Thursday, February 24, 2005

Snowy Thoughts on a Snowy Day

Here it is - February 24 - and the Washington DC area is getting snow. It has been snowing since about 6 a.m. when Ex-Fed got up to come to the office. Luckily, the roads are clear of snow so I am not going to worry about getting home tonight.

What am I doing at the office on a snowy day? I had thought about staying home today and working on Friday instead of today but then, I have some errands to do tomorrow and I have gone to work for many years in the snow before. No problem - as they say in Jamaica. Well, we are not in Jamaica and any snow is Big Problem here in the Washington DC area. I saw on the news that the District had about 750 salt and sand trucks on standby from midnight last night. Just think of the waste of overtime money!

I had written an earlier posting that I would be only working until March 4 and then going back into retirement. Plans changed just a little. The boss lady came to me a short time ago and asked if I would extend my time until at least the end of March. She said that they found some extra money and transferred it to my contract but it was not enough for full time work. I agreed to work 3 days per week and have long weekends. She had first asked for me to work 2 days a week through April but I did not like that idea. They are such great people that I will miss them a lot when I leave here.

I called the temporary company I work for and asked if they could give me a Metro Flash Pass with the entire amount of subway and parking fare for the last month of my employment here. They said that was not allowed by the company but the offered me a $1 per hour raise retroactive for a week. I quickly figured that up on my calculator and it was exactly what I asked for on the Flash Pass - after taxes. So, Ex-Fed got another little freebie! This consultant work is really good.

Now do not get me wrong. I like this temporary job a lot and the people at the Agency are great. I am not going to work past March 31. Mrs. Ex-Fed has us booked on a short cruise in the Caribbean on the Celebrity line at the first of the month. After that, I am going to spend a couple of weeks doing some things around the house and then it will be time for summer volunteer work at Brookside.

May I say it again? RETIREMENT IS WONDERFUL. EVERYONE SHOULD DO IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Mrs. Ex-Fed has a friend at her old agency who is eligible to retire, is super-stressed on her job, is financially able to retire, but will not do so - because "they don't have anyone else who can do the work". Leave NOW before they carry you out of the building with a toe tag.

posted by Ex-Fed @ 9:19 AM 0 comments

Thursday, February 03, 2005

One More Month Until Re-retirement

Ex-Fed has now been working as a contractor for two months and I have only one more month to go. The contract is up on March 5 and I have decided that I will not extend my time on it.

I really enjoy the work here at the Agency but I really dislike the daily getting up at 6 a.m. and riding the Metro to work and then back home afterwards. True, the money is wonderful and the people are great to work with, but I want to do things on my own time during the week because I AM RETIRED.

The HR staff here at the agency are basically good people but they have no ambition to learn position classification. These are supposed to be full performance HR Specialists and they have the position classification duties in their position descriptions but they know nothing of it. There is a new Classification Team Leader who has some real good - but ambitious - ideas about how the classification program should be run. I hope she is able to get them running but I am not going to bet the farm on it.

I have been working with some of the managers and branch chiefs regarding their classification needs. Most have no understanding of the process and could not care. They only want the results to be positive in their way. I cannot blame them at all since the HR staff does not know the classification process either. The way it has been here is that when a position description comes to the HR office for classification, the specialist rubber-stamps it and gives whatever General Schedule grade that was requested without even going to the Office of Personnel Management classification standards. This may seem like a good idea but it isn't!

I realize that this entry has probably put almost everyone asleep. When I get home in the evening and tell Mrs. Ex-Fed about what I did during the day or something funny to me as a federal classifier, her eyes glaze over real fast. I spent 18 years of my life doing this kind of work and it is interesting to me - and I must be pretty good at it in order to be hired for a consultant job and not fired yet!

Well, as I said earlier, I will be going back to being a retired Federal worker in another month and doing my own thing - when I want to do it. Mrs. Ex-Fed has us booked on a Caribbean cruise the first part of April and I am looking forward to 7 days and nights of luxury and relaxing. I am planning to play more golf this Spring and Summer as well as doing my volunteer work as a butterfly tour guide for kids.

These are all things you can do when you are retired. A few months of work is great but RETIREMENT IS WONDERFUL. I still recommend that everyone retires as soon as they possibly can do it.

posted by Ex-Fed @ 9:29 AM 0 comments

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