Katpau
Well-known member
I received a letter from USDA notifying me that a check was deposited in my checking account recently. It hadn't showed up in my account and I noticed that the last four digits of the account provided were not a match to my bank account. I worried the money had gone to the wrong person. I called Farm Service to find out what was going on, but it went right to Voicemail. When I did not eventually receive a call back, I decided to drive to town. The Farm Service Office was empty with just a sign that read, "No one is in the office". I went beyond the desk and peeked in the empty offices, before going down the hall to NRCS where I found one lonely employee on his computer and the rest of the building empty. He informed me that almost all the other employees had either left during the "Deferred Resignation Program" or been let go. They had already been short of help and the new hires were forced out. The lone survivor back at the FSA was now running multiple counties and was only in the office in this town a few days a week.
Since I was in town I went over to the Post Office to pick up the mail. I knew there were a number of letters, because I have "Informed Delivery" on my phone. We had sent out several hundred Prize money checks from our big Jackpot Show and, along with some other important mail, I knew we had letters returned for bad addresses. Since I believed they were already in the box, I had notified the committee and gotten corrected addresses. I was hoping to get them back on their way. I was surprised to find my box empty. After standing in line for awhile watching one stressed out employee try to deal with way too many customers, I finally got to the front of the line. It turned out the Post Office had also been stripped of employees by "Deferred Resignation" and new hires being forced out. They were several days behind getting mail in the PO boxes and some rural mail carriers were delivering multiple routes, which explained why the mail to my own mailbox came late in the evening if it arrived at all. The teller expressed frustration at having to work well beyond the eight hours he was paid for and still not being able to catch up.
When I got home I looked at the paper and read an article telling how the Supervisor at nearby Crater Lake National Park had left his position citing an extreme staffing shortage. The workload was way too much for the number of people hired to handle it and he seems to have broken under the pressure.
I am in my 70's and I have never seen anything like what is happening today. Over half of our large county is in Federal lands and the Federal Government is one of the biggest employers. Losing all of these workers will be a big hit on the local economy, and I worry what will happen when the inevitable fires arrive this summer. People don't realize how much work is involved in running these huge tracts of Federal land. Most of our large fires have started on under-managed Federal forestland.
Since I was in town I went over to the Post Office to pick up the mail. I knew there were a number of letters, because I have "Informed Delivery" on my phone. We had sent out several hundred Prize money checks from our big Jackpot Show and, along with some other important mail, I knew we had letters returned for bad addresses. Since I believed they were already in the box, I had notified the committee and gotten corrected addresses. I was hoping to get them back on their way. I was surprised to find my box empty. After standing in line for awhile watching one stressed out employee try to deal with way too many customers, I finally got to the front of the line. It turned out the Post Office had also been stripped of employees by "Deferred Resignation" and new hires being forced out. They were several days behind getting mail in the PO boxes and some rural mail carriers were delivering multiple routes, which explained why the mail to my own mailbox came late in the evening if it arrived at all. The teller expressed frustration at having to work well beyond the eight hours he was paid for and still not being able to catch up.
When I got home I looked at the paper and read an article telling how the Supervisor at nearby Crater Lake National Park had left his position citing an extreme staffing shortage. The workload was way too much for the number of people hired to handle it and he seems to have broken under the pressure.
I am in my 70's and I have never seen anything like what is happening today. Over half of our large county is in Federal lands and the Federal Government is one of the biggest employers. Losing all of these workers will be a big hit on the local economy, and I worry what will happen when the inevitable fires arrive this summer. People don't realize how much work is involved in running these huge tracts of Federal land. Most of our large fires have started on under-managed Federal forestland.
