When I was a much younger man, if I was lucky I would dream of beautiful cheerleaders who found me to be interesting. In college, my dreams turned to forgetting to go to class, and then being confronted with a final exam for which I was unprepared. Last week, I dreamed of Douglas Factors, MSPB’s famous penalty defense elements. No kidding. I dreamt I was trying to take a worksheet with only 10 factors and convert it into a worksheet that discussed all 12 factors just minutes before the proposed removal was to be issued. So, I say this to you youngsters out there: Do not stay in this business if you start dreaming about our work. If you have nightmares about going to hearing and then finding out that there are comparator employees that your deciding official knew about and ignored, you are too intense. If you get night sweats dreaming about the selecting official who admits to you that he’s been a member of the Ku Klux Klan for 20 years and wonders if that will affect his credibility at the EEO hearing, you need to move on. If your evening stupor includes visions of an OSC investigator sitting on your chest like a legally-trained incubus, find better drugs and seek other employment. Our work in federal employment law is important, whatever role you play in it. However, it’s probably best if you can keep it as work and not let it become a calling. Because if it becomes a calling, you may well end up like those of us who teach for FELTG; eating and breathing this stuff, forgoing comfort and sustenance for the perverse pleasure of travelling to you to teach federal employment law, dreaming of ways to more efficiently and fairly hold bad civil servants accountable for their misconduct and poor performance. Life is desperately short. Let us do the heavy lifting for you in civil service law, through training and consulting. You, instead, should have more pleasant dreams than do we.
