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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t get it. This was what it was like when I had my kids in the late 2000s. [/quote]

We all agree that you truly don’t get it, PP.[/quote]

+1. It was like this when I raised my kids, born in 2002 and 2004. And I ended up feeling like a crappy employee, a crappy spouse and a crappy parent.  It wasn’t good for my kids. It wasn’t good for my mental health. If I close my eyes, I can still panic of last minute snow days and kids waking up with fevers in my gut.  Moving into a federal 3 telework days a week job with 9:30 to 2:30 core hours (but can take a half hour lunch 11:30-1:30) was a game changer.  Just because I did it for ten years doesn’t mean women coming after me should have to. It’s better for employees, kids, and families if a job can allow telework and flex schedule.  And it’s true that not all jobs can have telework.  But maybe job flexibilities, like job availability and job pay,  are something people should consider when accepting a job or choosing a career.   And the “I suffered so you should too” attitude is, frankly, gross. How about “I suffered, and I don’t wish that on my own kids and their peers as they enter the workforce”?[/quote]

I completely agree with you but I also think some people are just pointing out that people like OP are screaming bloody murder after two months of living like many people lived their entire careers. Our country is in a scary place and we are all going to need some resilience to get through a tough time. In my own family, we’ve been affected but we are doing our best to keep our heads up and enjoy life despite being put out by our less flexible schedule. Perhaps the difference is we do not see this as a forever thing, just a time to get through.[/quote]

Np. I think what many members of the public don’t see is that our fed jobs are taken with lower salary and slightly more flexibility. Most of us have spouses who are doctors, nurses or other jobs who have zero flexibility. My husband has never once been able to telework, which is why I have my current job. [/quote]

Quit the whining. Nurses have the same level of education/ training and get paid a lot less than many of you and have to work the night shift and deal with people's bodily fluids. Teachers also have degrees (often graduate degrees) and have zero flexibility (as in can't be 5 minutes late so actually show up half an hour before students arrive and find it very difficult to take a day off here and there). The incessant whining of the white collar class about society going to ____  because they suddenly have less flexibility is really tone deaf and unbecoming.[/quote]

No you STFU.  Nurses chose a career of shift work that requires physical presence. And they’d be perfectly right to complain if the hospital arbitrarily changed their work schedule. Teachers like wise - and of course they get summers off and long vacations. [/quote]

By this logic you can say feds chose a career that’s subject to political whims. I would not argue this point but it does go two ways[/quote]

This is emphatically untrue. The entire reason there is a distinction between political appointees and the rank and file civil service (plus many with union protections) is to specifically avoid what is happening now.

The regular government workforce is explicitly *not* supposed to be subject to political whims. And people choose the lower pay in large part because of the job security. Aside from all the reasons to want to avoid a political government workforce (such as avoiding corruption and lack of continuity in services between administrations), these jobs would have to pay a heck of a lot more if people know they can be tossed out or their working conditions changed every 4 years. How many competent, qualified people are going to want to become specialized in a specific agency’s regulations knowing they could be booted out depending on who gets elected.

Go ahead and make fed jobs insufferable and see what the applicant pool is like.[/quote]

So you would say that the federal service experience experiences no impacts/changes from administration to administration? and there have never been times in the past when feds have found themselves waiting for a particular administration to pass?[/quote]

I’ve worked as a fed since Obama 1.0 and aside from a some slight variation in funding priorities (e.g. new tech roll out or backlog A being chosen over backlog B), no there has not been a noticeable difference in the nature of my employment (the exception being COVID upheaval, but that was global not just feds).

As a fed I have statutory and union protections that this administration and DOGE are violating. Not to mention Trump is egregiously overreaching his executive branch power, the president isn’t even supposed to have this much control over agencies’ agendas and fed employees as a whole.

[b]Honestly, anyone who says something as stupid as regular (i.e. non appointee) fed jobs are subject to political whims shouldn’t even be commenting on a post about fed jobs.[/quote][/b]

That was the point of the comment. The PP saying nurses and teachers deserve less empathy because they “chose” in person work is just as silly as saying feds “chose” a line of work impacted by politics.[/quote]

Wow the logic is falling apart here. I don’t think anyone is saying nurses deserve less sympathy because they chose to work in person.

The logic is if you accept a particular job with the understanding it requires X schedule then that is different than accepting a job under Y circumstances and suddenly, overnight (and most likely illegally) being switched to X. Both employees now have to do X, but one did not accept this as the terms of their employment.

The PP even said nurses and teachers would be justified in complaining if their schedules suddenly changed.

If a nurse is hired with a contractural right to work evening and weekend shifts, but then gets a call Sunday night they have to report the next day for a M-F daytime shift that would be messed up. If a teacher was suddenly told they have to work summers (and for the same pay at that) in violation of their bargaining agreement, that would also be messed up.

And I say this as a fed who has to work a M-F schedule including summers. Just because that is my schedule doesn’t mean it has to be everyone else’s or that they would be wrong for complaining about this.

But I get it’s popular right now to hate on feds and so many bitter people don’t want anyone to have anything nice like telework or a flexible schedule if they can’t have it. Which is stupid. I guess next these people will complain that some people have higher paychecks than them, or better stock options, or better health plans, or better PTO, etc.

If we’re going down the rabbit hole of feds shouldn’t have [insert: telework/flex schedule/job protections/whatever it is that is trendy to hate on] because some other entirely different profession doesn’t have that, then let’s just say screw it and make sure all jobs offer the same pay, schedule, benefits, etc. Since this disparity in job situation seems to rankle so many people.

Let’s go ahead and have the school bus drivers and ER doctors work 9-5 too, after all, fair is fair.[/quote]

I don’t think it’s that deep. I just think people in other professions are used to things (disrespect and mistreatment, for example) that may be new to some Feds. So the complaining doesn’t fall on sympathetic ears.

[/quote]

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