The previous post has generated some interesting comments and questions (keep them coming!) Let’s take a look at some of them here:
Q: “Why are you still a Fed if it sucks so much??”
A: Read (among others): http://federalwasteland.blogspot.com/2008/03/trapped.html
Q: “You are a horrible person for writing this and [insert threat here]!!!”
A: If I were to summarize the major goal of this blog, it would be: "To present a realistic yet humorous view of the absurdities of the Federal Government". Yes, everyone already knows that the Government is inefficient and backwards in many ways. The anecdotes here are posted to "show" versus "tell" what everyone already knows. And yes, its also a good way for us to vent our frustrations after a long day of dealing with idiots. The feedback has been 99.8% positive (especially from other Feds). However, a few people seem to be upset by what we write. That confuses us. Are you pro-Government inefficiency? Are you pro-wasting- tax-dollars-on-employees-who-sleep -under-their-desk-while-stealing-$95k-a-year-of-your-hard-earned-money? Let us know your real concern and we’ll try to address it.
Q: “[Republicans] like you want to let Capitalism take over the Federal Government – and it will destroy us all!”
A: Unfortunately, we are not proposing any type of solution to fix the problem. If we had a good one, we’d be teaching at the
Q: “You said you want open discourse, why didn’t you publish my comment?"
A: Probably because you said our mothers were wh*res or something. Civil discourse, please!
5 comments:
Dear Federal Wasteland Guy:
I was struck by the following statement you made in your last post: "And for every inefficient, wasteful coworker we have we can name another coworker who genuinely cares about their job, their mission, and their country."
Although I appreciate your optimistic sentiments, I unfortunately have to take issue with your 1:1 theory. I have been mucking around in Federal Wasteland myself for the past 4 years. From the experience I can draw upon at my FederalEntity, the ratio of people who don't give a flying f-ck to those that actually care about making a difference is much closer to 10:1. I have given this significant thought and consider this to be a broad FederalEntity-wide snapshot - taking a weighted average of both young hires and grizzled (or grizzly) Entity veterans. Basically, what happens is this: The proportion of young folks that come into a FederalEntity fresh out of college with ideas, energy, innovative thoughts, etc. to young folks who are just interested in "getting into a cushy government job" is about 75%/25%. Unfortunately, the young people who want to bring new ideas and new ways of doing FederalEntity business soon realize that this type of behavior is not rewarded in the Wasteland; on the contrary, it is punished. (Trust me, I used to be one of the 75% of the newbies who came into Fedland thinking he was going to bring a fresh perspective to the government and get things done much quicker than business as usual.) Within 6 to 12 months of arrival, I realized that my aspirations were essentially fruitless, as most of the Entity veterans had already given up and were not receptive to new ideas. Many of these individuals have "Retired in Place" in Wasteland-speak. True enough, you may get one or two who still care, but the ratio is much closer to 20:1 on the "don't give a sh-t":"actually still care" scale. This over-corrects for the 1:3 ratio of newbies, who quickly progress towards the 20:1 scale, thus giving us the overall 10:1 long-range, steady-state ratio.
Ah, life in the Fedland!
-F.
Dear F-
I have no retort!
FW
Regardless of whether or not your mothers are actualy wh*res or not... I love your blog - please keep writing it regardless of what your critics may say. This has becoming one of my favorite blogs to regularly visit and I try to tell others with similar interest to tune in for your latest story. Thanks for being the bit of comedy that prevents me from morphing into a "Federal Zombie."
"ours is the best Government in the world"
Really? That's depressing. I would have thought that somebody out there could do a better job. In fact, I bet someone has. Singapore perhaps?
You know, I'm sorry that the people at your agency suck, but the people at mine work very hard, day in and day out. We do life saving work that touches the lives of every American on a daily basis. There isn't anyone in my office that doesn't care. It's sad that you people are so bitter and jaundiced.
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