It was interesting to see various reactions to my last post about f***muppets who don’t understand how wages work in general, or PS labour pay rates, in particular. While some readers engaged on the substance, some had serious misgivings about using the term f***muppet. If you want to see my original post, you can find it here:

Frustration with PS employees who should better understand our wages

Someone subsequently shared my post on the Reddit forum, so if you’re so inclined, you can read the reactions and analysis of the post over there.

Frustration with PS employees who should better understand our wages
byu/North_Scientist5126 inCanadaPublicServants

I have follow-up posts planned on wage components, but I want to explain what and who I mean with the term f***muppet. I assure you, I didn’t choose it lightly, but it was not as broad-based target practice as some people interpreted.

No, not all PS are sh**diots or f***muppets

It’s strange to have to say that, but I wasn’t referring to all PS people as being problematic, only a specific subset. If a PS is ignorant in the literal sense or uninformed, that does not make them an idiot. I never said that, not sure why people would choose to interpret things that way, but that’s the nature of the internet, I suppose.

I do find it a particularly odd interpretation given that my entire HR Guide is aimed at supporting people who are ignorant or uninformed on how processes work. Truthfully, I’d say that my entire set of posts about anything non-fiction are in that vein i.e., they’re aimed at the uninformed more so than the technical expert…I might go deep, but I always try to keep the level of writing and concepts at high-school levels, not Ph.D. IMHO, people who are uninformed and looking for more information to understand things are the pinnacle of human development. That’s how we all learn. I love them, I don’t disrespect them.

For my own learning, curation of broad themes is my jam when I’m looking for stuff to read. For example, I’ll be posting this month in my writing and publishing area about a guy who did just that, curated a huge area, and crammed hundreds of hours of work into one post. Amazing stuff. I can only dream of reaching that pinnacle outside of my HR guide.

So, who DID I mean were the problem children? For context, since I like frameworks, I would break it into six groups of information bases and behaviour.

At the “start of the learning curve” (not necessarily the “bottom”), I would say there are the ignorant (L1) and the uninformed (L2). As I said above, they’re my main audience and my HR guide exists because I was them back in the day.

After that, there is a level 3-type who is either wilfully blind or close-minded, although not necessarily in a bad way. They feel they know enough, they don’t want to learn any more. It’s a choice, and we all have limits on certain things we don’t want to know more about; we know enough, that’s it. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by saturation, or sometimes by necessity of bandwidth. I reached that saturation point with COVID conspiracies, Trump, and several highly touted content management systems for websites, to name a few disparate areas. I went from L4 (below) where I was seeking stuff out before dropping back to L3, as I had enough info to make the relevant decisions.

Level 4s are probably my heroes. They are a significantly larger group in the various fora who ask questions, share intelligence, and collectively improve the discussions. I asked a question last week about life during “transition to retirement,” and they had some excellent insights across the board. Most of the time, this L4 group holds sway and I love their discourse. They’re building everyone up. I’m actively in L4 mode for retirement in general, kayaking, writing and publishing techniques, static location photo radar usage, and RVs; I’m passively in L4 mode for astronomy, library management, AI (haven’t jumped to active yet), performance measurement in non-traditional areas, audits, photography, and graphic design and editing tools. There are probably another 20 topics that I keep an eye out for, will click on if I see, some just for fun — like shuffle steps, even though I have no chance of ever dancing, or audio book narration as a business model. Well, admittedly, business models are always on the list, I suppose, whether it is someone working at a radio station or running a coffee shop. I always want to understand how their job works, what are the issues, what is settled, what is open, what is a big gray mess in between. People want to know what keeps CEOS up at night, while I want to know what the average worker or manager is worrying about in how they structure their work. While I digress, this is why active L4 people in the chats are my heroes. They too are trying to figure stuff out.

By contrast, however, there are two other groups that I was referencing earlier.

Level 5s are the ones I referred to as idiots. Some prefer the term sh**diots in varying spellings. These are the ones who know enough to use some of the right words, but don’t care enough to figure out how things actually work. They repeat catchphrases or slogans, yet have spent no time trying to understand or learn. Nevertheless, they engage in aggressive discussions in the forum, arguing with people based on that limited or wrong-headed knowledge. Plus, because they want something, they think they must be entitled to it, and then try to tell the other person how wrong they are. They are often the perfect candidates for the phrase, “You should educate yourself a little more.” If all they did was express an opinion and leave, they wouldn’t be that worrisome, but the sh**diots go way deeper than that, they are shutting down the L4s who actually know something useful and can share it. I hesitate to call it the MAGA syndrome, but well, that is one particular form of it.

The last type, Level 6, are the f***muppets. They may or may not know more than the L5s, but they are way more aggressive, equally wrong, and they have their opinion ON BLAST. They f*** around but seldom find out the consequences because the consequences come for all of us later in negotiations (I’ll give you some examples below), rather than individually to them. They frequently shout down far more knowledgeable people, and if someone disproves their argument, they throw in random facts because they don’t care about being right, they only care about “winning”. It’s like a climate change denier being shown evidence and responding with irrelevance like, “But the sky is still blue!!!”, along with open hostility that anyone who doesn’t agree must be an idiot. They are extremely entitled, dominate discourse with their rhetoric and volume, and generally make the entire discussion look ridiculous. You have likely seen the quote (misattributed to Mark Twain) that says: “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” It’s funny on hats, t-shirts and memes, but not as funny when they are on BLAST in a forum, crowding out more accurate and reasonable content.

Someone said in the discussions that it seemed like I should step away from the keyboard for a while. That’s probably true. 🙂

And 99% of the time, I ignore the L5s and L6s. In many fora, it is easy to just block them, like on FB, or X/Twitter. However, in the discussion group on Reddit, these L5 and L6 people are often advocating the union SHOULD be doing / negotiating whatever the blaster is thinking at the moment. I don’t care if they express their views; I do care if they’re trying to build momentum with L1s to L3s who might not realize the fallacies being shared as “fact”. The group is also read by union analysts (L4), TBS analysts who support negotiations for the employer (L4), journalists who repeat some of the lines for taxpayers without much context, AND even by MPs. In particular, there is one MP and two Senators (high L4s) who are very active on the issue of PS salaries, they know the arguments inside and out, and they actively follow the discussions.

Now, when the f***muppets are on full blast with their aggressive and wrong-headed rhetoric, two of the three often react VERY badly and communications start flying across government departments responding to their questions in committees, or emails to Ministers. Because to the politicos, it can easily look like we’re all overpaid and out-of-touch PS trying to suck more milk from the government and taxpayers’ teats. The logic of my concern is relatively straightforward — if the blasters make us look like idiots, the politicos paint us in bad light as the “PS needs to be curtailed”; TB negotiators listen to them AND then tend not to listen quite as well to what our union reps eventually say in negotiations. If you think of TBS and the politicos as the ones who judge our eventual demands, it’s a bit like tainting a jury pool against the defendant before a trial even starts!

Are the f***muppets really a problem?

I know, I know. Like the person who said I should step away, you probably think I’m over-reacting. I didn’t choose the term f***muppet accidentally or out of hyperbole. They literally are FAFO candidates, except as I said, the consequences are for us all, not just the L6s.

Let me start with a very real issue affecting a vast swath of the public service. When RTO started to happen, there were some early conversations about the impact on childcare, and particularly the challenge of childcare if you only needed it three days a week instead of five, as you might have before the pandemic. L1s and L2s asked some questions and tried to figure it out, while some L4s brought up some good issues in various fora. And then a bunch of L5s and L6s got involved.

Stepping back, childcare issues are really complicated as a policy item for employers writ large and for government in general (particularly as the government is both an employer and a facilitator of a national childcare program!). People are often VERY passionate about the challenges of childcare while working 3/d a week in an office. I get it. I really do. I think this area should get a lot of attention, some really good policy analysis, and some good frank open conversations between the PS and the unions and then the unions and the employer. We should be having day-long consultations with experts and unions and analysts at TBS to figure out, “What are the best options available for juggling this?” and if there are any particular avenues open to a knowledge-based and mobile workforce that could give the government employees more flexibility than say that of an auto worker in a plant.

Personally, I also struggle with all aspects of scheduling, coverage, costs, etc. My situation is different than the average one of people having toddlers or arranging after-school care, but I’ve been through that world previously. My life is way more manageable if I can WFH 5d a week and a frequent dumpster fire if I WFH only 2d a week or less. So, when people say they have issues with childcare, I think there is a world of dynamism in everyone’s situation that should be considered for potential flexibility for government management.

Now, admittedly, at first glance, childcare can be suggested to already be included in the $50 / day commute component. We got it before the pandemic, we’re still getting it, easy peasy lemon squeezy, let’s move on. Those analysing it in more detail often break it into about three types of childcare situations:

1. FD: Full-day care for kids under the age of 5
2. ASC1: After-school care for kids up to the age of 7 or 8
3. ASC2: After-school care for kids up to the age of 11 or 12

Some people will argue it’s 4y not 5y; others will inflate or deflate the ASC1 or ASC2 groups. However, the age cutoffs are not as important as the categories. Generally speaking, if you are looking at FD or ASC1, it makes NO difference if you are working five days a week at home, five days a week in the office, or some combination thereof. You are not allowed to be tending kids while working full-time. It has a specific term, which is that it is a form of time theft. For the ASC2 group, who are old enough to entertain themselves but still might need an adult around, you’re likely looking at a hybrid world where WFH lets them be at home and RTO means you still need coverage until they age out.

As I said above, it’s a rich area of diversity in needs, a ripe area for detailed discussion, and of interest and relevance to a significant number of PS employees. It deserves time and space to consider options and flexibility in how the employer treats the needs of the employee, even while the employees themselves are still figuring it out what those needs are going to be.

Unfortunately, early on in the discussion, the L5s and L6s went on blast arguing that they should be able to work full-time at home and look after their kids while they do it (any of the three groups above). They didn’t think about the implications, they didn’t think about what they were saying, and yet they jumped on it even when they didn’t have any kids themselves. They blasted about the employer being evil and unfeeling, and so before a reasonable discourse could happen about what was viable or not, the employer’s position hardened REAL fast. No space for discourse, no time for analysis, just BAM, here’s the solution. Cuz taxpayers saw the L5s and L6s and thought they were ripping off the government. The employer was forced to react quickly to the stupid version of the policy issue, not the actual nuances.

First, they immediately said “no” across the board, that it was time theft, and they weren’t listening to any other interpretation. No flex, no consideration, done.

Except even that part of the solution wasn’t all the employer did.

In some cases, they got people reporting that some L1s and L2s, emboldened by the f***muppets, had put themselves out there as an example of someone who thought they should be able to tend kids all day too. As a result, management had to investigate some people. Several of those being investigated saw my previous comments cautioning against relying on that rhetoric and asked me if I had any suggestions about how to save their job (time theft is a good reason for termination). Now, I don’t have a magic wand to help with problems with management. As far as I know, none were actually fired, but there were some clawbacks of pay and serious reprimands after management looked at clickrates and IP connections. Now, you may not care about those employees, maybe you agree that they were stealing. You may even think they are solely responsible for their predicament or perhaps they were just struggling to deal with the residue after the pandemic where many daycares closed, others were dumpster fires for schedules changing daily, etc. I get those perspectives, but I am more concerned that there was no space for a larger discussion of how to responsibly manage these situations as we transitioned back to the office. Instead, L5s and L6s blasted, certain people heard them, and shut it all down immediately. In the meantime, unions quietly reached out to some individuals and told them to delete certain posts where they admitted they might be in the problem group, no sense waving a red flag. But the L5s and L6s? Totally unaffected. It was like they rage-baited management and management took the bait, while everyone else paid the price.

There are other areas where the L6s are on blast for views:

1. LOCATION OF WORK: L5s / 6s are blasting about jobs moving to HQ, even though there was more than ample evidence earlier that just because you had a LoO that said that was the current deal, those details can be changed later. People want to argue the minutiae of wording, but let me make it simpler. If your office is in Gatineau, and they move the department to Ottawa, do you have ANY SAY in where you work? No. So they can move 2000 people from one city to another, but you think you can say no to moving you? You can decide to move or not, be compensated if not, get a reasonable other offer maybe, but you can’t say, “Sorry, I’m still working here.” Those on BLAST are crowding out the space of what that COULD more reasonably look like, with some time for thought. As a result, management is responding faster than they should and being hardlined about the rhetoric that is forcing them to respond.
2. COMMUTING: Early on, a bunch of f***muppets started arguing about how much harder it was to go into the office than it was to work at home. Like, somehow it was relevant to anyone that you now had to take a bus to work instead of staying in your pajama bottoms while working at your computer at home. The vast majority of the world has to commute to their job, you’re not special. And after a bunch of blasting, management said, “Not our problem, you are required to show up at the office, commute options etc., figure it out.” Except that there were issues buried in there. Perhaps the simplest example would be for management to recognize that people having to work 2d a week in the office initially, and thus 8-9d a month, were not interested in full bus passes for the month or paying for monthly parking passes. And management could have, for example, reached out to city municipal transit authorities or large parking places around them to encourage them to come up with more flexible options. Municipalities and parking lots would have responded far more favourably to the government suggesting flexibility to them than customers blasting at them how it was egregious to ask them to pay a whole month, even if the transit and parking authorities were like, “Umm…we already have daily? Why would you buy monthly? Why are YOU YELLING AT US THAT IT IS OUR FAULT?”. Some people want to say, “Oh, it’s the frustration.”. Doesn’t change anything, though. The f***muppets drove management into their default space that they are legally entitled to occupy, and some possible flex went out the window.
3. DTAs: For a bunch of things above, the L5s and L6s encouraged everyone to file DTA requests. Management got overwhelmed. So they do what all organizations do when they have more processing than they can handle…they develop simplified assessment tools that look at each case one at a time but relatively superficially and come back with a common outcome (often a “no”). All the flex managers had previously was drastically curtailed in the new process, everyone had to be treated equally even when they weren’t equal situations. But worse still was the smaller number of more traditional (dare I say it, previously “legitimate”) requests who were forced to wait in the clogged queues. Internally, a number of managers noted that f***muppets and their equivalent shouting about the wrong things are why we can’t have nice things. They ruined some really good options for some people who REALLY needed it.

All three of those areas could have had better outcomes than they did. To me, it was a very consistent pattern:

• Somebody identified an area that was in flux or a specific type of need that people were feeling undersupported;
• Some people started to talk about it, it had some legs and interesting issues but no consensus yet;
• Some L5s and L6s went on blast and started dominating the direction of the conversation towards a self-serving sliver of the actual substance;
• Management reacted to the noise and treated the issue as if the sliver represented the whole space, shut down the area fast with very nicely worded “STFU/GFY/PFO” messages, and told everyone no; and,
• Those with real substance got crowded out.

Telling them simply to educate themselves isn’t enough. Nor is simply ignoring them.

Does calling them f***muppets help? Probably not. But it’s way better than trying to legitimize their behaviour as simply born of frustration. These are not the frustrated masses, these are people trying to FA without FO, rage-baiting people and stirring up sh**. They don’t care about the outcome most of the time, they just want to insist they’re right even when they have very little understanding of the real issues.

Megaphones are rarely conducive to good policy outcomes, particularly in negotiations that affect all of the PS.

So, on my personal blog? I’ll call them what they are. Sh**idiots who crap on everyone else and f***muppets who like to stir the pot just for fun, without adding anything constructive to the conversation. Particularly because they never bothered to understand it in the first place.