Politics

[Crazed_Insanity]

I don't quite know fully what 'essential' means, but I'd suspect that means super critical... if gone, it might cause a government shutdown?!?!?

Like your brain or heart are essential, but your ears and your toes might be non-essential. During an emergency, blood flow will be diverted only to the essential organs. However, we probably don't want this emergency to last too long and end up causing us to lose our limbs permanently?

We can probably trim the 'fat' in our government. Not sure if we want to cut off all of our non-essential workers 1st.

Anyway, back to the shutdown... unless it eventually hinges on getting the final vote of 60 senators, we should be able to blame this shutdown entirely on the republicans..., including president Trump.

[IMOA]

Well run companies ensure they have staffing levels which ensure people can take vacations. It’s really not that hard, you look at how much work you’ve got coming up in the next year, factor in holidays and make sure you have the staffing. If you can’t take holidays for fear of an enormous mess it means that either you or the company (or both) is disfunctional. If its not you I’d suggest you need to work somewhere else because millions of companies around the world handle holidays just fine.

[JSGeneral]

Hmm.

I just re-read my post above and will now reply to myself.

So, you're saying that government employees are pleasant to deal with because there are non-essential employees and private sector employees are miserable because there aren't enough non-essentials to help out?

Um, well, maybe I am, if you look at it that way.

That was some deep, introspective stuff. I also liked your rebuttal to yourself. All valid points.

George for President... and his running mate George!
"Hindsight is 2020"

[Crazed_Insanity]

[21Kid]

Hell, most people I know who work for for-profit companies (myself included) are reluctant to take time off because there aren't extra bodies anymore to cover for someone who is absent. Coming back to 1000 emails, 100 voice mails, and a bunch of angry internal/external customers who have been ignored in one's absence isn't appealing.

Or maybe that's just office workers. Sure, there might be time to surf the web between tasks, but we've got to be here every day to put out fires or suffer later.

A former coworker and I used to cry in our coffee about this to each other. He had a friend who was a union bus mechanic and he'd say, "My friend can take a vacation and not come back to fifty buses waiting for him."

At that job (and my current one isn't much different), if we were gone for two or three days, we come back to a huge mess, and the kind of stuff that people remember - he's not reliable, doesn't get the job done, upper management copied on third and fourth request emails, etc.

Customers aren't routed to someone else who is not on vacation? That seems like very poor customer service.

When I took vacation, I always made sure my out of office message was on.
My employees knew how long I would be gone, and who was covering for me.
And I sent most customers/clients/vendors personal emails letting them know in advance that I would be out, and whom to contact in my absence, if needed.

If that's not being done, I can see why management would be upset. But, there shouldn't be any guilt associated with taking your allowable vacation time.

[dodint]

I think your definition of essential is probably not the same as being used in the context of retention during a government shut down.

When I was a federal fire department dispatcher, I was essential because I worked for emergency services.
When I did patch management (Windows updates, etc) for the Army Reserve post, I was essential because if the patches were not applied hackers would be able to access government computers.
Now I do compliance work, I'm basically making sure that the patch management people are actually doing their jobs. They can afford to lose me for a week or two as I'll check up on those essential guys when I get back.

I'm not saying there are government offices that don't have some bloat sitting around. I can say that the enterprise team I work for is perpetually understaffed and that you're getting your money's worth out of me and my team mates. Maybe one day I'll find one of those coveted bloated do nothing jobs.

Essential is the bare minimum the federal workforce can survive on for a short period of time. What you're saying is basically "Why do football teams need 53 players? They're doing just fine with the 22 that start the game."

[George]

Well, not to make this all about me, but at the last three jobs I've had, from 2005 to the present in the private sector, we ran with the proverbial 22 starters indefinitely, or fewer that that as time went on.

Fewer?

Yeah.

Example: 2012 I was one of 17 people in a department - 16 employees and 1 manager. By 2015 or thereabouts, we were down to 4 employees and a newer and certainly lower-paid manager than before. If any of the four of us took time off, the other three would honestly offer and intend to cover for them, but the reality was there wasn't time. Everyone already had more than he or she could do on any given day. Fortunately, our "customers" weren't actual paying customers but internal customers in other departments and vendors who supplied products and services.

Today, that one manager manages a whole raft of people in India who do what the four of us who survived the longest at that sweatshop used to do. I left there with four and a half weeks (the maximum one could have) of vacation time saved up (of which the government took 36% in taxes, by the way). Unused vacation time is taxed at a higher rate than regular wages.

At the job before that, I left with three weeks vacation (the max at that company) which the government also took what seemed like most of.

At my current job, I'm sitting on two weeks of vacation time saved up since starting here in April of 2016. The only time I've taken off was to go east for my mother-in-law's funeral and again for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. I manage a small department here. If things go wrong when I'm not here, it's on me. It's my name and my reputation and my future raises and bonuses and good references, or the lack thereof. I don't take that lightly with two kids to put through college in (thankfully) several years.

Can't my boss help? I never see her. Well, I see her at the water cooler and so forth, but otherwise she's in her office all day, slammed with a million emails and phone calls and "do this now" requests from people inside and outside of the company. Her boss? Yep, the same.

That's just how things are in the private sector in America, at least from my viewpoint. And what about all those news reports that talk about how little time Americans get to take off work (but also how productive American workers are)? Surely I'm not the only one reading those. Surely some of you at this very forum have jobs similar to mine. I know we're all a bunch of web-surfing slackers here, but don't most of us to do it from work, because we need to be at work? I'd much rather be out somewhere having fun while some other schmo hard-heartedly does some of my work, but it ain't gonna happen at any job I've had in the last several years.

This is why I, as a (mostly) hard-working taxpayer, get frustrated when I hear about "non-essential" government workers. At least in theory. I'm not mad. I'm just talking here. It's fun to do late on a Friday afternoon while still at the office after a good, honest week of work (even if I did spend some time here at this forum).

I raise my frosty tankard of cold beer...uh, I mean my well-worn coffee mug...to anyone who works and earns a paycheck and pays taxes.

[neanderthal]

Spoiler:

Okay, let's put aside the same bad parts between the 2 parties for now... and try to focus on the parts that made them different.

Can a democratic president really accomplish much with the worst congress ever? ACA was probably Obama's greatest accomplishment but thanks to the opposition, still not working very well.

When problems are not addressed and solved, each side can conveniently blame the other side and then just leave it at that. Unsolved. Kick the bucket down the road...

Now the government is all on the same stupid side. When the shit hits the fan, as long as it isn't thermal nuclear war, voters will finally come to their sense and quit supporting the Republican Party. I hope.

Since the DNC is just too weak to win on their own merit, this is the 2nd best way for DNC to gain control... just by giving RNC full control.

They don't have Obama and Hillary to blame anymore. Constitution should also be able to afford us some protection...

Finally, you still believe voting for a 3rd party candidate is the same as burning down the country?

Then how would you describe the act of voters who actually voted for Trump?

People are inherently selfish. Blaming people for being selfish won't really do anybody any good.

Fat load of fucking good voting for Trump/ Stein/ Bernie did for us all, innit?

[Crazed_Insanity]

She won't be able to do too much good even if elected. Not on a personal level nor will the worst congress ever allow her.

As it is now, maybe the power will shift next term.

Had Bernie won the primary, things might be different. I say again, letting her win the primary, what good did that do?

Let's just disagree and leave it at that. Democracy tend to end up with voters who'd vote for different things.

[neanderthal]

Spoiler:

She won't be able to do too much good even if elected. Not on a personal level nor will the worst congress ever allow her.

As it is now, maybe the power will shift next term.

Had Bernie won the primary, things might be different. I say again, letting her win the primary, what good did that do?

She won the primary. Thrashed Sanders in it, and won the popular vote. Thrashed Trump in that too.

And you think more people would have voted for Sanders? When he couldn't even win the nomination? There's delusions, and then there's that.