Last Updated on April 24, 2014 by FERS Disability Attorney
Medical conditions have a way of changing one’s perspective; the daily outlook of merely taking ordinary things for granted reverts to an ongoing sense of appreciation for the mundane. Even to be pain-free for a few moments may seem like an utopian state of blissful enlightenment. The ordinary becomes the miraculous, and the order of priorities for others may become inversely reorganized. But the problem remains for the world at large whose perspective has not been impacted by such alterations.
For the Federal and Postal employee who is suddenly confronted with a medical condition, such that the medical condition prevents one from performing one or more of the essential elements of one’s job, the Agency, the Supervisor, coworkers, the U.S. Postal Service, etc., may not (and one can more forcefully predict, “does not”) share that change of perspective.
Pausing to smell the flowers may be fine for some, but not while in the same room as the Supervisor who sneers at such folly. Such altered perspectives may need the mundane remedy of a legal response; and, ultimately, if filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is the option to pursue, because the Federal or Postal employee is no longer able to perform all of the essential elements of one’s positional duties, then such a course of action should be initiated as soon as practicable.
Not everyone shares a change of perspective; and, indeed, the Federal or Postal employee who has an altered perspective should recognize that he or she once resided in the exclusive club from which expulsion and ex-communication is now imminent. The static nature of the ordinary will always dominate; it is the extraordinary which remains in the minority, as history has always proven.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
1 thought on “Federal Disability Retirement: Perspectives, Altered and Static”