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EK: So I wonder, with the program spanning ten years and across multiple administrations, both Republican and Democratic, was your sense that there was any difference in the way that the program was administered over that period of time, and do you think that a program like this could happen today?

AG: I'll start with the first part. No, I did not see any difference, those were the good old days when we were just lowly federal servants. In the time when we were most active, you were there to do a job. Our hope was that everybody voted, you didn't know who anybody voted for. We really didn't see any difference other than when we did have to go get the new letter. That was probably the biggest, from the position that I sat in, whether it was payments, cleaning, or program management analyst or whatever, management analyst, from where I sat, there was never a feeling of difference. I could totally see a need for a program such as ours because of what's going on, currently happening, unfortunately, I think it would be colored by politics. And that is the sad part, because really, other than our little caste situation, that was it, and that got resolved. There was not any fight, everybody was always cordial and open and willing to see the other person's point of view for the good of the application, for the good of the applicant, for the good of the client. Unfortunately, I think in today's federal sphere, that willingness to have care where you still have career people willing... I have a girlfriend who says her granny says, "The fish rots at the head," which makes sense. If we have that going on, it's going to be hard. My fear is that we would have to one day have another program, and that we have not learned from our mistakes. And we have the knowledge to do a program, but I don't think it would be the same. Even... not from the political sphere, the influence of politics on top of stuff, but then also in terms of people in the workforce today.

So if the youngest person that I knew would have been Pam Rouse, because I remember her eighteenth birthday party happening in the office. And Ms. Rouse turned forty-nine this year, because I've seen her on Facebook. So she turned forty-nine this year, so if there was a need for a program in twenty years, she'd be sixty-nine. So for the people that know how to do it, would be sixty-nine. If the cultures that are the millennials, the whatever is after millennials, there's just a different mindset about work. I can definitely recall nights when we would have been in the suite at DOL4, and the midnight oil was burning, but we're like, no, we got to get ready, we got to make sure, the I's need to be dotted, the T's need to be crossed, that was the ethic that we had, they work very differently. So, "But I got yoga class." Okay, yeah, but Mrs. whomever, we need to get back to her, we need to do the research, we need to contact these people, or even the creativity. Well, they said that they had this, and we see that this case has the same thing, and they were on the same street, is there any way that we could link? Those are the things that we did. Not so much. I'm not seeing that in the staff that I have. And when I talk to other fellow managers, they say the same. So I think it would be hard, but in terms of, we never... it wasn't until 2016 where politics came into play, in my opinion.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.