So today was another one of "those days." I am so overwhelmed by work right now. I have completely incompetent staff. Completely. Incompetent. When I worked in the "real world," I fired no less than 3 people. It wasn't that difficult - well, okay, it wasn't easy psychologically, but it wasn't difficult to document and establish the proper paper trail and be done with it. I fired people for incompetence. In the government, we promote them and make them someone else's problem. And currently, I have three of those problems. One is a 68 year old man who has missed deadlines (major deadlines), has manipulated people into doing his job for him and is quite simply unable to do what needs to be done. His is a big job and it's complex and requires multi-tasking. And he's unable to do it. And so I end up doing about 50% for him. Oh, and did I mention that this employee has 35 years of government service and makes well into the 6-digits....way more than me, his supervisor.
The second is a middle-aged woman of pacific-island heritage. Her job involves some light physical labor. But she doesn't want to do physical labor. It's beneath her (she told me that...). Her job also involves detailed communication with other people. But she can't seem to string together a coherent sentence. She writes emails like she texts - u for you, r for are, etc. I have talked to her about the importance of clear communication and then she plays the ethnic card - I don't think it has to do anything with her accent (we're talking emails here, not spoken language), but she insists that her communication is fine and I'm being racist. Seriously. Her job is one that requires constant communication and very specific instructions and she is simply unable to do that. And that results in frustration among those on the receiving end, who then call me, express their frustration and need me to provide the specifics that they didn't get from her. And that takes time, and sometimes research, because I don't know her job in detail. And so now, I have to proofread everything before she sends it...and that often requires thorough re-writes, which takes time.
The third is a young man in his early thirties. He is a veteran who suffers from PTSD. Only his PTSD is not war related. He wrecked his car badly, and now suffers PTSD. And was medically discharged from the military and draws a disability pension and a civil service salary. He doesn't understand basic office courtesies, like waiting unobtrusively if there is someone in my office. He's tolerable, but is high maintenance, and if weren't for employees number 1 and 2, would be manageable. But now, my tolerance is low and he just bugs me. And when there is a performance problem, he blames it on his "condition."
I don't understand why it is so much more difficult to fire a government employee. It's ridiculous. From what I understand, it almost always ends up in court. I don't understand that. In the real world, you document, document, document, talk to HR, request a final paycheck and call the employee in. In the government, you document, speak with personnel, talk with the Judge Advocate, document some more, meet with the employee, document some more, have counseling sessions, ask for everyone that deals with the employee to document their concerns, send those documents to legal, send them back to the colleagues because there is only one period at the end of a sentence instead of two, get them back and send them back to legal, wait weeks for a response from legal, document some more, meet with the employee again and then end up with an uglier working relationship with difficult employee because you tried to fire them. And then you start all over again, without result...because I don't know of anyone that has ever been fired from a government job. There are stories about them...but I'm convinced they're Urban Legends. You know, the co-worker of a friend of a friend, who actually just heard about it from another friend...
So, I'm exhausted. And I spend about 6 hours of my day either dealing with these individuals, or doing their jobs. Which leaves two hours to do my job, which under the best circumstances requires a full 8 hours. I'm exhausted. And tense. And, I think, depressed. And I now hate my job. I teared up today at work at least three times. I cry when I get stressed. I don't cry at work. Except now I do. And it sucks. And it's sucking the life out of me. So tonight, I came home and mixed up a margarita, at some pretzels and followed it with a chocolate chip cookie chaser. Yeah, it was that kind of day.
