New in PJ Media:
We’ve heard a great deal over the last few weeks about government waste and inefficiency, but this is the weirdest example yet of how dysfunctional the federal government really is. This is the government we’re talking about, however, and so this manifestation of government inefficiency will likely be eclipsed next week, but for the moment, this is the one that takes the cake.
Fox News reported Wednesday that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are investigating Iron Mountain, a converted limestone mine in Pennsylvania where “federal employee retirements are processed manually using a system that could take months.” If you’re trying to make drastic cuts in the number of federal employees, this could pose a serious problem, and that’s why it has come to the attention of Musk and Trump.
During his appearance in the Oval Office with his four-year-old son, Musk said: “And then we’re told this is actually, I think, a great anecdote, because we’re told the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000.” This is because of an antiquated and inefficient system that no one has ever gotten around to fixing. Musk continued: “We’re like, well, what? Why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It’s manually calculated and written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down to mine and like, what do you mean, a mine?”
That’s right: in this computer age, if you want to retire from your cushy federal job, maybe to take that cushy establishment media job you’ve been eyeing, you have to fill out paperwork. Not digital forms, but old-fashioned paperwork that then gets sent to an old limestone mine for processing. On X, DOGE explained: “Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months.”
Back in 2014, when even the leftist establishment professed to care about government waste and inefficiency, the Washington Post exposed this curious operation, as a Post writer reminded the world that he had that great novel in him, beginning his article this way: “The trucks full of paperwork come every day, turning off a country road north of Pittsburgh and descending through a gateway into the earth. Underground, they stop at a metal door decorated with an American flag.”
Once you got inside, “a room opens up as big as a supermarket, full of five-drawer file cabinets and people in business casual. About 230 feet below the surface, there is easy-listening music playing at somebody’s desk. This is one of the weirdest workplaces in the U.S. government — both for where it is and for what it does.” The Post said that “600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management” worked there, doing nothing but processing retirement papers.
There is more. Read the rest here.
WPM says
Kind of like Raiders of the Lost Ark ark ,I wonder how many employees are still carry on the payroll and retirement payments after they die because their papers work is missing in the mine or backlog for years ?
ElderlyZionist says
So…If 600 employees can process a maximum of 10,000 status changes in a month, that comes to 16 2/3 status changes per 30 day employee month. Since no one works weekends, figure 20 working days per month, then that comes to .83 status changes processed per employee working day. Of course, not all of the 600 employees will be processing status changes full time. Many will be drinking coffee, scratching themselves or picking their noses. And many will be working from home.
Transmaster says
I remember when I retired. My military retirement, Fed retirement, Social Security, and the Government 401K. Of all of those, only the Thrift Savings Plan is in civilian hands. Super large pension fund companies run it. It took months to establish the payouts from the first three. The Person at the Thrift Saving Plan apologizes that my first payment would take over a week. The Federal retirement system was overhauled by President Reagan. His people were unable to take it as far as they wanted. Only the Thrift Saving Plan was put in civilian hands, they wanted to turn it all over to these huge pension fund houses. The TSP has never dropped below a 10% annual return; mostly, it is above 15%. On the others, I have to what on politician wanting to be re-elected for cost of living increases.
hil Copson says
It all sounds rather wonderful, actually. Rather reminiscent of “Peter Simple’s” perennially unsuccessful writer and “last citizen of the Republic of Letters”. – Julian Birdbath, who performed an astounding feat of literary detective-work by discovering a fourth Brontë sister – (Doreen) – but never having received received the recognition he deserved, finally retired in disappointment to a disused lead-mine in Derbyshire to spend his declining years working by flickering candle-light on a biography of the poet Stephen Spender, with only his pet toad Amiel for company…
But wouldn’t we all like to find a low green door-way – whether flag be-decked or not – set into an ivy-covered wall, where on passing through, we find ourselves magically returned to a lost age where people turned up to work properly-dressed, and comported themselves as ladies and gentlemen should?
Already I hear the scratch of quill on parchment as rows of bewhiskered, green eye-shade-wearing, shirt-sleeve gartered, celluloid-cuffed, cycle-clipped clerks – the seats of their trousers polished to perfection from decades of sitting on high wooden stools – confer patiently over the merits of J.D Gunslinger’s (R.Hickory Holler) pension application and file it away to be revisited in “not less than a decade”.
Mr Musk’s drive and energy are in the true American spirit and much to be commended, but do they not also serve – who only sit and wait?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I thought that the mine thing was a joke. At any rate, don’t they have electronic records of who all are government employees? If they do, they could just mark on those the employees who choose to retire, and let them
This mine was built in 1955, when there weren’t too many government employees, and DC wasn’t a major city other than being the capital. It needs to be decommissioned ASAP
Another approach they could take is to just terminate everybody, and then have those employees who want to stay enter their own data in an online database, which would then feed into a server. That way, they don’t need to hire tons of people to upload it. Those who can’t enter it either themselves or using a family member’s help simply won’t get rehired, nor their pensions. That will force the more incompetent employees to be more creative
As for the mine, just use it as an underground nuclear test site
Jerome from Layton says
Some of my father’s military records were lost in the St. Louis Repository fire.I think mine will be safer in that lime mine.