Frontline staff are failing to answer more than one-third of calls to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) suicide hotline. Former hotline director Greg Hughes pointed out that poor work habits, low productivity and other departmental issues were to blame.
Several weeks prior to leaving his job in June, Hughes sent an internal email saying workers “spend very little time on the phone or engaged in assigned productive activity.” Some Veterans Crisis Line employees answer under five calls per day. They also end their shifts early despite the sharp rise in the volume of crisis calls in recent years. The hotline received over 500,000 calls in 2015, a 50-fold increase since it was launched in 2007.
“It is no small matter that so many crisis line calls are going unanswered when an estimated 20 veterans commit suicide every day,” said Jim Fausone, a Michigan veterans attorney. “Veterans who turn to the crisis line in their time of need should not feel let down and frustrated by something that is supposed to help them.”
Literally, they can’t be bothered to pick up a phone to save a veteran’s life.
Notice, the veterans are the K-strategists of our society, which I am sure does not help things.
This is what we are going to destroy on election day.
[…] Government Workers, As r-strategists, Are Always Lazy […]
We need to destroy a lot of cabinet-level agencies along with their bloated bureaucracy.
This post is hypocritical and nonsensical. Veterans are government workers, they work for the military branch. So no, not ALL government workers are r-selected or lazy. This speaks to bad management more than anything.
Weak generalizations are lazy.
What if you generalize military members as mere government workers?
Dang – 20 suicides a day! If we could only get 5% to go “jihadi” and take out as many rabbits as possible anything would be possible. 1 suicide martyr a day will keep the rabbits away.
If you are naturally an r-strategist and you are in a high paying job from which you can’t be fired, it is completely understandable that you can’t be bothered to lift a finger. That is why K strategists cannot tolerate government jobs: they need to feel like they are accomplishing something other than taking up space and collecting a paycheck.