nm
If you don’t mind me asking, what were the shannanigans? Browsing/wasting time or porn and other nefarious things? The substance abuse I can see - although sometimes they will make the plea for “needing help” and getting sent to rehab as an out.
Are you state, local, federal, judicial…? I am very surprised anyone was fired for internet.
Interesting relevant link: http://news.cnet.com/Judge-Worker-cant-be-fired-for-Web-surfing/2100-1030_3-6064520.html
Can’t really say in this forum.
No no, of course not, not with them watching. 
Being a private sector worker who has worked on consulting contracts for public sector agencies - I have had plenty of experience witnessing this difference.
This can not be overstated - having a gov’t pension vs. relying on your own 401k is beyond huge enormous gigantic. Add into that the 30 yrs & out retirement calendar, and the bumps from accumulated sick and vacation hours that result in some workers pensions being >100% of their ending salary…
The life of a 55 year old retired gov’t worker living off of a pension that they didn’t have to scrimp and save for personally is vastly different than the life of a 66 year old private sector worker who is worried about if and when they will be able to retire because of the the stock market.
Exactly so.
Some areas also allow relatives/married couples to transfer leave in special situations. When my stepmother was diagnosed with breast cancer, my father was able to donate some of his accumulated leave (he’s never sick) to her, which allowed her to take paid leave until she had reached that 30-year mark and could retire with full benefits and pension.
That reminds me…at least one of my colleagues was fired this year for circumventing the site blocker to look at porn. After which there was an agency-wide warning to keep our noses clean.
I’m a government worker (UK local unitary authority), at least, I am for the next month, after which I am escaping to the private sector.
I (and most of my colleagues) work damn hard and have had our workload significantly increased in the last few years as cuts have eaten away our team resources - and it’s the same story throughout the whole organisation.
In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I’m leaving - I’m supposed to be working on strategic stuff at a management level, supported by a number of analysts, supported by a larger number of administrators. Deletion of vacant posts every time anyone moved on has resulted in this structure being eroded down to me and a couple of other people - so any project I want to run/manage, I also have to deliver all of the work content.
Strategic/proactive work was about half of what we do - the other half is incident support, which also is now loaded onto a too-small team. In practice, we spend all our time running around resolving one urgent issue after the next, ignoring the proactive work - but the strategic work is the stuff that would reduce the level of urgent incidents.
We’ve had a couple of 1% pay increases in the 6 years I’ve been there - cost of living has increased dramatically more.
I’m moving to a private sector job doing much the same thing, for a 30% increase in pay (my new job has a little more emphasis on the strategic/management, but made more possible by adequate resourcing).
UK local government is in a sticky spot right now.
Depends on your sector. In the DoD, most of the contractors working for me get paid more than I do, the benefits are actually better Federal health insurance gets a lot of good press, but I can’t tell you how many contractors switched over to Govt in the early Obama years (last big hiring spurt–nothing political) that looked at their health insurance and said WTF!!!). And I’m not talking about the Northrop-Grummans and Lockheeds here–I’m talking relatively small contractors. I’m OK because I’m retired Military, so I don’t pay into that program, but dental and vision are about the same as private sector.
Where we do have a big benefit is retirement. The Thrift Savings Plan is consistently rated as one of the best 410(k) programs available. On the other hand, my sister worked for a cell phone company centered around Chicago (but not nation-wide) and her bonuses and profit sharing came to 10+ thousand dollars a year and she wasn’t a muckedy muck. I’m pretty high in the food chain and my highest bonus was about $2K.
As to why people can’t get fired, its the grievance system. I have a guy who has been working in my agency for two years and has already filed two federal law suits (which by the way is the LAST step in a long process). He lost them both, but it was still significant time for my Boss to answer the frivolous suit. Other companies have this problem as well, but in the federal government, you have congressmen writing letters in favor of people they do not even know, news programs that jump on the evil government guy screwing the honest federal employee (the other way around isn’t as good a story), etc. On top of this, most federal supervisors aren’t given any type of leadership and supervision training. They become overwhelmed and just hide. Sometimes, its just not worth the hassle unless a law gets broken.