January 2017 Federal Employment Law Training Group Newsletter

Driving in the Dark

I am not proud of what I am about to tell you, and please don’t tell my grandkids that I did it, but when I was a teenager, sometimes at night I would drive down country roads with my headlights turned off. I grew up in a small rural town with nothing much to do for excitement but drive Dad’s car. Our road trips were sort of a cross between American Graffiti and Carpool Karaoke. The thrill of driving down a two-lane road at night, and then switching off the headlights, was about as much of an adrenaline rush as we could imagine back in the day. Of course, we did it for only short periods of time – maybe 30 seconds at the most – and always on a full moon night. Heck, it’d be really dangerous to do it without moonlight (pause for the ironic nature of this last statement). As we move into the first months of a new administration, many of you readers see a dark road ahead, much as did Sarah Connor in the second Terminator. What’s going to happen? Where will the danger be? How will we get through this? Here at FELTG, we hope that you will see us as the moonlight in your dark travels. We don’t know any more than you do what 2017 in the federal civil service will bring. But whatever it is, we’re here to shine light on your path, and to offer some degree of rationality in what some might characterize as a dangerous thing to do.