waste of time, but that's not surprising.

The next hitch came from our Travel system. We use a program that several other FederalEntities use to book their travel arrangements and boy does it blow. On my last trip, the system booked my airplane ticket in my name, but charged it to a woman who worked on the West Coast. Boy was she surprised when she got the $600 bill for a flight from DC to Chicago! It took 4 months to resolve.

This time, the system booked us on a “direct” flight. Everything was fine until we realized that “direct” and “non-stop” are quite different. A direct flight makes one or more stops, but you don’t have to transfer planes. Our flight was to take a 1 hour pit stop in St. Louis. As soon as we figured that out, we rebooked.

However, the travel system didn’t buy my plane ticket until 2 days before my trip. My coworker had an even greater surprise when she arrived at the airport to check her bags and they told her that her ticket had never been purchased! The travel system sent her a confirmation, including gate and seat numbers, but it never bothered to actually purchase the ticket! Luckily, there were lots of empty seats, so she was able to buy one on the spot, and still managed to snag the government rate.

When I return to DC on Friday, I’ll fill out an expense report. If history repeats, I’ll get my government credit card bill in 1 week demanding my payment, but my reimbursement won’t show up for a month or two. I’m not worried though – if the travel people’s slowness causes me to miss the credit card due date, the Government pays my credit card late fee. Today, I'm actually happy I'm a Fed - Huzzah!

Holiday Party!

It's taken me over two weeks to come to terms with our 2007 holiday party. Immediately after the party, I wanted to run back to my desk, write an expletave filled rant, smash my computer, and storm out of the office never to return again. I decided instead to go on Christmas vacation, relax, and then once I'd come to terms with everything, write just a simple presentation of the facts. Without further ado:

Our holiday party cost $13 per person to attend. It was held in the conference room at the end of our hall, from 12:00 - 2:30 PM. On a Tuesday. There was a buffet of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, and stuffing all served slightly above room temperature (this is what the $13 paid for). The meal was not catered by a restaurant or professional caterer, but a woman who works in another office on our floor and does it as a hobby. Dessert was NOT included. Instead, there was a "dessert contest" that forced employees to spend their time and $$ to prepare dessert for everyone else (very clever of the organizers - keep those costs low!). There were not enough spots for everyone in our office to sit down and eat. Some people ate while standing up, others simply grabbed food, went back to their desks to eat, and never returned. Holiday music was played from an iPod hooked up to computer speakers. For entertainment, we played a game of "Name That Christmas Song" and had a "Wrapping Paper Fashion Show" (3 teams designed "clothing" made out of wrapping paper and then modeled them). Winners of these games received holiday coffee mugs. And most importantly, there was NO alcohol this year, because the party planning committee didn't bother to get the proper request forms signed (you need a special approval form to bring booze into a Federal building). After the party was over, everyone returned to their desks to work. The big bosses even scheduled important meetings for the rest of the afternoon that several of my coworkers were forced to attend.

Government holiday parties are inherently lame. The Government can't subsidize our holiday parties with your tax dollars, and nobody wants to pay a ton of cash from their own pockets for an office party, so there is little to work with. But I never could have imagined that a holiday party would make me want to quit! Sadly, the biggest disappointment was the lack of booze. Usually, I go into the holiday party with the mindset of "well this is gonna suck, but at least I can get drunk". Take away the booze, and all you have left is the suck.

Side note: Remember the college friend from a few posts back who got hired as a Contractor instead of as a regular Federal employee? His holiday party last year -- Black tie gala at the Ritz Carlton. Yep...