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What Our Government Trustees Really Did In
Their Spare Time
I have talk much about working in the Federal sector and much
about my disenchantment about Federal workers representatives
(Whom I label as Trustees - based on the work done by Dr. Philip
Zimbardo in the Stanford Prison Experiment). Our Trustees where
in fact a dismal disappointment. It was their job and stated
agenda is to protect the rights, health and welfare of the
Federal employees entrusted into their care. Our trustees were
not assigned to their post...no, they fought for these positions
aggressively. They did this for a myriad of reasons, mostly the
reasons were fueled by deep seated feelings of insecurity
alongside of a true desire to do something good.
They would deny it if
cornered, but their woeful lack of leadership skills along with
their contentious nature was at the core the main reason why
there was much dysfunction at the agency I worked for.
One person especially
comes to mind. He was one of our trustees for years and for a
while he was the president of the trustees. Before I verbally
crucify him, I want to go on record to point out some positive
things about him.
He was a contentious
worker and often affable.
However, he suffered from
the crippling need for the applause and regard from practically
everyone around him...even from people that he despised and
distrusted. He also was an enabler and a martyr at heart and always desperate to show his thorny crown.
I have previously
mentioned that my two friends that worked at this agency with me
and I did many things to make both our jobs and our lives enjoyable and rewarding. We
did our best to encourage feelings of group cohesion with
everyone in our sphere of influence; my fellow coworkers; the
administrators, managers, and supervisors; and the trustees.
We invited everyone to engage
in all of the outside activities that we involved ourselves with;
activities
that enriched us in every respect...even financially. We enjoyed
camping, scuba diving, sky diving, weight training, hunting,
fishing, and last but not least investing in real estate. This
last venture would have proved to free our fellow coworkers and
trustees from what they claimed was the tyranny of their hated
vocations.
Almost all of the trustees
told us that the time they spent sacrificing for our rights
simply ate up too much of their time. With both the pride and
resentment that only chronic enablers and martyrs can display,
they told us that the fun life that we enjoyed and the rewards
of our investments was not to be their lot, because they simply
had to sacrifice their time for our benefit. The constantly told
us that the stones cast
upon their soft flesh by management was willfully accepted by
them for our defense and well-being.
They loved to point out that
they did not have the opportunity to work the overtime offered,
because they had to spend that time doing trustee paperwork for
our defense and protection.
The president of the
trustees chronically lamented that he and his wife missed sharing the
time they use to spend together before he took on the cup of
responsibility. Especially quality naked time. He would explain
that by the time he left the office and made it home, she would
be long asleep. He was like all of the other trustees, sounding
much like Jesus when he wept and asked God to pass the cup
to someone else. Unlike Jesus, when other competent people
offered to take the cup from their lips, they fought these
ersatz saviors tooth and nail for the cup that was allegedly the
greatest source of their angst and the reason why opportunities
that my friends and I enjoyed would never be theirs.
No matter how often and what
advice my friends and I would offer these trustees to solve
their investment problems, they would simply rationalize and
make pitiful excuses as to why they couldn't. Evidently instead
of investing in realistic and viable options for their financial
future they were more invested to keep their crosses and thorny
crowns. This was especially true of the president of the
trustees.
Months later, I found
out that the majority of our trustees enjoyed an unusual
addiction. The president of the trustees was hooked harder than
everyone who also participated in their new and fruitless
activity.
What could they be
addicted to you may ask?
You most likely will
not believe this, because if you were to accept their aberrant
behavior it would very well likely make your world reel.
Okay, grab a seat!
My trustees spent their free
time away from work involved in the weirdest pastime. They
started to look for license plate numbers and letters that would
follow sequential order. For instances, their rule was to find a
license plate that had a number 000-AAA, then the rule was that
the next license plate had to be 001-AAA, then 002-AAA. In their
game they were not allowed to skip numbers or sequence. If one
person found 003-AAA, another person could skip all previous
numbers and their mission was to find 004-AAA.
Now just for the sake
of clarity, this endeavor was not pursued by people who suffered
marginally from obsessive compulsive disorder, or people without
a life and only as they happened to drive to and from work or on
the way to some chore. No, sadly, it was much worse than this.
They did the unthinkable. They increasingly invested their spare
time into this neurotic and unproductive game. They would leave
work or their families early to wander in their cars for
HOURS scouring parking lots of malls and apartment
complexes in their individual and mutual quest to discover
sequentially higher license plate numbers (They all had to
be Oregon plates).
The worst offender of this
insane pastime was the president of the trustees. Simply because
he is the most competitive of them all. He is by nature
competitive over the most trivial and trite sort of items and
activities. It is likely why he fights hard for his position as
president.
It was amazing to me
that he would spend all of those hours searching for plates when
he could have been home enjoying some quality naked time in the
sack with his wife... time that he so often lamented not having.
(Perhaps this was what he was trying to avoid).
The many odd and
non-productive games that they invented to take up the time that
they allegedly could ill afford to squander were legion. Often
when I went to the trustee's office, I would hear them engaged
in fantasy baseball or some other wasteful endeavor.
Does this mean that
they did not perform any of the duties required of trustees?
No, of course not. To their
credit in some manner of function they do possess a measure of
intelligence and competence. They were pretty good at para-legal
secretarial stuff. Although years later, they literally lost and
misplaced several boxes worth of documents that me and many of
my coworkers gave them to prepare their grievances and
arbitrations. (Perhaps they used the back of these document to
write down all of the sequential license numbers or some
important fantasy baseball info was jotted on our documents --
who knows).
The point is, as
trustees, they were not totally useless. They in fact performed
a number of worthy causes.
I am saying that they operated at twenty percent
efficiency at best. They could have done a lot better or they
could have stepped down when other competent people ran for
their office instead of fighting them vigorously to keep their
positions. It was during these times that they spent less time
searching for plates.
What do I think of all of
this?
I just hope to God that our
nation's leading legislators are not scouring the capitol looking
for sequential numbers.
The thought that President
Bush, Vice-President Cheney and other leaders frequenting
parking lots on such an insane endeavor sends chills up my
spine.
(For the record,
I do not object to any game, no matter how trivial, if it brings
a person pleasure and adds quality to their lives. I only object
to people that whine about not having time to do important
things as they squander their time on the trivial).
What is Wrong With Our Government Agencies
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