Forest Service Job
Bureaucracies have come a long way in the digital age. At the highway department in the early 90's all the computers were owned by the data processing department. And all of their computers used the OS/2 operating system. It wasn't compatible with any DOS based programs. At the time we were using old UNIX Clipper stations to run Bentley Intergraph for our CAD. We bought 60 copies of Microstation only to find out we couldn't run it on our computers. Within six months (before we had any resolve) we purchased about 200K worth of GPS receivers. But none of the Trimble or Ashtech software would run correctly with OS/2 either.
We spent a year staring at a pile of boxes while the gears turned slowly. One of my crew chiefs in Western OK had configured his PC to be a dual boot with either DOS or OS/2 and loaded the DOS based programs. The folks at DP wanted him fired for messing with the computer. I convinced the Chief of Parties to got to bat for us. IT worked. Soon we all had dual boot machines and could run our software...on old 386 machines.
I remember processing static files that took 12 or 15 hours to finish (if they didn't crash). I would hit "enter" and then go home. IF I was lucky the files processed over night and was there when I got back to the office the next morning.
Oh, the good old days...not!
Remember slide rules and typewriters that weren't in museums, but everywhere you went. Remember drafting with a T-square, triangles and a "snake"? These young'uns have no concept of how unbelievably easy their workday has become. Remember when you had your secretary put in a call to Bob at Duffer's Print Shop, then wait for his secretary to get him on the phone, then your secretary would tell you to get on the phone to tell him exactly how you wanted the final prints to appear. Remember when you carried around dimes with you every day in order to be able to use a pay phone booth? Remember when you carried a small bucket of dimes and quarters with you when driving on those &$^# toll roads with a toll booth about every three miles? Remember going to the car rental agency and you got a better rate if you took one of their cars that did not have an air conditioner installed? Remember using traveler's checks on a regular basis? Remember talking with the cabbie and he spoke English and he knew exactly how to get you to where you were going even if you didn't? Remember the big smile the doorman would give you when you dropped a quarter or two into his open palm? Remember taxis that could put half of your household belongings in the trunk? Remember matching your shoes and belt to the provide the proper accent to the color of your clothes, whether the shoes were black, brown, blue, white or two-tone? Remember when men's dress shirts came in white, white or white? Remember when one of your brief cases for a trip might be loaded with punch cards held together with REAL rubber bands? Remember driving on a six to eight-lane urban highway at 85 MPH wedged between three semi-trailers and a car that might just have Firestone 500 tires that could disintegrate at any moment? http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/07/ever-hear-of-firestone-500-tire-recall.html
Remember slide rules and typewriters that weren't in museums, but everywhere you went..
I cleaned the garage out a few weeks ago and found typewriter I had purchased at a government surplus sale years ago. It has a 24" carriage so you can put 11x17 paper in it. I used it the first time I went into business for myself (1985) to put the text on my hand-drafted surveys. It was the cat's meow.
My wife asked me what I was going to do with it. I told her I was keeping it so I could still survey after the apocalypse....sometimes she doesn't think I'm very sane. 😉
@bushaxe, Job security by the IT Department.
I had the same issue when I hired into the Federal Government as a surveyor years ago. It was never resolved. Everybody in the Government is paranoid about not having enough duties, so there's endless turf wars. Shoulda woulda coulda left about 10 years earlier than i did.
I worked for the Forest Service for 30 years and 0 days. Every new endeavor was a challenge created by the Bureaucracy. Fortunately I had a Purchasing Agent who would help me find loopholes. We couldn't buy computers, but there was no restrictions on computer components. We built two computers from scratch. You couldn't buy computer software. A University student who worked summers sent us software on 5 inch floppy discs. We were doing CAD work on $500 computers while the Regional Office was purchasing $20,000 CAD stations that nobody could figure out how to use.
A renegade Trimble dealer who posts on here often, figured out how to sell us a three unit 4600 GPS system that passed the IT Department's scrutiny. Our Eastside Forest Land Surveying group, which consisted of two people was the most technically advanced group in the Forest Service. We bought a plotter by calling it a digitizer verifier.
If I worked for them today, I'd probably be heading for prison.
I worked for the Forest Service for 30 years and 0 days.
I hope you got a great retirement package after that length of time!
I tested for a federal position once. Passed with high marks but decided that the bureaucracy would drive me crazy and ultimately passed on the offer. I'm glad I did.
@notsomuch Yes, I've got the old CSRS retirement plan. They screwed the newer employees out of it with the FERS retirement plan. Those guys are still working.
You made a good decision. All they do now days is sit in the office and read emails.
I worked for a large State agency for a while and after a few weeks observed more than a few coworkers were pretty much worthless, away from their desks often, phones set to "leave a message", sleeping in their cubicles, surfin' the Web, etc. More than once I'd request some work from a slacker and be told they'd get right on it and after a few weeks realize they'd never git her done, just keep responding "Yah, I'm working on it" forever. Quicker just to do it myself.
I finally talked with my boss about my problems with some of my coworkers and he said he was well aware but crippling union policy dictated "rehabilitate, don't terminate." His said his practical solution was to shuffle them around to where they did the least damage and when the opportunity arose promote them to a different department. He said the only way to quickly fire somebody was if they killed a coworker or stole something.
The only exception I witnessed was a few months after 9/11 when the FBI hauled off a Middle Eastern employee, his computer and all his cubicle paper records, never to be seen again. Rumor was that he was a member of a US based terrorist organization; and please Wendell, I'm just reporting my observations, not denigrating any ethnic group.
An unpleasant memory of those long ago days just popped into my head. There was a gal in charge of supplies and she ran a tight ship. If you wanted a pen, magic marker or pencil you had to turn in the empty pen/pencil stub to get a new one. If, perish the thought, you needed a CD/DVD you had to fill out a form describing the reason and billable project number and in a few days she'd get back to you after checking with the project manager. I finally bought a spindle's worth with my own money to avoid the aggravation. She was also in charge of ordering business cards and somehow we got off on the wrong foot so I never got business cards during my entire stay.
Oh, and the chair situation. If your chair broke it was a mound of paperwork to request a new one and it could take months or even be denied if your chair was still "serviceable", i.e., only missing one wheel. So everybody would dump their broken chair in an unused cubicle or in the back of a storage room and scrounge up a better chair from somewhere. I had a fresh nice captain's chair (I'm 6'4") and behold, I show up one morning and my chair is gone, replaced by a cripple scrounged from junk chair storage. I went ballistic and spent over an hour searching the entire building (600 employees) and found it in an upper level supervisor's luxurious corner office as a seat at his conference table. I told him "that's my chair!" and he said "I don't know what you're talking about" so I grabbed the chair and told him to "talk about this" and wheeled my chair back to my cube and dumped the junker behind a gap in the cube walls.
A few days later my supervisor called me in and told me not to mess with that guy as he's an axxhole and could make trouble for our department, but technically I did not steal so my supervisor refused to write me up. He advised me to respond to any inquiries concerning the incident with "I don't know what you're talking about." He then stood up, shook my hand, winked and said we'd never speak of this matter again. I have several other chair stories including the "flying chair" and the 450 pound employee's battle for a medical chair but I'm trying to be brief.
So if you win an interview for a government job on the second face to face meeting meekly ask for a tour of the facility, be observant and if it's a beehive of activity that's a +1, but if it's as quiet as a morgue with junky equipment that's a -10.
If you are interested in this position, make sure you ask a lot of questions about current equipment, software, ability to purchase/upgrade, personnel, and ability to hire.
You will have no ability to purchase/upgrade, personnel and ability to hire. As a new hire Party Chief, PLS, etc., those tasks are way above your pay grade.
