Lawyer Representation for OPM Disability Claims: The cluster of choices

Last Updated on March 10, 2021 by FERS Disability Attorney

Often, choices come in pairs, and the difficulty is in deciding between the binary alternatives offered.  Chocolate or vanilla?  Apple pie or cherry?  If taste were the sole determining factor, one can simply submit to the subliminal voices churning deep within the intestinal caverns of digestive tracts, and simply declare one as opposed to the other.  Of course, in such matters, one can “cheat”, and simply say to the host or hostess, “Oh, they both look so delicious, can I just have a small sliver of both?”

Why is it that if there are three or four to choose from, suddenly such a response shifts it into the category of gluttony, where people begin to look you up and down to see whether or not diet, exercise or lack of self-discipline is the problem?  Why is it, say, that there are various pies – apple, cherry, rhubarb and pumpkin, and you cannot choose between the four or more; is it okay to say at a dinner party, “Well, can I have a sliver of the apple and rhubarb”, but NOT to say, “Can I have a very small sliver of all four?” (or eight?) It is the cluster of choices that make for difficulties, almost in every sector of life.

Today, of course, the modernity of overload and the excessive, almost unlimited choices displayed, presented and given, makes for difficulties in the cognitive grey areas of the human mind.  Have human beings evolved sufficiently to be able to cope with such alternatives presented?

As a child, many decades ago, one remembers that the local “supermarket” merely had two, maybe three items on a shelf of any one product.  Ice cream shops had three or four flavors, and if there were five – well, we stood at the counter with amazed looks and couldn’t quite decide until Mom or Dad threatened to choose for us.

Does a lioness, or a cheetah, walk about through the wilds and come upon a herd of antelopes and pause because she cannot decide which one looks the most promising?  Or have the evolutionary stresses upon the fight to survive already determined the dominant characteristics that will prevail in such decision-making?

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who must decide when, how, and in what manner to file an effective Federal or Postal Disability Retirement application, ultimately to be submitted through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under CSRS, CSRS Offset or FERS, the cluster of choices to choose from must be deliberative, with great seriousness, and with an approach that must look after one’s own best interests.

Often, however, because of the clouding of judgment wrought on resulting from one’s medical conditions – i.e., pain, profound fatigue, inability to focus and concentrate – it is difficult to separate between the cluster of choices given.  But Federal Disability Retirement requires a cogency of judgment, thought, decision-making and affirmation of choices, and in engaging this complex administrative process, it may be a good idea to consider consulting and hiring an experienced Federal Disability Retirement lawyer, in order to bifurcate between the cluster of choices presented, so that the best option and course of purposive actions can be embraced with a thoughtful and deliberative approach.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire