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Feb. 11, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
57:12
Who is Taking Care of Those Who Take Care of Our Nation’s Heroes?
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We know, currently, that the job of the VA is to take care of the men and women who chose to wear a uniform and defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
If I were to tell you that the VA, reportedly, according to an anonymous source, is not necessarily taking care of veterans the way that they say they take care of veterans, would you be surprised?
Probably not.
Well, we are going to expound on that on today's conversation.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
we start now.
Hey everybody and welcome here to the next episode of the Richard Leonard show.
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Okay.
What I didn't tell you in the intro is that our good friend Jason is here with us again today.
And so let's bring him in.
Hello, Jason.
How are you?
Pretty good.
And you guys?
Well, not too bad.
I hope everyone else as well as TOO. T-O-O as well.
Jason.
Yes, sir.
It has been reported to us by an anonymous source.
This may surprise you a lot, but it seems as if the VA is lacking in some areas, which I don't think anybody would find to be a surprise.
We talk all the time back and forth about how the VA as a whole could probably do better in some areas as it relates to quality of care for veterans.
If I were to tell you that via an anonymous source earlier this week, it was told to me that...
The VA, although hired a ton of people in 2023, are not keeping what I would consider essential workers around.
So let me explain this to you.
You come from a construction background, so you probably understand this a lot better than I did initially.
But if you have a place like a clinic, like a CBOC, or you have a VA hospital, what would you say, other than the doctors, right, that treat the patients and the nurses that have hands-on with the patients every day, what would you say are the most important members of that workforce within that facility?
Well, it'd have to be your day-to-day operations.
Okay, explain what that means to you.
Day-to-day operations.
For the audience.
So in my mind, that's the rank and file that would keep things together to ensure that the primary focus of the business could continue moving forward.
It's just like at a construction company, I can send out finished carpenters, but I don't want finished carpenters to be pulling lumber off of a stack and sizing things and doing things.
So we typically have less skilled laborers come on to do the moving around, so the skilled laborers stay with the skilled portion of their day.
Okay.
I don't have any experience in construction, so when you say a finished carpenter, that means the guy that comes in and does your crown molding or whatever decorative carpentry needs to be done?
Is that what that means?
Yeah, like the finish, I would look at, and again, I'm not equating what we do to anything at the VA, but certainly, you know, let's just go right to the VA, a doctor, right?
Mm-hmm.
The doctor, the nurse, and their staff.
Those folks are there, if it's for a surgery, they are there to do the surgery.
It's everything that leads you up to the surgery and has it readied for the next surgery.
It would be like the operational staff.
So the people that are cleaning the rooms, cleaning the instruments, making sure that the air conditioning is working, that the ventilation systems are in place, that the water is running, that everything else is happening to ensure that they are capable of doing the one thing that they're specifically there for.
Okay, well, thank you for clearing that up.
I think that's pretty clear.
A little easier?
Okay, so here's why I ask you this.
Because according to our anonymous source, and I don't think it's a secret that the federal government has recently put a hiring freeze in place, so they say.
There's many different opinions about this.
There's many different conjectures, if you will, and stories or whatever you want to call it.
But it seems as if those frontline workers, those boots on ground people, are the population of employees within the VA medical system are the population of employees within the VA medical system that are not being replenished.
They're not being cross-trained.
And these are the people that essentially take care of the folks that take care of us.
So if I go to work every day at the Harley-Davidson dealership and it's 90 degrees in there and it stinks, the equipment we have to perform our job is not adequate, those types of things, how would – and this might be a rhetorical question, in fact, it is a rhetorical question, how do you believe the morale of the workforce would be?
I would assume it would be pretty poor.
So the reason I ask you all these extremely leading questions that are difficult is because I'm going to go out on a limb here and speak for both you and I to say that neither one of us claim to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.
And so if I can understand that, and you can understand that, people who are a whole lot smarter than us, i.e.
the folks that are in power within the VA system, should certainly be able to understand that.
And so some of the things that were told to us are we are not able to have positions backfilled that do things like fix water machines, do plumbing, engineering work.
So I would assume that's like HVAC or something like that to make the building comfortable.
To give employees clean water to drink.
This person told us that employees at a few specific facilities are having to fill their water bottles throughout the day out of the bathroom sink.
Instead, because they're taking drinking fountains out, they're taking ice machines, they're taking like Culligan water type machines out because there's nobody to service them, there's nobody to clean them, there's nobody to make sure that they're working properly.
And so it would lead me to believe that there's treachery afoot, right?
I mean, you employ people in the company that you're with.
Is it important to you as an employer, Jason, to ensure that your employees, no matter what they're doing, at least enjoy part of their day?
I mean, we all know that when you go to work, sometimes it sucks.
But you can always find at least one conversation or one break or one interaction and passing enjoyable throughout the day.
I think that's what keeps people going to work.
It ain't necessarily the paycheck they receive.
But is it important to you to ensure that your employees are at least happy at work?
Well, not only is it important to me, but it also provides back-end production.
When people are happy, when you have great camaraderie or teamwork, days go by faster, people maintain a smile, and we get done far more on good days than when there is a bad day.
And there's not a question about that.
But I have to assume, based upon the things that we did here, that there have been a lot of bad days.
But I would also ask that and going aside from morale building and all those other pieces because quite frankly once a business gets to the size of the VA and let's be honest VA is a business run by bureaucrats poor decisions are continually made by people that are in high spots Inside of those systems, not knowing the byproduct of those poor decisions.
And that's what we're talking about today.
So, okay, well, that's an interesting twist.
Let me make sure I understand.
So you're saying that the people in power that are saying things like, we cannot hire anybody else, we are not going to backfill positions, we're not going to do this, we're not going to do that, we're going to save money in these areas...
Are you saying that it's possible that they don't really understand what's going on on the front lines, on the ground, and that's why these things are an issue?
They can't.
I mean, based upon how poor the decision is, Nobody could have a clue what that byproduct is unless they're just not hearing it.
Again, I can't speak to the actual business infrastructure and the management structure of the VA, but I assume it's pretty similar to most government agencies, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, you probably have a director at HBA and it goes all the way down, but they're not, these aren't people that, I don't think outside of like the big figureheads that come from other businesses, they're typically internals and like everything in government, right?
Like, oh, if we don't get that funding by October for next year or spend that money, we won't get the same money for a budget.
That's not how you run a real business.
And so to see them or hear them falling prey to something that most medium to large scale businesses have realized that they were all being consumed death by middle management, that's likely probably where the VA is right now.
There's too many people that don't actually know how the business needs to function or operate and where the critical skills are.
I mean, it's easy to say we need more surgeons No shit.
Okay, we don't have enough cut jockeys.
Go hire some surgeons.
You know, but when it comes down to rank and file individuals that, you know, that mop the floors and do all these other things, they don't have a clue how many people are actually doing it.
They would never do a cost-to-benefit analysis to say, you know, if I've got 15 janitors working X amount of square footage, doing blah, blah, blah, blah, how many janitors do I really need?
You know, they just say, oh, we've always had 12, so we're just going to have 12.
Or, oh, we lost two, don't worry, they can pick up the slack.
Not knowing that, say, losing two out of 12 people, that's one-sixth.
That's 15 and change percent.
Now you're going to throw 15% more work on everybody else's back to make up for those losses.
That could be taxing as hell on your day.
Imagine your eight-hour workday, and on a whim, boss decides.
Out of that 480 hours, he's going to add on another 70 minutes worth of work onto your 480 minute day.
Well, you still only get paid for 480, so now you're either going to do a pretty poor job of the entire thing, or you're just going to quit doing certain parts of it.
Simple.
Well, yeah.
And even if, I guess, pay aside, I mean, of course, everyone wants to be paid for the work that they perform.
But also remember that a lot of these folks, especially more of the blue-collar folks within the system, and it's not just VA, it's every system.
A lot of, and these people, they have, everybody has a life.
Going on outside of work, right?
And so, I didn't think about the pay, but you're right.
If my boss says, hey, by the way, I need you to stay for an extra 70 minutes tonight.
I'm going to be frustrated by that because I may have kids that have practice or they have activities or church or, you know, there's all kinds of different guys night poker, whatever it is, right?
And because I believe that it is paramount for us as adults in this society to be able to find a way to disconnect and unwind at the end of the day.
With all the polarization that goes on in our communities and all the...
I mean, you cannot...
It's getting to the point, man, where I can't even turn on SportsCenter, ESPN in the morning, and just hear them talk about last night's games or see highlights.
Now they're talking about who's raping who and who's going to beat the hell out of this person for a bigger contract.
It's all negative shit.
And so, if you're asking me to stay extra time, whether I'm getting paid or not, but tonight, you know, my son has a hockey game, and I promised him I was going to be there, that's not going to jive for me.
And I believe that a lot of folks are in the same boat.
And it's my opinion that people who are more blue-collar workers...
Find those things to be way more important in their day-to-day lives than those folks who are probably sitting up in the corner office of a VA medical center.
Not to say that their families aren't important to them, but it just seems like Folks that work in those types of industries that are blue-collar, hands-on, labor-intensive jobs are a whole lot more apt to be super pissed about staying extra time, paid or not, because they have things to do.
Right.
Well, I was even getting at working within your day.
I mean, they're not going to pay you extra.
So nobody's going to give that to you.
So let's just say in your eight-hour shift, you can clean 20 rooms, right?
And I don't know.
We're just using something arbitrary.
But what I was saying is when you lose that staff right now, you lost people.
They didn't allow those positions to be filled for whatever reasons.
So all of a sudden, you go from your eight-hour day of doing 20 rooms to now you have to do 22 rooms.
Now what's going to happen?
You know you can do 20 rooms well.
Are you going to keep doing 20 rooms well or now you have to do 22 rooms and you're going to do them a little more poorly than you otherwise would have?
Because I think a lot of the people, especially those people who work at the VA that are veterans or just the blue-collar working staff, they take pride in what they do too.
They're set up to not succeed by not getting enough time to do the things that they're doing because of staffing shortages.
They're not getting overtime.
They're not getting any of those other pieces.
They're just being destroyed by a heavy workload.
Which also...
Makes me think that part of the reason we're super understaffed in VA facilities is because people are sick of that shit.
And they're going to go somewhere else and find a job that maybe pays a little bit less or pays more and has better benefits or just as good of benefits.
I mean, I guess I don't know exactly what all that means, what the benefit packages look like.
But...
At the end of the day, I think that anybody whose personal time to do with whatever they please, whether it's family, friends, alone time, playing games, going to the gym, whatever that means for you, those things are important to those people.
And so you're right.
Okay, I gotta do 22 rooms in 8 hours?
Well, guess what?
You're not getting the same quality out of me, probably.
I'm gonna try to, but at the end of the day, if it's coming up to an hour, I got an hour left of my workday and I still got 3 rooms to clean, I'm gonna hustle through them because I can't be late to my son's hockey game.
And it's just going to have to be good enough.
And so I guess where I'm going with all of this is, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk to you like you're not intelligent.
But I'm trying to set the tone here.
What are we doing?
What are we doing to these agencies and to these institutions that are causing people to just say, man, screw it.
Screw it.
I don't care to work here.
I don't care to deal with this shit.
I'm going to go work at Dollar Tree.
And I'll take a $3 an hour pay cut and get a part-time job doing something I enjoy maybe.
Whatever those solutions look like.
But what really concerns me is how is all of this, in a roundabout way, affecting the quality of care that veterans are receiving at VA facilities?
And I don't know that, I don't know, maybe it should be something that's super obvious, but I don't think it is to people.
We get very...
And to me, I didn't really think about it that deeply until the other day.
Because we always talk about having the best medical care, having the best nurses, having the best this, having the best that, and how all these treatment plans and treatment options are horseshit.
But we don't ever talk about...
The people that are bringing us our breakfast when we have to stay the night at the VA. We're not talking about the guy or the gal that's taking our blood when we go for blood draw or the person that checks us into our appointments who's making $13 or $14 an hour and has to deal with some grumpy-ass old dudes who want to bitch at them because they don't want to be at the VA in the first place.
And now you add on top of that, that they gotta drink sink water throughout their workday if you don't bring your own.
Dollar Tree gives their employees water, I'm pretty sure.
You know, I mean, I haven't been into a lot of Dollar Trees, but the few I have been, most of the employees seem like they're happy to be there, and they're helpful, they're cheerful, they're not all pissed off all the time.
Out of 10 VA appointments that you go to, Jason, how many times is the person that checks you in, how many times does it seem that they love their job and they're super happy to be there?
You know, I... I can think of only a couple of times where people were super excited or happy.
Okay.
I can't tell you how many times.
Normally, I'm checking in on a kiosk.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that computer is never really pissy with me.
Okay, well, see, there you go.
There's probably another way the VA cuts costs.
Well, we can't put people here.
Let's have these folks interact with a kiosk, which may be better.
It might be better for some folks.
I would like to see based upon the information that we were recently given and the information that we're able to see the end of fiscal year 23, those hires that the VA made, where did they make their hires?
Well, let's talk about that.
I have this article pulled up here.
Okay.
So, in fiscal year 2023, the VA raised their workforce.
Their existing staff grew by 7%.
7%.
And you looked before we started the show, what is the percentage of VA employees that are veterans?
Do you remember what that number was?
It said 23.
Okay, so 23% of everybody that works at the VA hospital is a veteran.
Now, I'm going to ask you this again.
I asked you offline.
Out of all the jobs available at the VA hospital...
And 23% of the employees at VA facilities are veterans.
How many veterans of that 23% do you think are wearing white coats?
I'm guessing it's pretty low.
Pretty low.
I'm going to say it's under 5% of those people.
Oh, way under 5%.
So, with that being said, where would you believe...
That 23% of the workforce that is represented by veterans sits on a day-to-day basis in a VA facility.
I bet it's close to maybe like a two-thirds, one-third.
Two-thirds probably directed at day-to-day operations staff and maybe one-third office clerical type.
Right.
I mean, it's just my gut.
Well, I think that you're right.
Where I was going with that is, I believe that, and keep in mind, I worked in our local VA hospital for almost a year before I couldn't take it anymore.
Most of those people are the electricians, the plumbers, the carpenters, The people checking in, the people making phone calls or answering phones, janitors, food service, people that work in the store.
Not a lot of that 23% is wearing a white coat.
I'd say there's probably a little larger than 3-4% of those people are nurses.
I think there's quite a few nurses that are veterans, which is great.
Yeah.
The guy that checks me in is a nurse for my doctor, and he's awesome.
We get in trouble because we're eating up doctor's time chatting about other bullshit.
For an agency that is dedicated, so they say, to taking care of veterans, it seems as though they forgot, maybe?
That 23% of your staff are also veterans.
Right.
Which means the veterans that you vow to take care of, you're telling these folks when they're working for you, you've got to drink sink water.
Absolutely.
And by the way, I need you to stay late today, an hour.
We're missing folks.
We don't have staff.
We need help, right?
The veterans need to be taken care of.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is, if we can't, as an agency, see that the staff that makes us function day to day is taken care of, and that we can't even show them that we're making an attempt to keep your morale up while you're at work, How are we taking care of the patients that come in there?
What are we really dedicated to?
Because if we're dedicated to taking care of veterans as patients, and that's our number one responsibility, but yet we can't take care of the people that we put in charge within our agency to care for veterans.
We can't take care of them.
Well, how are we confident that they're taking care of veterans properly if they're sick to their stomachs to come to work?
Because now I've got to drink another four bottles of this effing toilet water that comes out of the sink.
How does that reflect?
How does that reflect on the VA as a whole?
And furthermore, Jason, have you ever seen or heard of this issue in the news?
Of course not.
Hmm.
Interesting.
Well then, my friend, welcome to the Spin Zone.
We're going to be labeled tinfoil hat-wearing dudes before, if we haven't already.
You know, and the Richard Leonard Show was a Spin Zone.
They were just spinning it into their narrative.
Well, I don't know.
This is not my narrative.
This is not Jason's narrative.
This is from people that work in these facilities...
That came to us.
To tell us about it.
Because nobody else is talking about it.
But you better damn well bet that I'm going to talk about it.
You're going to talk about it.
So, I don't know.
I don't know.
I guess we should, maybe we should just shut down the shop.
And not talk about it.
Well, that ain't gonna happen.
But what we are gonna do, what we are gonna do very quickly is take a break.
We'll be right back.
Hey folks, welcome back here to the second segment of the show.
Jason, I'll dive right in.
Let me just ask you something.
Because, as usual, of course, we don't like to give a problem without a potential solution.
So, I have an idea, but I'm wondering, do you have an idea of how to, not necessarily solve this problem, but a better avenue of approach, maybe, to make it better?
Well, maybe, you know, the anonymous person from this week, you know, mentioned where they were hiring.
And I kind of alluded to it when we were first talking about death by middle management.
And again, you know, I mean, that's a pretty simple thing to say, but it's like, I almost want to be Jim Carrey's character in Liar, and it's like, do the right thing, asshole!
Yeah!
Start hiring the right people!
Like, you need to have people that understand the things that they're doing, not just filling jobs that are being created with a nameplate.
Simple.
So, you're saying...
So, for full clarity, our anonymous source did tell us that there is a hiring freeze for these frontline positions, but there is managers and supervisors being hired all the time, still to this day, and they're just...
And more than that, they're being hired from outside of the agency, which means they're not hiring within.
They're not promoting people up.
They're taking people from the outside and bringing them in.
So if I'm hearing you correctly, the idea is to quit hiring managers, take that money, And hire frontline staff, people that can fix the water coolers, people that can train people to clean properly, and those types of things.
Right.
Yeah.
Overly simplified, for sure.
What I would look at, again, perfect world, they contact Richard and Jason to come in and fix one VA facility.
Number one, terrible hires, number one and number two, right there.
But playing this game out, to think about it, like, how do real businesses operate?
You know, typically when you have figureheads, you know, the C-suite, they typically come from either that particular vein of business, or they truly understand business flow and philosophy.
So, you know, you can bring a CFO who worked in metal fabrication and you can move them over to, you know, flour production.
Quite frankly, that CFO position is not going to change, but all the direct and reporting staff would.
And so, when I constantly hear that they're hiring again, I don't know what those supervisorial positions are or the management are.
But I never hear about all the data entry and the analysts and the people that actually can figure out where the problems are.
They seem to just hire people to put them over the top of where their problem areas are to try to fix it.
And I do believe in hiring from outside.
I mean, you can't internally hire absolutely every position.
Otherwise, you have no change.
And quite frankly, bringing in that fresh blood, depending upon the level that you insert them in and their experience coming into the job, that might be the absolutely needed thing to correct the change where maybe somebody would understand you need more people cleaning rooms or they would see some of those efficiency issues that we're talking about.
But it doesn't seem like that has been the case thus far.
So I wonder if this is an issue of...
So in the article that I was referring to earlier, I read a few, but this one in particular had mentioned that there is a certain amount of people who entered the hiring process before said freeze...
So I wonder if part of this is that maybe management positions, they take longer to interview for.
They take longer for job offers to get to and then back to the agency and blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's all kinds of logistical things.
And maybe hiring those folks isn't as easy as one or two interviews and then when can you start, right?
Because if I'm hiring a person to...
Clean the bathrooms, for example.
That interview is pretty down and dirty simple.
If I'm hiring somebody to manage 15 people that are cleaning bathrooms, well, there's a lot more information that I need to gather about that person to see if they're the right fit for the job.
But if the problem is, as we were told, That there's not enough frontline people.
They have to work overtime.
They have to stay late.
They've got to come in early.
They've got to do this.
They've got to do that.
Then you're right.
Now that you say it, I didn't think of it that way before, but the simple answer is we just hire more frontline people and quit hiring chiefs.
Don't hire as many chiefs.
Hire more Indians.
And so maybe some of these managers that were coming in were already in that process because they're not going to...
I don't know.
They did mention that they were terminating some interviews and some applications who were entered towards the end of the time before the freeze.
But neither here nor there, we don't have enough people to do the down and dirty work.
And...
I would imagine that we don't need an overabundance of managers or supervisors when we don't have enough people to do the grunt work.
To keep the place open, to keep it clean, to keep other employees comfortable as well as the patients that come into those facilities comfortable.
And I think that you're right, Jason, earlier when you said that maybe those people in the upper echelons of the system, they don't really know what's going on down below them.
But I would say to that, that's too bad.
It's too bad that they don't know because at the real core of the problem...
We can't, as an agency, and I shouldn't say we because I don't work for the VA, but they can't, as an agency, say that they are providing paramount services to veterans, because we all know that that's not true in every case, but And then just ignore the needs or the hierarchy of needs for your employees.
Because those are the people that are supposed to be providing this amazing service to veterans who serve this country.
And so I agree with you.
I agree that...
Less Chiefs, more Indians would be absolutely a way to start making this better.
I don't know.
I guess I don't have enough experience to talk about how we fix the problem as a whole.
Well, I would think, and sorry, I just wanted to jump on that.
You know, when you're hiring management in, and you've probably had this where you have a good or a bad boss, right?
Somebody that truly listens to what you're saying.
I think a lot of times...
With agencies and organizations that are this large, things just, you know, they continually happen a certain way and that's just the way that it is.
And they bring in a new manager.
They have particular protocols and policies that they're supposed to abide by.
And they're typically the...
That's what's failing.
You know, it's not the people.
And so, you know, maybe the breath of hope is that they did create some positions where there's opportunity for some of these mid-level managers or management types to go down chain to understand what the issues are so So they can bring it forward to middle-high management to make some of those in-real-time decisions that they can do hirings on to say, we really need to do this, this, and this.
And so I would hope, having this conversation, if there is anybody that's listening, to maybe ask them to go find out what the problem is.
If it's coming out and it's getting to Richard and Jason, I'm telling you, the best place to go find all the problems is wherever everybody smokes, because that's where all the complaining's done.
You know, you're going to say it under your breath in the job, but boy, you go suck down a butt out in the parking lot, I guarantee just to be a fly on those walls, you could probably solve about 70% of the problems in one afternoon.
You know, it's so funny that you say that, because That is no shit.
That is where all the problems, the grievances are aired, right, at the smoke pit.
It was like that in the military, and it is like that at the VA. When I did work there, the few times I went out to go out to the smoking shack, because, you know, the weather's nice and you're stuck inside all day, so, all right, yeah, I'm going to go have a smoke because I can get some sun, but If you're out there and not talking to nobody, just mind your own business, you hear a lot of business.
And everybody's got something to bitch about.
The only thing I don't know is where to find the people bitching about work that don't smoke, which is probably around a coffee machine, maybe, I would imagine.
But, I mean, so, okay, so...
Hiring management is something, in my opinion, that could be handled this way.
What if we were to hire managers and tell them, your first 120 days or 190 days on the job, you're going to work with the frontline staff.
So when you come to work every day, go ahead and go to the supply room and get a set of scrubs.
You put a set of scrubs on or you put on the engineering, whatever the uniform is for your particular area.
And I want you to shadow the people you're going to manage.
You spend all day with them.
Spend all 190 days, 120 days, whatever it is, with those people.
Because you're right, Jason.
One of the best things about good leaders that I always noticed when I was in the military and even in any other civilian job is that the person who's in charge, who is willing to get their hands dirty, are the best leaders and therefore have the highest morale amongst their subordinates.
Right.
Right.
And from a business perspective, they get more out of their team than anybody else.
Yes.
Yeah, I would venture to say that they're the most efficient.
They have the fewest instances of having to go back and repeat their work.
Those types of things.
And I don't know, man.
In the Army, when I was tasked with the job of leading soldiers as an NCO... Sometimes it was very difficult because you have this mindset that I've been there already.
I've done that.
I've been the private.
I've been the shit heel in the mud.
But I found that my men were a lot more apt to do whatever needed to be done to get the job done if they knew and believed that I would do it with them.
And that goes for any other civilian job I had.
If my boss was willing to take some shots on the chin when we screwed up, okay, well, I'm going to go to bat harder for this job, for this person, for this agency, because you believe that you're supported, right?
And so I can only imagine how some of these people feel when they walk into a bathroom, take the top off their Hydra Flask or their Yeti water bottle, and fill it with sink water.
I can only imagine what they're thinking.
It would be enough for me to think about, wow, this is bullshit.
I gotta find a different job.
And unfortunately, some people are...
We're stuck where they're at because, you know, they feel that this is the best they're ever going to do.
And I would say to that, knock it off.
But we still need good people.
So it's a conundrum, right?
We still need good people to be in the system, to work at the VA, to take care of the veterans who need care.
But how do we do it efficiently and with integrity?
And I think that you nailed it on the head, man.
Stop hiring managers.
Because I would say for every manager they hire, they could probably hire one and a half to two grunts.
Ground pounders, if you will.
Right?
I mean, that's kind of how that works, isn't it?
It should.
I've never seen their pay structures, but I would assume.
I mean, that's pretty typical.
You know, if it's not a little more than two, two to one on the pay structure.
But again, I did look up before we started chatting today just some of the entry-level VA jobs.
And I would say this, I mean, as bad as we just pounded on it, but if there are people out there looking, entry-level laborers at the VA have a very, very nice compensation package.
Yeah, they don't get paid bad.
No, that's not bad at all.
Well, so then...
Well, you're right.
We just hammered on this.
Now we're saying it's not that bad.
I'm saying the pay...
It doesn't...
But you could pay me...
$10,000 a day, if I'm not appreciated, if I'm not happy, if I'm not comfortable, I'm not taking the money.
You know, and I think that was kind of the undertone of the information given to us this week, was these are all these small scale issues that just beat over time, right?
Like it's a death by a thousand needles.
They all seem pretty They're smaller in scale when you take them one by one.
But when you combine all of those things together that they discussed, it makes it a very difficult situation to say, is the juice worth the squeeze?
Is it worth making this money with all these other headaches and then all these other pressures where I could go make a little bit less and have all of the freedom and the decompression time when I leave my job and There's something that everybody has to weigh, so I was just looking at it because I was shocked.
I thought for sure, you're getting crap done, you're getting water from the sink, you're doing all these other things, you're working all the extra hours, and you're getting overtime.
I thought that number was going to be...
Far lower than it was.
So I might actually be filling out an application tomorrow.
No, you're not.
No, you're not.
But that even furthers our narrative, right?
That it's not just about the money.
And you're right.
You're a thousand percent right.
I could have a job making $50,000 to $80,000 more a year than I'm making.
But if I'm not happy there, I'm going to consider finding something else.
And if I do find something that fits my personality, that fits my morals, that fits who I am better, and it's less money, I might be apt to take that job for less money because I'm here to tell you that just because you have a job that you think is great or that just pays well, try going to your job that pays well And being unhappy all day, every day.
And the sad part is that a lot of people, a lot of Americans do that.
They do.
Man, they get stuck in the rut.
Well, and I mean, the story is as old as time in our country, right?
Where, like you said, people get stuck in a rut.
Well, they get stuck because now you've got this job.
And this is just a scenario that popped in my mind.
Now you have this job that pays well.
And for your first three to six months, you're able to figure it out and navigate the BS and just go to work and go home and be done with it for the day.
Well, then you get yourself, now you're making more money, now you buy a nicer vehicle maybe, not super expensive, but something nicer.
Maybe you move to a better apartment or whatever it is, right?
Because I believe that as Americans, one of the things that we fall into the trap of is living beyond our means and living paycheck to paycheck, which a lot of Americans do.
And so now you're at this job, you got your bills paid, but you hate going there every day.
And now it's even worse because you feel like you're stuck.
You're stuck in that job because you need that job to pay for the new lifestyle in which you've built for yourself.
And who knows, man?
Sometimes you're not able to find something that pays better or the same because those better jobs are usually taken up or you're not qualified or nowadays people are reporting that they're getting denied for jobs because they are told they're overqualified.
So what do you do, right?
You stay in your horseshit job making your decent living, but I don't know, I guess quality of life is what comes into my mind, and finding a balance between the two, and I think that's the challenge for everybody, right?
We're not reporting groundbreaking news here.
I mean, everybody's doing that, right?
Trying to make a better life for themselves and not have to compromise their happiness, their morals, or their time with their family, friends, or what have you.
I'm still trying to figure out how low the totem would actually have to be for me to be overqualified for a job.
That's a pretty low bar for me.
Well, I think you'd be an overqualified entry-level carpenter.
Well, I don't know.
Folks, I'm here to tell you something.
I have personally seen some of Jason's work and he's overqualified to be an entry-level carpenter.
But if I was in charge of hiring entry-level carpenters and you interviewed for the job and you were willing to take it, I personally would not mind having an overqualified carpenter.
But I think that the trap that employers fall into is they don't want to hire people that are going to take their jobs.
That's why the military promotion system doesn't work.
It's why none of this malarkey and bullshit with bureaucracies ever work.
People are too concerned about having amazing people around them for fear that it exposes their inefficiencies or ineffectiveness.
What a false...
What a challengingly shitty way to live your life and it's all over in that system.
That was one of the things that she said without saying this week.
Did you notice that?
No.
Oh, it's always the gaps in the conversation that fill in for me.
And, you know, really when you're talking about like overqualified people, no, you nailed it on the head and that's what the insinuation was.
Is that nobody wants to hire these people that really know how to do it.
They would rather have somebody that doesn't know how to do it so they won't have somebody else looking over their shoulder, gunning for their job, or making them look foolish.
I mean, I couldn't imagine if I were on a hiring board and let's just say I oversaw a department selling pens and all of a sudden the guy who created BIC and their entire marketing line walked into my hiring board.
Coming for a job, working directly for me, knowing full well that this guy, in this hypothetical situation, sold 450 million pens last year, and we're a struggling pen sales company, and he tells me he wants $30,000 a year What kind of an idiot would I be not to hire this guy instantly?
So when you hear that, that's what I hear.
I just hear people who are very insecure in who they are in their job or position.
Because there have been times where I have been around people that were in very low positions that had some of the most amazing ideas and weren't recognized just based upon their platform or station.
And then as soon as I had a conversation with somebody who was to be perceived as somebody who could speak to the point, They were given all the accolades that were available for this person's amazing idea.
And they had already heard the idea from that person, but they just didn't take it seriously.
And so I think that probably happens at the VA more than any of us would like to admit.
Well, I'm sure it does.
I'm sure it does because it happens everywhere.
And why it's confusing to me is my whole life, my whole adult life working and in the military, I was always told we're only as strong as the weakest link on our team, right?
And again, this isn't groundbreaking thoughts here.
And so I guess if I hear you correctly, being the person that says, okay, well, maybe you outshine me in these areas, but I'm hiring you to be part of a team.
And if I can hire you and it makes our team stronger, then everybody wins.
Now, the problem in that becomes that there are conniving assholes out there that are looking to take what you have.
And so it's got to be a strategic thing.
But if places like when I worked at the VA, it was all about, hey, we're a team.
So make sure we're helping each other out so we can all get done with our day at the same time.
If you're slow here, go here and help out, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, cool.
No problem.
But the second somebody on that team stabs you in the back, goes behind your back to talk to the boss about this, that, or the other thing without bringing issues to you for...
I mean, there's a whole plethora of things as to why those things break down.
And I think that there's probably a lot of those unforeseen instances, both positive and negative, that you and I aren't hitting on.
But the main idea is if I can bring somebody that's stronger than me onto my team, our team is going to kick ass.
And the one thing I always told my people when I was in charge in the civilian world or in the military, I used to tell them all the time at our staff meetings, look, man, If you make me look good as your boss or your leader, I'm going to make you look better.
And I won't say that we don't all have the opportunity to benefit from this, but the subordinates are the ones that benefit the most.
Of course I benefit, right, because they're going to make me look good because they're doing what they're asked, they do it well, and they exceed and they excel and blah, blah, blah.
But when your team looks good to the powers that be or to the public or to the masses, it's the frontline people, in my opinion, that should get all the accolades.
And if you're the leader and you're not passing those down and passing that attention down to the people below you, that's a failure in leadership, in my opinion.
Well, create a pretty rough culture to want to work in.
Well, and I think the fear is that that's part of the place we've gotten to.
We have leaders in places, in high and low, that aren't willing to be part of the team.
Less people are living by this, make me look good and I'll make you look better mentality.
Right.
That's what it seems to me.
I mean, I don't know if you agree with that or not, but...
Everybody hides from everything.
Like, nobody wants to be, you know, not that you want to be confrontational, but nobody wants to accept reality anyway.
So, I mean, how are you going to see something like that shift or change where you know that anytime anybody says anything, you're the first one to get, you know, you stick your neck out.
Nobody comes around you to protect you.
They just cut your head off and on to the next.
I mean, you know, that's just kind of one of those things that's evolved over time here, and it seems to have picked up steam the past couple of years.
And, you know, maybe until that changes, you won't see real change.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I think that we're in a time in our society and our communities that...
We've lost those fundamental ideas.
We have lost the ability to put the team as a whole first in many areas of our lives.
And then, in turn, we focus on what our benefit is.
What do we get?
What are we bringing?
You know, I mean, I don't know.
It would seem to me that, you know, Jason, if you worked for me, I would be stoked to give you a $5,000 a year raise or something like that.
Right?
Because that's great for you.
It's great for your family.
And you're going to be loyal.
You're going to work your ass off.
And you're not going to steal from me.
Yeah.
It means I made you a lot more money than that, you know?
Yeah, that's true.
I suppose you know, that's true.
That's how it works, right?
But that's thrive over survive.
You know, and I think too many people live in the survival mode rather than the thriving mode.
And so that's, you know...
Whatever.
Well, I'll tell you what, I don't know if we've solved all the world's problems here today, but I think that we have some good ideas in place.
We've run out of time for the evening, but I would like to, before we go, give Jason the opportunity to give us a final thought, and I will follow you up, Jason, so go ahead.
You've got about 30 seconds.
So is this because of Jerry Springer?
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
It feels Springer-esque.
Folks, Jason hates the final thought.
That's why we do this.
But I think that he has profound things to say.
So give us 30 seconds.
We're running out of time.
My bad.
Yeah.
I don't have anything on this one.
I think we hit everything.
I would hope, maybe in hearing this, maybe this gets some type of frequency and goes somewhere where somebody can hear some of these things.
Again, they're not new ideas.
They're in no way, shape, or form, but maybe it'll be an acknowledgement that some of the complaints that people have heard and they're voicing truly need to be listened to and thought through at the VA and at the county level.
Dealing with the hiring problems.
See?
That's painless.
Thank you for that.
Before we go, I want to close with this.
About this time last week, our good friend Jason turned 45.
So I want to, from the audience and myself to you publicly, say happy birthday, brother.
And we love you.
So with that, folks, we run out of time.
Please take care of yourselves, be well, and we'll see you next week.
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