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A thought on empowerment ...

Started by Baruch, December 12, 2017, 07:07:54 PM

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Baruch

Quote from: Cavebear on December 23, 2017, 12:48:18 PM
I told Management I would be leaving in Feb 2006 in Feb 2005.  I got to choose and trsin my own successor.  I left the last day the only person in the office.  I turned out the lights, locked the door, and drove off into the sunset.  I was eventually replaced with 3 full time employees and they couldn't keep up the program.

I TOLD them it required more people and smarts...  I will die smiling.

My boss, who is very capable and experienced, is leaving at the end of this coming June.  He picked his date about 7 months out, mostly to please his boss, who he respects.  That boss is leaving shortly before him ;-)  My boss per GS procedure in the military (and true for most people in uniform as well), will have no opportunity to train his replacement.  That is considered an impossible luxury ;-(

He is currently training the most junior person who just joined us last Monday.  People in our organization, learn on the job, often it is a new job for them, they only have approximate background for it.  Think lots of 2Lt types, but in all ranks.  The people who know what they are doing, are the lucky ones, they got trained in their previous job.

I hope to retire sometime in 2018 as well.  There is nobody to replace me .... we are a small unit with most positions one person deep.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on December 23, 2017, 01:29:41 PM
My boss, who is very capable and experienced, is leaving at the end of this coming June.  He picked his date about 7 months out, mostly to please his boss, who he respects.  That boss is leaving shortly before him ;-)  My boss per GS procedure in the military (and true for most people in uniform as well), will have no opportunity to train his replacement.  That is considered an impossible luxury ;-(

He is currently training the most junior person who just joined us last Monday.  People in our organization, learn on the job, often it is a new job for them, they only have approximate background for it.  Think lots of 2Lt types, but in all ranks.  The people who know what they are doing, are the lucky ones, they got trained in their previous job.

I hope to retire sometime in 2018 as well.  There is nobody to replace me .... we are a small unit with most positions one person deep.

Really?  They allow crazed lunatic religious nazis in your office?

Seriously, I understand.  The military assumes rules to follow and that any replacement should be able to follow them.  I know better.  And apparently, so do you.

Sadly, after a decade of being the #1 perso in my office, I was transferred (in a power play) to an office that hadn't the slightest idea what I did (voice telecommunications management).

I could have taken over the Division (the useless occupant was retiring), and I had some good ideas, but  was also eligible for retirement myself and looking forward to it. 

I offerred to stay as a contractor for 2 years, but they declined.  It only cost them twice as much to replace me.

They didn't consider how much of myself I put into the job (and most of it was in my head).

So I might know how you are feeling right now... 
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Baruch

Quote from: Cavebear on December 23, 2017, 01:47:20 PM
Really?  They allow crazed lunatic religious nazis in your office?

Seriously, I understand.  The military assumes rules to follow and that any replacement should be able to follow them.  I know better.  And apparently, so do you.

Sadly, after a decade of being the #1 perso in my office, I was transferred (in a power play) to an office that hadn't the slightest idea what I did (voice telecommunications management).

I could have taken over the Division (the useless occupant was retiring), and I had some good ideas, but  was also eligible for retirement myself and looking forward to it. 

I offerred to stay as a contractor for 2 years, but they declined.  It only cost them twice as much to replace me.

They didn't consider how much of myself I put into the job (and most of it was in my head).

So I might know how you are feeling right now...

I consider military medicine, an important mission that doesn't deserve individual or organizational incompetence.  But the system always gets in the way.  The system would have a coronary, trying to allow alternative arrangements, even if they made sense.  They would be smart to keep me on half-time ... but no smarts in the machine.

They have had power plays occasionally here ... at one point they eliminated a civilian position, while one guy was on reserve duty, to prevent him from coming back.  After a year, they re-established the position.  That guy later came back in a different new position (IT), and that guy hired me.  He loved overcoming the jerks who screwed him (but they were probably rotated out before he was able to come back).
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on December 23, 2017, 01:55:29 PM
I consider military medicine, an important mission that doesn't deserve individual or organizational incompetence.  But the system always gets in the way.  The system would have a coronary, trying to allow alternative arrangements, even if they made sense.  They would be smart to keep me on half-time ... but no smarts in the machine.

They have had power plays occasionally here ... at one point they eliminated a civilian position, while one guy was on reserve duty, to prevent him from coming back.  After a year, they re-established the position.  That guy later came back in a different new position (IT), and that guy hired me.  He loved overcoming the jerks who screwed him (but they were probably rotated out before he was able to come back).

I get that.  My dad was a civilian in DOD.  Never got respect in spite of being co-director with the 1 Star of the Month.  So I went civilian in civilian agencies.  Temp GS-5 and up from there. 
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

JCM800

Quote from: Cavebear on December 18, 2017, 07:47:27 AM
I know the Republicans of today are the Southern Democrats of the 1960s until Nixon seduced them. 
I thought it was FDR's "New Deal" legislation that made southern dems exit the party? I'm just an uneducated millennial though.

Shiranu

Quote from: JCM800 on December 25, 2017, 01:25:47 AM
I thought it was FDR's "New Deal" legislation that made southern dems exit the party? I'm just an uneducated millennial though.

I know my grandmother's parents were the one's in my family who switched from So. Dem. to Republican, so that would fit about FDR's time.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Baruch

Quote from: JCM800 on December 25, 2017, 01:25:47 AM
I thought it was FDR's "New Deal" legislation that made southern dems exit the party? I'm just an uneducated millennial though.

Yes and no.  FDR liked the South, died there (Warm Springs GA) and enjoyed buying his own moonshine.  Upper class New Yorker slumming.  It was a sequence of disappointments in Democrat policy.  Everything was fine in 1932, in the South (ugh).  The rest of the US was hurting, but the South was still rural, you knew where your food came from.  Big cities not so much.  Then came ...

1. Rural electricfication/TVA
2. More enforcement of anti-moonshine laws
3. Mobilization for WW II, caused race mixing in the South on military bases
4. The military had been integrated during WW I, but fell back into ghetto thinking in the 1920s
5. Many Southerners supported Adolph Hitler, and Hitler lost
6. After WW II, the military was reintegrated as it had been during WW I, but still bigotry was normal even in the military
7. The Eisenhower administration ignored civil rights decisions by the courts
8. The Kennedy administration payed attention to civil rights decisions by the courts
9. The Kennedy administration didn't want to go as far as MLK at all, but saw political advantage and took it
10.  The Kennedy administration applied Federal policing to local segregation issues
11.  The Johnson administration passed the Voting Rights Act that allowed more poor and Blacks to vote, and they did

That was the last straw, old fashioned bigotry died by 1975 ... but it is still there, in hibernation ... bigotry is the natural position of human beings, open mindedness isn't
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: JCM800 on December 25, 2017, 01:25:47 AM
I thought it was FDR's "New Deal" legislation that made southern dems exit the party? I'm just an uneducated millennial though.

It was Nixon's "Southern Strategy" that started to shift conservative Democrats (aka "Dixiecrats" to the Republican side with a "Law and Order" (and vaguely racist) campaign in 1968. 

Before that (and this may seem odd to you) there were liberal and conservative Republicans and liberal and conservative Democrats.  The liberal Republicans were economically-oriented and the conservative Republicans were economically conservative.  The liberal Democrats were socially liberal and the conservative socially conservative.

Nixon joined the conservatives of both parties together.  That ended the old Republican North and Democratic South of Civil War days, mostly. 

It can get more complicated, but you can go with that.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Jason Harvestdancer

Quote from: JCM800 on December 25, 2017, 01:25:47 AM
I thought it was FDR's "New Deal" legislation that made southern dems exit the party? I'm just an uneducated millennial though.

The Southern Strategy is overblown sour grapes based on the musings of one particular racist, sour grapes that the South is now up for grabs instead of being a solid lock for the Democrats.
White privilege is being a lifelong racist, then being sent to the White House twice because your running mate is a minority.<br /><br />No Biden, no KKK, no Fascist USA!

Baruch

#24
Quote from: Jason Harvestdancer on February 03, 2018, 08:34:00 PM
The Southern Strategy is overblown sour grapes based on the musings of one particular racist, sour grapes that the South is now up for grabs instead of being a solid lock for the Democrats.

And that happened because of the Kennedy Administration ... doubled down on by the LBJ administration.  Eisenhower ignored the original SCOTUS decision in 1954 on Brown vs Board of Education.  Truman did piss some people off, because he reintegrated the armed forces, which had been Jim Crowed circa 1920.  FDR did little to overturn the Jim Crow laws.  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt did promote the Tuskegee Airmen.  But then conservatives hated her for a lot of reasons.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on February 04, 2018, 08:15:08 AM
And that happened because of the Kennedy Administration ... doubled down on by the LBJ administration.  Eisenhower ignored the original SCOTUS decision in 1954 on Brown vs Board of Education.  Truman did piss some people off, because he reintegrated the armed forces, which had been Jim Crowed circa 1920.  FDR did little to overturn the Jim Crow laws.  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt did promote the Tuskegee Airmen.  But then conservatives hated her for a lot of reasons.

No, it was that Nixon (correctly) thought he could get the Southern conservative Democrats (Dixiecrats).  I was there.

That is where the Republicans and Democrats basically switched sides (ideologies).  Which is why, to this day, the Republicans lost the North and gained the South.

And that is why, when Republicans proclaim themselves "the party of Lincoln" today, they are blowing gas out their nether regions...
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Deidre32

''Empowerment'' tends to be an overused word in our political and social justice culture. Like I should feel ''empowered'' because I'm a woman, and you should hear me roar, and all that.

If you have to tell people that you're empowered, you're most likely not.
The only lasting beauty, is the beauty of the heart. - Rumi

Cavebear

Quote from: Deidre32 on April 06, 2018, 09:53:06 PM
''Empowerment'' tends to be an overused word in our political and social justice culture. Like I should feel ''empowered'' because I'm a woman, and you should hear me roar, and all that.

If you have to tell people that you're empowered, you're most likely not.

I understand that.  If you have to tell people you are or are not something, you may have failed in previous posts.  And in that regard, I have no idea what your general views are.  I don't mean to be insulting, but given a list of atheists and theists here, I wouldn't be sure where to place you. 
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Deidre32

Quote from: Cavebear on April 07, 2018, 12:29:06 AM
I understand that.  If you have to tell people you are or are not something, you may have failed in previous posts.  And in that regard, I have no idea what your general views are.  I don't mean to be insulting, but given a list of atheists and theists here, I wouldn't be sure where to place you. 

I’m not a theist nor an atheist anymore, I would consider myself spiritual in the sense that I have found positives in different belief systems but don’t adhere to religion. I was once very religious, but I don’t follow religion anymore. It’s been a long path for me these past five years and much of my choice has to do with my grandmother dying three years ago.

I think that many people feel you’re either an atheist or theist, but that’s too rigid in my opinion.

And my political views are that I’m an independent/left leaning. What are your political views?
The only lasting beauty, is the beauty of the heart. - Rumi

Cavebear

Quote from: Deidre32 on April 07, 2018, 11:24:02 AM
I’m not a theist nor an atheist anymore, I would consider myself spiritual in the sense that I have found positives in different belief systems but don’t adhere to religion. I was once very religious, but I don’t follow religion anymore. It’s been a long path for me these past five years and much of my choice has to do with my grandmother dying three years ago.

I think that many people feel you’re either an atheist or theist, but that’s too rigid in my opinion.

And my political views are that I’m an independent/left leaning. What are your political views?

Spiritual = theism.  If you think there is "something beyond mortal existence in any way", you are an irrational superstitious theist.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!