I spent nearly 3 FUCKING HOURS at the social security office yesterday. I took my #, waited 10 minutes, and was told I’d need to wait for my name to be called. By the time I was called, an hour and a half had passed, and I told them they’d need to hurry, so I could catch my ride. The condescending bitch told me, "I guess you’ll need to make another apointment! ARRGH!!! The matter could easily have been handled over the phone!
My financial aid/bursur office is just as inept! I had a form for a grant I recieved, and they had nobody on campus to process it, so now I need to asskiss my proffessors to get credit for the class. (I had no $ for books, so I ditched the semsester!).
There is a difference between incompetent government workers – and their supervisors – and government workers doing the best they can. In the case of the SSA, the problem is endemic throughout the agency.
Removing civil service protections will not fix the problem. Instead, you will get people being paid the minimum wage or just above who still don’t care.
Contracting out won’t work either. To repeat, you will get people being paid the minimum wage or just above who still don’t care.
What really needs to be done is an overhaul of the agency. SSA is known for poor customer service. Unless there is a change in management at the top, customer service skills instilled, and supervisory controls put in place, you will continue to receive crap service.
You know, there is a rule that government employees aren’t allowed to look out the window all morning. Know why? Huh? Do ya? 'Cause then they wouldn’t have anything to do all afternoon!
(he says, typing away at the dope from non-government work… ;))
I’ve worked for SSA for twenty-six years, and can attest to Duckster’s comments. When I first started I was idealistic enough to think that I could make a difference, and I took pride in doing my best to reduce the massive workloads that existed at the time. Over the years, I have seen unqualified people promoted just to get rid of them, changes in procedures which were supposed to improve efficiency but actually did nothing but make the numbers look better, and organizational restructuring that did nothing but add more layers to the bureaucracy.
The biggest disaster, to my mind, was the toll-free customer service; a prime example of a good idea done poorly. The idea was to provide a way of handling routine actions and general inquiries by telephone. So they set up a system using staff trained to process things like address changes and forward any inquiries they couldn’t do themselves to the appropriate office. After a while it became apparent that the volume of calls varied widely, so they started putting some of the technicians at the payment centers on the phones during peak periods. This resulted in increased workloads at the payment centers, since the technicians were unable to process cases while on phone duty, which led to an increase in calls because of unprocessed cases. The solution was obvious: put more of the technicians on the phones, so they can handle the additional calls instead of getting caught up on their work. Eventually this led to Grade 11 employees doing Grade 5 work, and then having to work overtime to do the work they didn’t have time to do because they were answering phones.
Things have gotten so frustrating around here that I can’t wait until I qualify for retirement so I can get out.
I was once so frustrated in the local SS office that I burst into tears. I was about 17 at the time. A nice man hurried over and helped me imediately. I felt much better.
I’m a little late on this one but I just had to chime in.
I work for the VA and can agree with everything LurkMeister said. We’ve been reorganized I don’t know how many times but all that amounts to is adding more management and cutting out staff (i.e. the people who actually work). I had so much zeal when I started this job 12 years ago and now I’m halfway to apathetic zombie. Probably more than halfway. And it bothers the crap out of me, I feel so bad about it. But I work for a supervisor who’s only two or three years from retirement and sure as hell not going to do anything to rock the boat. If he can even remember where the boat is anymore. The section chief is so ossified I’m surprised he’s not on display at some museum. His biggest goal everyday is to avoid everyone- he doesn’t hear any problems so he doesn’t have to do anything.
I had some hopes when we got a new department head but it only took a few months for them to Stepfordize her.
Competence is not prized in this job, it’s not an asset.
I really need to get out. Or just get rid of my brain altogether- it’s holding me back.
(BTW, I don’t work for SSA so I can’t drectly comment on your situation)
One thing I do know is something one of my government professors once told me. Your congressperson always has a lot of interns to work on constitutes needs, such as how can I get a passport in 3 days, Grandma hasn’t gotten her social security check this month, ect).
I would try calling up their office in January (as it is likely most are gone for the holiday now, but you can try) and ask them if they can help. Many politicians will be glad to do that to look good to the public eye. Always worth a shot.
My father worked for SSA for 25 years; he’s got some pretty incredible stories about how much the whole system sucked.
But you know what? I don’t like to go into Best Buy or Wal-Mart either. I think these problems are more endemic to bloated bureaucracies or any type, public or private sector. In short, everything is going to hell, and everything that isn’t is already there, just like for the whole of recorded civilization. Business as usual.
Yes Macro Man, that’s exactly what the OP is complaining about.
It doesn’t matter the the OP NEVER mentioned WHY they were at the social security offices or what they were waiting for. Your obviously alien granted ESP powers allowed you to transcend time and space to read the minds of the OPer at the SS office and the clerks helping.
What impresses me is that you obviously managed to read some of the words and associated social security with free money… but failed to understand what was said, and failed to realize that social security isn’t free money.
Just like to chime in that my b/f’s sister has worked for SSA for about 2 years now, and as god as my witness, I think i’ve watched her brain atrophy in that time.
I think the SSA is some black hole that sucks your soul out of you slowly, day by day.
Or you know, they just spend such a huge portion of their day dealing with one idiot person after another, they just get jaded. That’s her theory anyway.
I work in a government office where we give people who worked in Nuclear Weapons places sometimes up to 150,000 dollars.
How long does it take? At least 2 months (that would be a speedy claim). I’m not really involved in the payments, but I do the initial entry of the claims.
Our phone people are pretty swift, and don’t really get bogged down, but thats probably cause this program has only existed since July of 2001. (DOL/ESA/OWCP/EEOICP)
