Hourly Work

My cracked tooth requires me to attend Navy sick call for (I hope) the last
time. I discovered it while flossing vigorously yesterday. The filling on the
last upper molar on the right side assumed independent life and I realized
suddenly how vulnerable I am to the disintegration of my body. I have a few
weeks of active status left, the first of September and formal retirement
looming. I have been living in a fool’s paradise of separation leave, much of it
accrued since the terror attacks in 2001. I have been playing the Senior
Executive by day, concealing and active duty identification card in my wallet.
The security blanket ends soon and they will cut it up, sever the umbilical to
the great haze-gray machine I have served so long.

I am eager to have a health plan that includes some sort of dental
co-payments. I don’t have one, due to the curious situation in which I find
myself. I accepted a one-year appointment in the Federal bureaucracy, just until
they work out a few details. The detail comes with a handsome rate of pay,
calculated on an hourly basis, but does not include the pension plan, or the
health care or vacation. I am an hourly worker. If I do not work, I do not get
paid. If I get sick, I must find my own way. For a variety of perfectly good
reasons, the details of my permanent position are now stretching out into the
middle distance, and my time in the Navy is about to end abruptly. The
indecision, the ability to defer decision endlessly is a hallmark of the
Government. It is that indecision that will drive the decision I must make as
the final separation looms. I must make it in the next week or two. I also need
to remember to take my dental record with me as I drive a half hour north of the
city to the vast Naval medical complex in the morning traffic.

What to do? I am overcome by ambivalence. Not having leave or dental suddenly
has an imperative all its own. I will not be paid for going to the dentist, and
perhaps that is unreasonable on my part. But I have no leave and I must have the
cracked tooth repaired. I find I must have a dental plan, and I would like to
have one that is not provided by the military. Years of Navy dentistry have
taken their toll, never seeing the same Docotr twice, each visit an
adventure.

I felt the imperative last night after I left the office and was caught in
the mess on the 14th Street bridge trying to get out of town. I caught up with
K.C. and his Dad at the Rock Bottom just minutes behind the appointed minute.
You were with me right to the door and it felt good. But I knew something was
wrong- it was Dollar Beer Night. The place was jammed. It is a huge place and I
did not make a move to my wallet to show my ID to the bouncer and he did not
challenge my rheumy stare. The crowd spilled out into the hostess area and I
realized I was never going to find anyone in the din.

The noise and the press of the bodies made the search a challenge. I could
not advance to the bar and the slim young women in black with trays filled with
tall pints of micro-brew made each move a challenge. I scanned the crowd, bar
area to veranda, veranda through the hostess station and down the long shot-gun
aisle to the back bar. It was packed all the way. I did not see them there, or
on the crowded porch were all the smoking kids were clustered around the tables
behind the decorative fence that separates the restaurant from the Ballston
sidewalk. The crowd was filled with seekers, pairs of young women looking the
best they could and astonishingly tall young men with complexions almost
completely cleared up.

Sprinkled in the crowd were a few old dogs like me. Most were in casual
clothes, but I saw some still in dress clothes, probably hoping the beer would
not slosh down the Brooks Brothers Bureaucrat and mar the shine on the Johnson
dress shoes. I still had my collar button in full business mode and bright red
cravat fully up. A few of the seekers looked at me slide-long, as if their
father had arrived to join the party, but not all of them. I was glad I have
given up playing at being young. Some of the other gray wolves in the crowd have
clearly not, looking perhaps to cut a likely prospect out of the herd.

I was on the verge of giving up, already thinking of the cool waters of the
Chatham pool and the quiet of a tall vodka tonic. I walked down the other side
of the shotgun aisle, past the tables filled with people eating to avoid the
pack at the bars. There I saw the beefy presence of my friend Pete and a slimmer
version of him right beside. It struck me that K.C. is now the same age as Pete
was when he came out of Vietnam, the ribbon on the back of his black beret cut
in the swallow-tail that means he was a blooded warrior. K.C. is learning the
ways of a different jungle, this one being Washington.

I had succeeded in getting K.C. hired as a government temporary employee. He
has been here for five months or so. We have the Full Time Equivalent
authorization to hire several new people at his grade and experience, but the
economic downturn and the general jitters have resulted in a flood of
applications for each available position. K.C. is like me, then, a temporary
worker. Our hourly wage is just a little different. We reviewed the packages for
the available full time positions. There was a Masters graduate of the London
School of Economics. She wanted to be a GS-9, and ranked no higher than 13th on
a slate of 15 “well qualified.”

K.C. was fourth. The way forward to hiring him was blocked by a disabled
veteran, a double dipper on the preference scale. My Department is a Veterans
Preference participant for hiring purposes, a Congressional add-on from some
other time. In the scoring for prospective employees an applicant receives five
points for honorable service, and another five for disability. So that position
was blocked. The panel interviewed the Veteran and the reports are that he is
unsuitable for anything we need but his score is unassailable. I don’t know how
we will deal with it, and it is quite odd to find myself loathing an ex-soldier
who is so adept at gaming the system.

I sat down at the table across from the two generations and we had a dollar
beer and some shrimp. We shouted war stories as one another, both of a war long
gone and one still in progress. My friend Pete is eager to have me visit Memphis
where he lives, semi-retired, as his wife gets a chance to be the primary
breadwinner as a Navy civilian. There is talk that they want to close down the
Personnel Center there in the backwater of Millington, Tennessee, and move it
back to Washington where it used to be. They will have to buy out the contracts
of the civilian workers in Tennessee, just as they had to buy out the contracts
of the civilians in Washington when they decamped in the night like the
Baltimore Colts. The government is a curious and wonderful thing. After nearly
thirty years of service I can describe it but cannot explain it. The internal
logic is so consistent. It is the external manifestation that is so strange.
Like my secretary, who sends me an e-mail on the road with my hotel confirmation
number but not the name of the Hotel with which it is associated. She is a nice
woman but the job is not the point. Being there is the point. To get the
benefits.

We finished the shrimp and managed, at length, to attract the attention of
our waitress. We in turn decamped through the throng to the bar of the Macaroni
Grill where there was no dollar beer and plenty of quiet. We drank wine and
swapped stories. My friend asked me to stay to dinner and I had to regret. I
needed to plunge into the cool water of the Chatham pool to wash away the
struggle of the day and think through what I am going to do next.

I arrived on the pool deck with fifteen minutes to go, and the cool water
washed over me and flooded out the sound of the day in a cloud of bubbles.

I had hoped to talk to you and make the day complete. But I will have to let
that wait until later this morning. I have to find a uniform in the back of the
closet and pretend to be a sailor once more.

For a little while. For the benefits.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra