Retiring: 38 Years of 'Employment'

German politicians and the German public were aghast and outraged that their European Union euros were being yet-again wasted in support of a country like Greece whose social support policies they considered too rich, compared to the frugal, responsible Germans who know the value of a pfennig and respect it for what it's worth.

And because they are the mainstay of the EU with their strong economy they feel resentful that their hard-working, pfennig-pinching population must pay to prop up a profligate economy for a self-entitled people.  Austerity is the key to success, and it was past time for Greece to engage in a little bit of belt-tightening, even if the populace furiously denied this.

Can one blame them?  After all, if one set of people acknowledge by their thrift and hard work the value of both and the virtues of fending for oneself, and being socially and fiscally responsible at the personal and the governmental administrative level, while the other seeks continually to advantage themselves by short-changing the government on tax renditions while at the same time insisting their social dues are owed them, they're not entirely compatible.

And why then should the responsible, self-respecting population be expected to financially support the irresponsible, selfish beliefs in entitlements of those who consider their personal welfare must be sustained at no personal sacrifice whatever to the greater good of their society?  It simply makes no sense.  So all hail to the Germans for their superior values and life-modes.

Um, what?

A civil servant has had the unmitigated hubris to crow about the fact that he "did nothing for 14 years" while collecting quite a hefty salary?  How un-Teutonic.  How utterly selfish, and unprincipled.  How values-distorted and -degrading.  But this retiring worker boasts that he had 'earned'  $975,000 since 1998 for doing no work whatever?  Impossible!  Say it is not so...!

"Since 1998, I was present, but not really there.  So I'm going to be well-prepared for retirement ... Adieu", was what he had the unmitigated gall to write in an email that he fired off to his colleagues, some 500 other civil servants in Menden, North Rhine-Westphalia.  He has evidently worked in a municipal state survey's office since 1974.  And he has accused the local authorities of inefficiency, overlapping and parallel structures, etc.

The hiring of another surveying engineer to perform the very job this man was doing, left him with nothing to do.  "Of course, I well benefited from the freedom that came by me", he chortled.  Where is this man's personal sense of responsibility?  Oh, of course; it dwindled to zero representing the respect he finally had for those who made these decisions in administrative incompetence.

And he wasn't finished with just that.  He went on to accuse the Menden city authorities of other grave instances of administrative malfeasance: buying unusable computers and software, for example.  For his part, the mayor of Menden, experienced a "good dose of rage" as he viewed the email.  Claiming that the employee in question had not once - not once - complained about not having work to do to earn his salary.