What REALLY grinds your gears?

This fucking clothes emporium and their 'old people repellent' lighting:

http://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/t1/1545672_614222778642816_1094338849_n.png

Cog chewed to a nub. FACT!

People over age 16 shouldn't be wearing their shirts anyway.

fed gov't employees.

i get to rep a good bit of them and I am always shocked at how over-paid they are for clocking 40 hour work weeks with pension and benefits.

then they come in and you meet them and they are fat, lazy and can not speak properly ..... but drive multiple high end vehicles while the rest of us bust hump 50-60 hours a week with no pension and have to contribute to health ins for half the pay.

i dont hate the individual federal employee (except when they complain), i hate the fed govt system for their employees.

You can't paint all government employees with the same brush, whether it be city, county, state or federal. Took me decades to figure it out, first the average citizen usually only interacts with the lowest government employees.
The jobs that require no or minimal special skills or education past high school or a Ged. Examples would be, federal procurement officers, ATF, FBI, Border Patrol, IRS agents, Postal workers on a federal level, DMV clerks, DOT workers, State Patrol on a state level, police, sheriffs, building inspectors, health inspectors, on a city and county level. The preceding group are usually paid 2-3 times what they would earn for their job skills and education in the private sector.

If you go to what I would call mid or upper mid level government jobs they start to even out pay wise with the private sector, jobs that require 4 year degrees plus experience, master's degrees and PHD's. These people make a little more or the same than private sector, usually with good benefits. Science and Technology researchers, college professors, university deans, medical doctors and psychologists working in county, state and federal facilities. The problem is most people never interact with these people so their opinion of government workers is formed by their experiences with the lower level employees, see above.

Top level, mostly way underpaid. You could equate senators, governors, and the President as CEO's of varied sized corporations. The average governor made $133K, Senator $174k and the president $400K. In 2011 a total of 485 CEO's made over $1 million according to Forbes.

For the record as a whole I think most lower level government employees
need either fired or big pay cuts. To me it is the same as giving welfare to an able bodied person if you are paying $30 an hour for a government job that needs equivalent skills and education to working the snack bar at the movie theater.

^^ BuffaloBob pretty much hits it on the head in terms of my experience. I would suggest that most government attorneys, for example, are paid substantially less than there private counterparts at every level with the gap biggest at the County level and smallest at the Federal level. Lots of reasons for this and, while others may, you won't find me complaining about that particular issue. Lots of trade-offs, but suffice to say, many 4th or 5th year associates at larger firms make substantially more than I do.

Just a quick google search to show some of the disparity:


More Baltimore first year lawyer salaries:

McGwire Woods LLP: $145,000
Miles & Stockbridge P.C.: $140,000
Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll LLP: $140,000
Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office: $52,800
Baltimore City Public Defender's Office: $52,949

Just a quick google search to show some of the disparity:


More Baltimore first year lawyer salaries:

McGwire Woods LLP: $145,000
Miles & Stockbridge P.C.: $140,000
Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll LLP: $140,000
Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office: $52,800
Baltimore City Public Defender's Office: $52,949

Holy crap! Knew a guy who was a Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) worker back in Cali in around 2005 he made $30 an hour. (62k yearly on 40 hours, but he worked 50 average and made over $85k). They are notoriously lazy, they are all over the place in public view, you can see 3 guys leaning on shovels while one guy fills a pot hole. This guy making $30 an hour was on a road maintenance and clean up crew, they drove around and filled pot holes with shovels, cut up fallen trees, replaced guard rails, etc,etc. So a job that takes no more skills than changing oil at Jiffy Lube pays more than a Baltimore City lawyer? Something is wrong with that picture.

Well, those are first year salaries. I imagine that the top salary is closer to 80-90K. In addition, supervisors probably make 90+.

If you're in it for the money, gov't work is not the place to be unless you have no or limited skills. Once you get into the specialists, it's about quality of life or commitment to public service.

Just a quick google search to show some of the disparity:


More Baltimore first year lawyer salaries:

McGwire Woods LLP: $145,000
Miles & Stockbridge P.C.: $140,000
Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll LLP: $140,000
Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office: $52,800
Baltimore City Public Defender's Office: $52,949

to be fair, those private practice attys work 80 hour work weeks. in California they also get 50-100% bonus as well.

and i was in no way impugning my disdain for what Fed gov't employees (especially DOD and their contractors) on state level employees or ppl like joe who actually bust tail and provide a tremendous return in value.

the govt needs more joes and less ppl like my clients.

to be fair, those private practice attys work 80 hour work weeks. in California they also get 50-100% bonus as well.

and i was in no way impugning my disdain for what Fed gov't employees (especially DOD and their contractors) on state level employees or ppl like joe who actually bust tail and provide a tremendous return in value.

the govt needs more joes and less ppl like my clients.

I did some DOD contract work, there is something for the most part where it pays considerably less working for the Feds than for the private sector. I don't know where the stories of $175 hammers and $600 toilet seats come from, I definitely wasn't making any. I was making small replacement parts for weaponry and vehicles. Every contract went to lowest qualified bidder, and whenever a job repeated it went to the lowest bidder again. Final selling price was close to what a similar item would go for in the private sector, but labeling, packing, and other paperwork as much as doubled the time needed over the same priced job going to Joe Gunsmith down the street.

A lot of the blueprints were photocopies of hand drawn ones from as far back as World War II that had never been updated. Not only were they hard to read, they had requirements for raw materials and coatings that had long been obsolete. If you didn't know the modern replacements off the top of your head or know a private sector vendor to call for the answer, don't waste your time trying to get help from the procurement officer that wrote the work order they usually don't know or know who to ask.

It blew my mind talking to some off these procurement officers who write up the contract solicitations. Some had been doing the job for decades yet did not know how to read the simplest of blueprints. You would think since most of the DOD solicitations contained blueprints they would teach their employees how to read them. I actually went to a government contractor office at March Air Force base a few times. Most of the time I walked in the employees were standing around drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. I wonder why the higher ups didn't send everyone to drafting school, when they had nothing to do they could be converting those illegible WWII blueprints to modern digital formats.

Anyone that uses the term "you go girl" several times a day needs to be tossed in a dumpster.

Anyone that uses the term "you go girl" several times a day needs to be tossed in a dumpster.

We have one richard head in our office that comes in and high fives everyone. then keeps yelling we are all hitting home runs today.

Me and my work buddy refuse to high five him. The guy thinks we work in a used car dealership.