HR Hatin'

So for about a month now the AFPC (AF Personnel Center - our HR peeps) has had August 15th posted as the date when the fiscal year 2008 VSP (voluntary separation pay) plan is supposed to come out. As many of you know, I have been waiting for this program to come out so I can put in my separation paperwork and get a nice, fat chunk o' change. I wanted to make sure that I was first in line so that I could be guaranteed a slot (the AF is being much smarter about getting rid of people who have overages in their career fields and mine only has a few slots left after the FY 07 program closed out in May). So I tried calling my local personnel office about 50x both yesterday and today, and, of course, no one answered the phone or returned any of my messages because they are HR and what do they care about my career? So I sucked it up and got the kiddos up early and headed on down to base first thing this morning to make sure I got my paperwork in. When I get to the MPF (personnel office) the two civilian ladies working the customer service desk (who don't bother to get up and answer my question for 10 minutes -- EVEN THOUGH I AM THE ONLY PERSON IN THE OFFICE -- because one of them is on the telephone) have no idea what I am talking about. In fact, they don't even know what the VSP is. This is the customer service section, people. This program (for FY 07) has been out for over a year and they don't know what I am talking about??!! Finally, one of them suggests that I go upstairs and talk to the folks in Separations (who I had also tried calling with no success). So I go up there with questions in hand and receive the same blank stare from the girl in uniform at their front desk. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!?? These are the people who are supposed to be helping me and they don't have the first freaking clue what I am talking about. Can you seriously be that incompetent at your job? Finally she locates someone who actually knows what I am talking about and it turns out that AFPC has not yet released the message for the FY 08 program (in spite of the fact that the website has been saying it will be released today for the last damn month). Not only that, but he has no idea when the message will be released, what it will say, or what information I'll need to provide them with when the message is actually released. So I got the kids up early (meaning I stayed up after A's 5am feeding since it takes me that long to get everyone ready) and drove all the way to base for nothing all because AFPC didn't bother to update their website on, you know, the 14th of August and because no one would answer their goddamn phone. If I hadn't had the kids with me, I might have just let a few choice words fly (which would probably have been quite stupid since I will eventually have to go through these people to put my paperwork in even if they have no idea what they are doing). I can't believe that my HR department is so damn incompetent. Okay, that's not true. HR is almost always incompetent, but it's still very frustrating!

In other news, Hubs is on a business trip to Toronto this week, so I am all alone with the kids, wah! Plus his cell phone is getting roaming charges out there (I guess b/c he's in another country), so we can't even talk that much since we don't want to run up our phone bill :( Hubs is my beacon of sanity in an otherwise poop and puke-filled world. I miss him so much!