Chances are you've worked with these people, and you've been in this workplace. I descended into a pit of vipers and nearly died a slow death of poisoning. Eight years later, I made it out alive, more or less intact. Those eight years taught me a lot about who I wasn't, and by contrast reinforced my knowledge of who I was. Some may wonder at my description of "brief career", and yes eight years is a long time to be referred to as brief. I was comparing my tour of duty in the civil service with a larger body of civil servants I like to think of as "lifers". Lifers spend their entire working life interred behind the high walls of the bureaucratic institution we call the federal government. The meat that sustains a lifer through the years of insanity is the distant dream of retirement and a pension. Adapt civil servants, can over the course of their career, carve out islands of sanity in which they can conduct their business with a degree of normalcy. For eight years I floundered and despite my constant attempts was unable to inflate a life raft, let alone build my own private island. Finally, when I grew weary of treading water I decided to swim ashore. The following are two excerpts from the pit.

So, I Hit Him

The Hammer And The Carrot

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