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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I've worked in both private and government. 
Differences:
-There aren't any secretaries in the federal government (and if there is one it's the Director's, not yours), so you have to learn to do everything yourself. Like filing, arranging travel, calling maintenance people, mailing, making copies, etc. It's not a big deal for me, but for many GS 14/15s they complain nonstop about the lack of secretaries and will try to make anyone do their filing.

-I agree with pps, the life insurance sucks. You may think "it's only $350 a year," but if you shop around, it's around $110 elsewhere and you get better insurance.

-Hoard your sick leave. You won't get any short term disability or maternity leave, so you'll need this if something happens to you or your family. It's taken me 6 years to save up for a semi paid maternity leave.

-Office supplies are at a minimum. I like the jokes that PPs made about hoarding pens. It's very true. We also haggled over reams of paper last fall when funding got tight. My back hurts every day because they buy us $50 office chairs that suck. My printer is also crappy. Oh and our Dell computers that freeze up and break about every 2 years.

-Just like any workplace, learn who's the office gossip and who is the person that gets stuff done/knows the most. Make sure you aren't on either's bad side. [/quote]

The admin thing is ridiculous.  At our agency, all the bosses are still old boomers and they love a billion hard copies of everything. They won't offer up their admin to help you make those copies because those admins can only copy output that came directly from the big cheese. So you will stand in front of the xerox all day while the admin spends the whole day on facebook in plain view. Get used to this abuse of taxpayer dollars and learn to like it.[/quote]

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