2B said:
This was meant to kid Grumpy a little. It got blown out of proportion. Since it has, I give a little report on what I did see. There were a several civil servants that had private businesses that they ran on "government time," some people were in jobs that were technically far beyond their capablilities, some seemed to spend most of their day counting the years until they had enough points to retire and some were just political jerks. There were also frequent encounters where it was obvious that since I was a contractor my opinion should be kept to myself. There were also a large number of committed individuals that did a good job. Most of it was very similar to private industry.
I did listen to a few whiners that said that they could be making a lot more in private industry which justifies an absurdly generous pension. I finally told one that I thought I had a decent rapport with that I knew what her grade level paid and it wasn't really any different than the private sector for her kind of job. All of us contractors are in the private sector, make a fraction of the equivalent CS grade of pay and there ain't no pension waiting for us.
