With veterans moving to the head of the hiring queue in the biggest numbers in a generation, there\u2019s growing bitterness on both sides, according to dozens of interviews with federal employees.<\/p>\n
Those who did not serve in the military bristle at times at the preferential hiring of veterans and accuse them of a blind deference to authority. The veterans chafe at what they say is a condescending view of their skills and experience and accuse many non-veterans of lacking a work ethic and sense of mission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This might be news to some, but not for anyone who has been in the Federal workforce. As you probably know, I just retired from a Federal job earlier this year, and nearly every day I experienced that sort of resentment. I was told that I was crazy just because I was a veteran. Other employees didn’t mind telling me that they resented the 15-point hiring preference for vets because they had lost opportunities to vets. Even though we had more management experience than our peers, we were prevented from advancement to positions of supervision. Why? Well this paragraph in the Post article might explain it;<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re getting a very conservative worker that\u2019s very narrow-minded,\u201d said Bob O\u2019Brien, a technology specialist for the Office of Personnel Management. About 90 of the 100 computer experts in his office in suburban Maryland are veterans, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn meetings, you can\u2019t question anything,\u201d O\u2019Brien complained. The veterans\u2019 attitude to their supervisors, he said, is: \u201cYou\u2019re my boss. You could be a complete lunatic, but I won\u2019t question you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, well, for anyone with military experience, sitting through those painful meetings would make you pull your hair out. Employees without military experience question everything – even the use of “and” and “is”. If my supervisor told me to do something I thought was stupid, instead of arguing in meetings for hours, I’d find a way around the stupid parts, quietly, at my desk, using my brain thingie. But non-veterans seem to like wasting their time complaining about stuff. Everything. Every. Single. Thing.<\/p>\n
I remember endless meetings about the color of the new carpet in the office. I remember the complaints when we got new chairs. There was nearly a revolt when we were told that we were going to have to use the online version of our own publication instead of the paper copies that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars every year. The Old Schoolers were even resistant to a liberal telework schedule – when I left there were still three people in my section (of eight) who refused to draw a laptop computer and get on the telework pony. I guess they liked their morning commute through downtown DC every day.<\/p>\n
But Laura Barmby was pleasantly surprised when she ran a training session this summer for the Commerce Department that included veterans. In a role-playing exercise, the eight veterans banded together in reaction to a natural disaster, devising a novel response to offer emergency services to the public.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I moved to West Virginia to be part of the Contingency of Operations Program that was created after 9-11-01. Our job at the remote location was, of course, to continue operations in the event that DC was blowed up. All three members of that team here had been veterans, because we had no problem being on a call-list and being available always to the office, whereas the non-veterans were much more resistant to the concept. And we had little problem getting the Top Secret Clearances required for the job.<\/p>\n
I feel better that much of the Federal work force is veterans, I feel better about the country. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief Tango sends us a link to a Washington Post article about how federal employees are … Feds resent vets’ hiring preferences<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55195","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=55195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"soldiers_veterans_jobs\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/soldiers_veterans_jobs-300x194.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n