40 years of work

It's the Labor Day holiday, celebrating the working men and women who made America great. Until I retired in 2016, I've always worked. From 1972-1976, following dropping out of college to work full time on the McGovern campaign after my sophomore year, I worked in the restaurant industry in New York City for a year then spent winters in Aspen and summers on Nantucket, enjoying skiing or beach time during the days and working at night.

Then after I returned to college to finish up my BA in history, I became a lawman from 1977 to 1987, two years as a deputy in Boulder County and seven years as a Colorado State Trooper. The latter was a job I enjoyed very much, being a first responder in the foothills and mountains in Jefferson County and Boulder County and spending a year on duty in Denver as part of the Executive Security Detail protecting Governor Lamm.

The first of my three children arrived in 1986 and I decided to get a more "regular" job rather than alternating the day shift with the night shift every two weeks with a week of graves thrown in every six weeks. So I went off to law school and worked as a consumer protection attorney for the government from 1990 to 2016 when I retired on principle due to discriminatory ageism by the new, current breed of self-serving mid-level managers that have no regard for institutionalism or their workers.

Since then I have tried to be a good, patriotic citizen working to return America to greatness and its traditions after four years of enervation and existential chaos. From being cemented in place for hours on the Mall by the overwhelming crowd at the Women's March in 2017 to now when I've carefully researched my voting plant, I've tried to continue making a difference after 40 years of actual productive labor broken only by two stints in school. In 2016 I worked in the presidential campaign for a candidate I didn't particularly like but who was obviously vastly superior  to the totally unqualified candidate opposing her.  In 2017, in addition to working in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign, I effected a pro se a settlement with my agency that granted me i) my proper last review of a grade of all Outstanding; ii) a lifetime achievement award; iii) a monetary settlement; iv) a requirement that the division provide training for management specifically relating to the scourge of ageism discrimination; v) including for any former managers who returned within five years (the manager most responsible, with help from the other managers he was in cahoots with, left the agency abruptly two weeks after I retired suddenly); and vi) most importantly to me, it did not contain NDA, because I don't believe in hiding away evidence or suggestions of wrongdoing behind ubiquitous NDAs.  In 2018 I worked all fall to help flip the nearby Tenth Virginia Congressional District from the party that held the seat for forty years.  Last year I registered voters and attended rallies in support of the impeachment of our incompetent, rogue president who is tearing down our country, perhaps irrevocably.  This year I've lined up neighbors to come vote with me at City Hall on the first day early voting opens, Friday, September 18th in Virginia.  I'm proud of my more than 40 years of lifetime work, and all the volunteering and other activism I've done done contributing to the community as well.  

Settlement Agreement, the signature page.

And so, more than two years after the sub-standard evaluation of Satisfactory I received on August 26, 2015 that caused me to file a formal complaint of age discrimination, and more than a year after I amended my formal complaint with additional allegations of a hostile work environment which culminated in my involuntary retirement in May 2016, the settlement was entered. It was with irony that I signed the document exactly two years after my bogus review. The court entered it on September 20, 2017. My final review, the one we were arguing about for all that time, was changed to Outstanding in every category.

Most people don't pursue their righteous complaints to this degree, and that's what the system, be it government, private, corporate or institutional, counts on. It takes too long. It jeopardizes your livelihood. It's shrouded in secrecy. This agreement does not contain an NDA. I wouldn't have signed one that did. That's how the system beats down individuals, because they don't know who went before them and how it came out. The culture of deceit, impropriety and even illegality, is exposed when light is shined upon it and it may then change.

Why did I do it? "Mine honor is my life, both grow in one; Take honor from me, and my life is done." R2 I.i.182-3.

Below is a picture of me at the office on the day of my 25th anniversary of government service as an attorney. My friends threw a surprise party for me in my office and I was feeling proud about my work and good about my situation. A month later I received my bogus review based upon what I believed to be age discrimination, with in my opinion a generous helping of vindictiveness baked into it, and my two year battle with the system to have a proper review entered began. I persevered and prevailed. Read the settling document and tell me otherwise. I miss my friends at my former agency though, and wish them all good fortune.

Settlement Agreement, page 4 of 5

On the top of page 4 of 5, below, is the crown jewel of my settlement with my former agency and the most revealing paragraph of the Settlement Agreement, the 4th of 4 settling points. It requires all of my managers present in the division when I received my sub-standard review of Satisfactory in August 2015, which I believed was due to age discrimination, to "complete EEO and diversity training, including training addressing age discrimination." This is my legacy at my former agency, my attempt to right a wrong, to leave something behind that benefits those who follow me even though it cost me my job, because I have my honor to live up to, a reputation to uphold and a conscience to answer to.

A closer parsing of the top of p.4 reveals something I was told that my former agency had never done before. One manager who was present two years earlier when I received my sub-standard review and who I believe engaged in retaliatory behavior which culminated in my involuntary retirement in May 2016, left shortly after I did, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. I informally refer to the 2d half of subpart d, following the words "In addition," as his amendment. This is what I negotiated and it is apparently novel. If this former manager returns to my former agency at any time in any capacity within 5 years, he (and any other affected manager) will be required by the order to "receive the above-noted training."

Settlement is settlement, and it is supposed to resolve all existing, known issues. This settlement is no different. I have already laid out my 4 settling points, changing my bogus last evaluation to what it should have been, Outstanding; receiving an honorary Superior Service Certificate; being paid money to settle, and the imposition of required training for management in my former division at my former agency. My former agency's salient settling point, the only one that I can perceive beyond normal settlement discharge language, was for me to "withdraw all complaints" etc. (IX.a). Well, yeah, that's what settlement does, and I sent this Settlement Agreement to the ALJ as it is self explanatory, and called up the HR office at my former agency to tell them and offer to send them a copy but of course they knew all about it already and declined my offer.

Don't you think this settlement is self explanatory as to what went down in my case?

Order of Dismissal

There are two main problems that keep inequities, indeed even illegalities, present if not endemic or rampant at agencies, corporations, entities and with powerful individuals. NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and the lengthy, mandatory process involved in reporting and pursuing allegations at HRA offices. My case wherein I suffered an "involuntary retirement in May 2016" is such an example. My original complaint was based upon age discrimination after I received, in my opinion, an unfair, biased and erroneous substandard evaluation of Satisfactory on August 26, 2015. The Order of Dismissal below, one of six pages that encapsulates the settlement of my case, which I shall publish this week, is dated September 20, 2017, effecting the settlement on or about that date. Its issuance is more than 2 years after the occurrence I originally complained about, the erroneous performance appraisal that was allegedly biased based upon age discrimination. I followed the process presented to me fully, and that is how long it took to resolve the matter. This is too long a process and the lengthy, built in delays cause many people to give up in despair, go silent and get on with their lives and careers, especially because there are strong social pressures based upon many factors to not make waves. Not the least of these pressures comes from the fact that if a complaint eventually goes to litigation, your colleagues might be called to testify and will be given the Hobson's choice of remembering correctly the sequence of events and the atmosphere in your shop or not remembering it (I don't recall.). Most of them will be returning to their jobs and working for years or decades with the same managers.

You will notice that this Order of Dismissal, entering the attached 5-page stipulated settlement, is dated September 20, 2017, and it was issued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Washington Office, an administrative law body, and signed by an ALJ (Administrative Law Judge). It has its own docket number, EEOC No. 570-2017-00377X, which refers to the Agency No. 2016-2. I timely filed this Complaint with the EEOC office on December 27, 2016, after the lengthy and exhaustive investigation was completed at my agency. I could not have filed it with an ALJ any earlier. This was almost a year and a half after the original occurrence of the allegedly unfair, biased and erroneous evaluation I complained about, following the presented process. I was out of a job following my "involuntary" retirement in May, 2016 and this was another thing hanging over my head along with my 80% income diminution. There were no meaningful settlement discussions about my complaint during that entire year and a half. Perhaps, dear reader, you can you get a sense of the pressures that build up during the pendency of a complaint as time slowly passes and one year turns into the next with no end in sight.  There are two interesting things about the dates on the document that will be discussed in the paragraph below.

I filed the EEOC Complaint on December 27, 2016 and the first time I received a single thing back from the EEOC was on September 20, 2017, the Order of Dismissal which entered the stipulated settlement. This was almost 9 months later! It was radio silence before that from the court. I didn't receive a docket number, nor an acknowledgement of receipt, or a scheduling order. Nada. After about six months, I started fretting that I was "sleeping on my rights" and that I could have my case dismissed for lack of prosecution so I called the GC's (General Counsel's) office at my former agency to inquire if they had heard anything back from the court. That event started settlement discussions for the first time, about 20 months after the occurrence originally complained about. I was told, which I had no reason to disbelieve, that this lack of response so far by the court was not unusual and that the actual litigation itself, once it started, could take a year or or even years to conclude. Can you imagine the pressure that the passage of time builds upon you as you anticipate years of litigation ahead and the cost of extensive discovery?  I was litigating by myself with no real resources against all of the staff and resources of my former agency's GC's office. This leads to the second interesting date on the document, the date indicated by the agency's referral No., 2016-2. This told me that during the entire year of 2016, mine was only the second complaint that had been pursued this far (remember that I filed my case with the EEOC on during the last week in December of 2016) from my former agency, a smallish but by no means tiny agency. No wonder I was only one of two formal complaints! The process is so drawn out and oppressive that it must cause many or most people to just go away, and especially with age discrimination, perhaps the person will just expire in the meantime.

So here, for today, I will end my tale of filing a complaint with the HR department at my former agency. Below is the backside showing the two opposing counsels in the case being resolved by the Order of Dismissal.  As stated, this document entered the stipulated settlement more than two years after the original occurrence complained about. My case did include an allegation about illegal retaliation, which did add some months to the agency's HR office's investigation, but in my experience, retaliation, which might or might not be in the eye of the beholder, was not unheard of.  I believed I had witnessed retaliation at my former agency just the year before from the same actor and based upon a similar set of circumstances and allegations.

2017 in Review, 3 of 3

The Settlement I effected in September of my ageism and retaliation complaint against my former agency, which led to my involuntary retirement after I had devoted more than a quarter of a century to government service as a lawyer, was the most significant thing I achieved in retirement, in my legal career and perhaps my life.  I felt the settlement terms I negotiated over the four months of discussions with the GC's office once an avenue of discourse was opened up, vindicated my complaint and showed the way for those coming behind me.  Most importantly, it did not contain an NDA which is the customary way government and corporate entities keep their misdeeds under a shroud of secrecy.  My settlement is open for anyone to review and use as they see fit.  It cost me my job and took over two years, but the Settlement forced my former agency to give me the evaluation I should have gotten in 2014-2015 but for the age bias of management in my division, it required the agency to pay me money, and it mandated that all managers involved in that division take training in age discrimination, even those who left if they returned within five years.  The Settlement was entered in September by the ASLJ and my case was thereby, of course, dismissed as settled.  (The settlement terms.)

October was taken up by working for the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia and trying to notify the manager who, in my opinion, created a hostile work environment for me in retaliation against me even while I was supposedly protected by the law while the investigation into my formal age-discrimination was ongoing.  He had left the agency abruptly shortly after I retired and I sent a copy of the Settlement to him at his new workplace to inform him that if and when he went back to his former managerial position which he had, in my opinion, abused, he would be aware that there were requirements for him to undergo training if within five years.  (Taking training to be an inside precinct observer in the November elections.)

A very big occurrence for me and the nation was the election in November of the Democratic candidate, Dr. Ralph Northam, to be the next governor of Virginia.  Hopefully it's the first indication that America is on its way back to greatness.  I  put in a long day as a poll watcher and was gratified when I returned home late that night to find out that Northam had already been declared the winner.  I spent the Thanksgiving week in Ohio at my sister's house relaxing, reconnecting with some of my nephews.  (A Confederate statue in Ohio, guarding a Confederate cemetery on Johnson Island at a former POW site.)

And now another year is in the books, my first full year of retirement.  In December I set up a couple of holiday lights walks on the Mall for my former running buddies at my former work, but nobody came along.  I enjoyed the sights.  I am looking forward hopefully to the New Year.  (The Christmas tree at the Canadian Embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue.)

Goodbyes

I lost some people who were close to me this year, and I regret their passing, as I regret the passing of  all people I know who passed.  Pictured below on the left is Dave, who was one of the two mentors of mine in my legal career.

Dana was a close colleague and a friend, whom I hadn't seen in years because she moved on to a different agency, but I saw her on her last night in hospice.  Her passage was shocking as she was only in her fifties if that.  The other mentor in my legal career, Steve, and I attended a memorial gathering for our friend and then extended the celebration of her life afterwards by discussing our fond memories of the cases that the three of us did.

A friend and neighbor, Steve, passed suddenly and at his memorial service I discovered just how deep was the reservoir of good will that all of his quiet, good works had created.  His wife found a beautiful place to lay him to rest in a cemetery atop a hill nearby.

Other people I knew and respected died too, like Peter, a runner who maddeningly almost always beat me and was also the editor of the Kipling Tax Review, and I fervently hope my 3 children are alive and well and believe they are, but I mourn deeply the possible passing of our democracy with the inauguration this year of our unqualified and unstable demagogic president, voted in by a distinct minority of the misguided or misanthropic voters last year.  He is pictured below in the opening days of his presidency blowing a kiss to then-FBI Director James Comey; shortly thereafter he fired him because the director wouldn't vow personal fealty to him and the putative king dismissed him in a possible criminal act.

   

Goodbye Dave

I was going to write a post today on the greatest football game ever, played yesterday in Super Bowl 51, but today I received a voice mail from a friend at my former workplace saying merely, "Peter, please return my call."  You always hasten to return those calls.

I thereby learned that one of my two foremost mentors as a lawyer, Dave Fix, who taught me how to be a forward looking, far-projecting strategic thinker in cases, died yesterday.  I called my other foremost mentor, Steve, who taught me litigation and how to drive a case to a successful conclusion, a contemporary colleague of this lion, to let him know the tragic news about Dave, and we set about to find out as much information as possible.

I am beside myself.  God bless you, Dave.

I have a lot of memories of Dave, which I won't share with you because they are special to me.  This Harvard and Stanford grad, instrumental in implementing successful federal court actions filed by my former agency in support of consumers struggling under the burdens imposed by unprincipled fraudsters, be they small nefarious boiler room operators or giant avaricious corporations, was a hero of mine, and I am so sad.  (Dave is on the left and Steve is on he right in this photo taken in 2011.)

The year in review, part 2 of 3.

At the end of May, after more than a quarter century on the job and after working hard all year doing more with less as people at work left to take new jobs or went out on maternity leave, I was suddenly forced to retire by the impossible demands of, in my opinion, a bullying manager acting as the point man for a group of in-it-for-themselves managers a generation younger.  I already had an active age-discrimination complaint going at the time but these people consider themselves to be bullet-proof and, in my opinion, do whatever they want, paying only lip service to rules put in place about retaliation and the like.

On the day after I was precipitously and prematurely forced to retire due to ageism, I bought new running shoes and ran five times a week during the month of June, mostly around Northern Virginia and sometimes in the District, taking on the task of running home from all of the furthest-out Silver Line Metro stops.  I also discovered from a neighbor that my youngest son had gotten married a year earlier to some girl named Laura.

In July I kept active by continuing running five times a week, sometimes in the District with friends from my former place of work.  I also did some hiking and bicycling on some of the many recreational venues available around the District, like here on the C&O Canal Towpath.

August was a most interesting month.  On the eleventh, out of the clear blue sky, I got friended and then unfriended within the hour by my daughter-in-law Laura, and then the next morning I underwent stomach surgery, which put me down harder and longer than I thought it would.

Our lives were about to change.

The year in review, part 1 of 3.

In January I waited at a reunion that apparently will never be.  Dining with the perennially empty chair and the ever-full 2d beer on my middle child's 28th birthday.

I kept on running during the noon hour through a cold and raw February.  Here I ran by some school children on a field trip dispensing hot chocolate at the MLK Memorial.

In March I ran my only official race of the year, a 5K on the W&OD Trail half a mile from my house.  I won my AG and received a pie as my prize.

On my birthday in April, I was delightfully surprised when I was joined by friends at the place I normally go to for lunch on birthdays and holidays.  The couple in the middle are newlyweds who in the fall moved to AZ, while the woman on the right, a colleague at work, had had a baby less than three weeks earlier.

My life was about to change.

Christmas Trees from times past

Christmas trees are certainly a ubiquitous item at this time of the year.  Here are some times past.  The Peace Officers Tree in DC from a few days ago.

Helping to decorate a tree last year.

A tree in Orlando from several years ago.

The Capitol Tree in 2008.

The Capitol Tree in 2014.

Helping to decorate a tree in 2014.

The Peace Officers Tree in 2012.

The Peace Officers Tree in 2007.

Last year's National Tree.

This year's National Tree.

The National Tree from 2014.

Children watching the train set at the bottom of the National Tree.

The National Tree in 2012.

The National Tree in 2007.

The National Tree in 2005.

An Occupy DC tree from 2011.

The tree at the Statehouse in Columbus..

A tree in Columbus in 2012.

The same tree in 2011 after a Turkey Trot 5-miler.

The National Menorah in 2008.

A tree on the 16th Street Mall in Denver..

A tree in Buffalo.

My tree in 2008.

My tree in 2007.

My tree in 2005.

Frosty the Snowman, a block from my house.  Is he waving hello or goodbye.  This party store is closing forever on December 24th.