Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Forest HCM

I usually do not talk about work here, but this has got to take the cake....

As everyone knows, I took this job because of the automatic promotion, the great experience I am getting, they paid for my move, and because I wanted to be where the action is. And I got the action!

Anyway, the Forest Service has this new thing called Human Capital Management. They took all of the HR people out of each forest, and moved them to Albuquerque, Nm.

This of course happened right before I moved from the Park Service to the Forest Service.

My first interaction with HCM went very well, they processed my advance, hooked me up with a great moving company.

I really thought it was gonna be a welcome change from the usual...

BOY WAS I WRONG!

Bonnie Kennedy was the lady that called and offered me the job here. After accepting the job, she no longer took my phone calls. In fact, I could not get any help from anyone at the Sparks, Nevada HQ of the forest I work for.....I thought this was very peculiar..I later found out that she was told that if she answered any questions about HR to any employee, she would be terminated. WOW again!

Now, a little geography......I work for the Humboldt-Toiyabe Forest. It is the biggest forest in the USFS. We are spread out all over Nevada, and part of California.....

Lauren Reynolds is supposed to be the HR person for the entire forest. Getting her to take a call is like calling the White House and asking for the President. He/She is just not gonna take your call.

The Sparks office is 130 miles away. Albuquerque is 1400 miles away. Do you think they care about us employees out in the Desert?

Okay, back to when I got here. When I got here, even though the District Office I work for was part of the process of hiring me, when I walked into the door, they said "who are you? What are you doing here?".

I should have known to just turn around right there!

So, in the interest of shortness, I am already a Federal Employee when I arrived. In my other jobs as a federal employee, I never missed a pay check when I went from one agency to the next.

It took over a month of being here before I got paid. (Thank goodness for the South Eastern Hockey Officials Association and the funds I earned).

Then there was the Health Insurance fiasco.......I came on board the USFS June 10th, 2007. I had no usable health insurance until the first week of November 2007. The USFS still took the premiums out of my pay, but do you think they would pay me back? NOOOOOOOOO!

Now lets talk about RIT.

It seems that the Federal Government taxes its employees twice when they pay for your move.

First when they pay you, then a year later, they want to know how much money you made so they can tax you again! So, being someone that thinks we pay to much in taxes anyway, questioned this. I asked: "What business is it of the USFS how much money I make as a Hockey Referee? Why do you have to know how much I report on my federal taxes?" I asked these questions to HCM in Albuquerque, because the response from Lauren Reynolds was "you need to call HCM". After making several calls, sending in several e-tickets, I finally got to talk to a person at HCM. His response: "its the IRS's policy, not ours. You have to report it or we garnish your wages!" So, after going round and round with this person, we arrived at the answer to the original question.......Only W-2 info is required, not 1099 info.

Now comes the automatic promotion. The week of June 10th of this year, I was to be automatically promoted to the next grade. It was part of the job. I had asked one of my bosses at the District office if this was automatic. He said he thought so, but he called Albuquerque to confirm. They too said it was automatic. But, he put in a request to make sure that the promotion went through.

Well, it was not! The HCM never put in for the promotion, never acted on the request by my district office. So now I am furious about this and with everything else that has happened, got really rude in my correspondence with HCM. Never swearing, just calling them worthless and such....

So, today, I get this email from Kirk D Powell, Customer Service Supervisor
ASC/HCM Contact Center, MS-211. He says that he is not going to let me talk to his employees like I did, harass them and so on.

So, instead of helping resolve the problem, his way of helping a fellow employee is to tell me I am not allowed to put in any requests nor talk to his employees.

I have now reached the end of my rope with HCM.

My District Ranger, and my boss here at dispatch have asked me to curb my emotions (which I keep in check, ask my center manager).

So I will, but bet your last dollar, every chance I get, I am going to post that guys name so everyone knows what a horrible problem solver he is!

Okay, I feel much better! Oh, and the 61 hours of overtime this pay period helps a little!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thats terrific!

ASC is worthless as intended. Its great that some people are still able to react with rage at the forest service nonsense.

Its pathetic but with an endless supply of tolerance and mindless consent to any and everything they will have us all standing on our head reciting the pledge of allegiance while doing online aglearn training.

Been there, done that said...

Gotta love ASC - we had a directed reassignment there when B&F moved. We didn't take it. Quite a few people didn't take the ASC jobs. So who's at ASC? Many are people who had never worked for the Forest Service or even the Government.

Anonymous said...

One major oversight on your part, and a very popular misconception is that promotions aren't automatic, an action has to be processed and submitted by a supervisor.

Anonymous said...

Hope things have improved for you! I have worked at the ASC for nearly five years and have experienced the same type of mishaps. Transferred from another Federal agency to the FS/ASC. My pay was set incorrectly and I fought it for three long years. Even filed a congressional, but they responded it was correctly set (when I knew it wasn't). I continued to fight the fight. After getting to the right person, I was paid $9,000 in back pay! Then...after receiving payment, I was told they made an overpayment! My response....are you freaking kidding me? I disputed the overpayment and won that battle too! Persistence DOES pay off!

Anonymous said...

It is really impossible to say what the mouth-breathing shitbirds in ASC will do next to make life even more impossible for us. I knew it was going to be bad but it defies description now. Just remember, you are a number and that is all.

Anonymous said...

I work at ASC, and it's pretty disheartening to see people calling us things like "mouthbreathing shit-birds". It's not really any easier for us. Also, take into consideration that the FS only centralized HR 3 years before this post was made. It is now 2011, and we are still growing and figuring things out. ASC started in 2004 with a handful of employees, I think somewhere in the 30's, and right now, under six years later, we have nearly 700 employees. In other words, ASC is growing by leaps and bounds and will continue to do so for quite awhile as we work out the kinks. It's not a small job, coordinating HR for an entire nation of workers.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'm sorry, comparing ASC-HCM to mouth-breathing shitbirds, that would be an insult to mouth-breathing shitbirds.