About a dozen slides include pictures of the misanthropic Muppet in the can he calls home. In one, a sign reading “CRANKY” hangs from the rim. In another, Oscar’s face is flanked by the words “100% GROUCHY, DEAL WITH IT.”<\/p>\n
The presentation includes tips on how to tell if a claimant is nearing an “outburst,” including being accusatory, agitated, demanding, or unfocused. One section on dealing with angry claimants is titled “Don’t Get in the Swamp With the Alligator.”<\/p>\n
If the stress of dealing with angry claimants is overwhelming, the employees are instructed to take a break.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s a good way to stay out of the swamp, there VA. If I seem a little touchy, maybe we should hear what a veteran who watched the presentation says;<\/p>\n
Christian DeJohn, 45, a VA employee who attended the training, said the content stunned him. DeJohn, an Army veteran who served in Bosnia, said the message seemed to be that veterans are irritable and potentially dangerous.<\/p>\n
“For a long time, there was a stereotype of Vietnam veterans, that they’re mentally unstable and violent, bitter, angry, resentful,” he said. “I feel like this is perpetuating some of the worst stereotypes of veterans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m thinking that is because too many VA employees in the upper echelon don’t understand their clientele. In case someone from the VA reads this and they’re planning on making their next slide show, I wouldn’t appreciate being portrayed as Bert, Ernie, The Count, Big Bird or any other Muppet character. How about using real people in your slide show? Hows that? Dingus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I get tired of bashing the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, but they keep asking for it. … What to say to Oscar the Vet<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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