{"id":28949,"date":"2003-07-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-31T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.feiraodelandingpage.com.br\/hourly-work\/"},"modified":"2003-07-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-07-31T03:00:00","slug":"hourly-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/hourly-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Hourly Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

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My cracked tooth requires me to attend Navy sick call for (I hope) the last
\ntime. I discovered it while flossing vigorously yesterday. The filling on the
\nlast upper molar on the right side assumed independent life and I realized
\nsuddenly how vulnerable I am to the disintegration of my body. I have a few
\nweeks of active status left, the first of September and formal retirement
\nlooming. I have been living in a fool’s paradise of separation leave, much of it
\naccrued since the terror attacks in 2001. I have been playing the Senior
\nExecutive by day, concealing and active duty identification card in my wallet.
\nThe security blanket ends soon and they will cut it up, sever the umbilical to
\nthe great haze-gray machine I have served so long.<\/p>\n

I am eager to have a health plan that includes some sort of dental
\nco-payments. I don’t have one, due to the curious situation in which I find
\nmyself. I accepted a one-year appointment in the Federal bureaucracy, just until
\nthey work out a few details. The detail comes with a handsome rate of pay,
\ncalculated on an hourly basis, but does not include the pension plan, or the
\nhealth care or vacation. I am an hourly worker. If I do not work, I do not get
\npaid. If I get sick, I must find my own way. For a variety of perfectly good
\nreasons, the details of my permanent position are now stretching out into the
\nmiddle distance, and my time in the Navy is about to end abruptly. The
\nindecision, the ability to defer decision endlessly is a hallmark of the
\nGovernment. It is that indecision that will drive the decision I must make as
\nthe final separation looms. I must make it in the next week or two. I also need
\nto remember to take my dental record with me as I drive a half hour north of the
\ncity to the vast Naval medical complex in the morning traffic. <\/p>\n

What to do? I am overcome by ambivalence. Not having leave or dental suddenly
\nhas an imperative all its own. I will not be paid for going to the dentist, and
\nperhaps that is unreasonable on my part. But I have no leave and I must have the
\ncracked tooth repaired. I find I must have a dental plan, and I would like to
\nhave one that is not provided by the military. Years of Navy dentistry have
\ntaken their toll, never seeing the same Docotr twice, each visit an
\nadventure.<\/p>\n

I felt the imperative last night after I left the office and was caught in
\nthe mess on the 14th Street bridge trying to get out of town. I caught up with
\nK.C. and his Dad at the Rock Bottom just minutes behind the appointed minute.
\nYou were with me right to the door and it felt good. But I knew something was
\nwrong- it was Dollar Beer Night. The place was jammed. It is a huge place and I
\ndid not make a move to my wallet to show my ID to the bouncer and he did not
\nchallenge my rheumy stare. The crowd spilled out into the hostess area and I
\nrealized I was never going to find anyone in the din.<\/p>\n

The noise and the press of the bodies made the search a challenge. I could
\nnot advance to the bar and the slim young women in black with trays filled with
\ntall pints of micro-brew made each move a challenge. I scanned the crowd, bar
\narea to veranda, veranda through the hostess station and down the long shot-gun
\naisle to the back bar. It was packed all the way. I did not see them there, or
\non the crowded porch were all the smoking kids were clustered around the tables
\nbehind the decorative fence that separates the restaurant from the Ballston
\nsidewalk. The crowd was filled with seekers, pairs of young women looking the
\nbest they could and astonishingly tall young men with complexions almost
\ncompletely cleared up.<\/p>\n

Sprinkled in the crowd were a few old dogs like me. Most were in casual
\nclothes, but I saw some still in dress clothes, probably hoping the beer would
\nnot slosh down the Brooks Brothers Bureaucrat and mar the shine on the Johnson
\ndress shoes. I still had my collar button in full business mode and bright red
\ncravat fully up. A few of the seekers looked at me slide-long, as if their
\nfather had arrived to join the party, but not all of them. I was glad I have
\ngiven up playing at being young. Some of the other gray wolves in the crowd have
\nclearly not, looking perhaps to cut a likely prospect out of the herd.<\/p>\n

I was on the verge of giving up, already thinking of the cool waters of the
\nChatham pool and the quiet of a tall vodka tonic. I walked down the other side
\nof the shotgun aisle, past the tables filled with people eating to avoid the
\npack at the bars. There I saw the beefy presence of my friend Pete and a slimmer
\nversion of him right beside. It struck me that K.C. is now the same age as Pete
\nwas when he came out of Vietnam, the ribbon on the back of his black beret cut
\nin the swallow-tail that means he was a blooded warrior. K.C. is learning the
\nways of a different jungle, this one being Washington.<\/p>\n

I had succeeded in getting K.C. hired as a government temporary employee. He
\nhas been here for five months or so. We have the Full Time Equivalent
\nauthorization to hire several new people at his grade and experience, but the
\neconomic downturn and the general jitters have resulted in a flood of
\napplications for each available position. K.C. is like me, then, a temporary
\nworker. Our hourly wage is just a little different. We reviewed the packages for
\nthe available full time positions. There was a Masters graduate of the London
\nSchool of Economics. She wanted to be a GS-9, and ranked no higher than 13th on
\na slate of 15 “well qualified.”<\/p>\n

K.C. was fourth. The way forward to hiring him was blocked by a disabled
\nveteran, a double dipper on the preference scale. My Department is a Veterans
\nPreference participant for hiring purposes, a Congressional add-on from some
\nother time. In the scoring for prospective employees an applicant receives five
\npoints for honorable service, and another five for disability. So that position
\nwas blocked. The panel interviewed the Veteran and the reports are that he is
\nunsuitable for anything we need but his score is unassailable. I don’t know how
\nwe will deal with it, and it is quite odd to find myself loathing an ex-soldier
\nwho is so adept at gaming the system.<\/p>\n

I sat down at the table across from the two generations and we had a dollar
\nbeer and some shrimp. We shouted war stories as one another, both of a war long
\ngone and one still in progress. My friend Pete is eager to have me visit Memphis
\nwhere he lives, semi-retired, as his wife gets a chance to be the primary
\nbreadwinner as a Navy civilian. There is talk that they want to close down the
\nPersonnel Center there in the backwater of Millington, Tennessee, and move it
\nback to Washington where it used to be. They will have to buy out the contracts
\nof the civilian workers in Tennessee, just as they had to buy out the contracts
\nof the civilians in Washington when they decamped in the night like the
\nBaltimore Colts. The government is a curious and wonderful thing. After nearly
\nthirty years of service I can describe it but cannot explain it. The internal
\nlogic is so consistent. It is the external manifestation that is so strange.
\nLike my secretary, who sends me an e-mail on the road with my hotel confirmation
\nnumber but not the name of the Hotel with which it is associated. She is a nice
\nwoman but the job is not the point. Being there is the point. To get the
\nbenefits.<\/p>\n

We finished the shrimp and managed, at length, to attract the attention of
\nour waitress. We in turn decamped through the throng to the bar of the Macaroni
\nGrill where there was no dollar beer and plenty of quiet. We drank wine and
\nswapped stories. My friend asked me to stay to dinner and I had to regret. I
\nneeded to plunge into the cool water of the Chatham pool to wash away the
\nstruggle of the day and think through what I am going to do next. <\/p>\n

I arrived on the pool deck with fifteen minutes to go, and the cool water
\nwashed over me and flooded out the sound of the day in a cloud of bubbles. <\/p>\n

I had hoped to talk to you and make the day complete. But I will have to let
\nthat wait until later this morning. I have to find a uniform in the back of the
\ncloset and pretend to be a sailor once more.<\/p>\n

For a little while. For the benefits.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My cracked tooth requires me to attend Navy sick call for (I hope) the last time. I discovered it while flossing vigorously yesterday. The filling on the last upper molar on the right side assumed independent life and I realized suddenly how vulnerable I am to the disintegration of my body. I have a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}