New York was great, and I plan on having a short travelogue up in a few days.
Here are some pictures in the meantime.
The first day back is always hard, but even harder in this instance because it's October, which is one of the most stressful months of the year here. All of the new computers come in the door. (At last count, I have about fifteen deployments of new machines and upgrades, each of which will take a day or two to complete.) Congress hasn't approved a budget yet, so we're on "continuing resolutions" – basically, the government decides to let itself run without a formalized budget and no one actually gets to spend any money until Congress gets its act together. This happens on a month-to-month basis, and it can be an incredibly difficult and cranky time.
Also adding to the fun of this particular Tuesday was the fact that it was Frank's last day on the job. Frank is (was) our PC support guy, and some of you have heard me joke about him. Retired Army bomb disposal captain, lived in Hawaii about the same time Christina and I did, affable enough in a right-wing gun nut sort of way. A difficult office mate, to hear tell from those who shared space with him, but mostly I think because he played a lot of conservative talk radio on his tiny little Walkman speakers.
Frank is leaving the USGS – not for a better job, not for a quiet life of retirement – but because his answers to a questionnaire didn't score him enough points. Apparently, his position was a federal government "term" position, meaning it lasted a maximum of four years. After that point, his position rolled over into a permanent position. When that happens, the position is once again up for grabs and even the person holding the job currently must apply. The supervisor must draft a questionnaire asking about certain job skills and attributes of the applicant, which are scored by a third party. Things like time already served in the government, veteran status, and disabilities also earn extra points, and as a vet Frank scored some of those. (In fact, he even beat out our previous PC person, Regina, for the term spot. She still had her year-to-year contract position, but departed soon thereafter.) But in these technology bust days, long-term positions for Windows support technicians are rare. 130 people applied for the job. More than 20 of them scored more points than Frank did. Since he wasn't even on the short list, Frank was forced to vacate his job at the end of his term period. Today.
You gotta love the federal government. A person can be capable of doing a job, like that job, and do that job well, and yet not be allowed to keep that job when it is determined that his skills will be needed for the forseeable future. Many job descriptions (and thus, the questionnaires based on them) are written in excruciatingly exact detail to enable the one person in mind to get that job. You know those Rube Goldberg machines that pass a ball along a certain track, or make breakfast in a fascinatingly kinetic way for a character in a movie? Hiring a specific person for a long-term job at the USGS can be a lot like constructing one of those machines. You have to be able to see exactly the physics (or politics) of the situation before you set the machine in motion to achieve the desired result.
Unfortunately, the job of "Windows Support Guy" is apparently not the sort of job for which a Goldberg-machine job description can be written. Alternately, someone in the hierarchy here at the USGS decided that we could do better than Frank in the PC support department and allowed things to happen as they did to nudge him out of the nest. Either way, it makes me feel almost grateful for my own year-to-year contract status. Sure, I could be let go at the end of any year, but at least it won't be on a technicality like that. I'll have to think long and hard if the powers that be offer me a term position.
This is a rather more depressing entry than I meant to write on the first day back from a great vacation, but you try toting a good-luck greeting card around to a couple dozen people on a colleague's unhappy final day at work, and see how much you feel like writing happy-happy blog entries.
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