I hope all of you are having a happy and relaxing Labor Day week-end.

Linked below is an inspired YouTube video that reminded me of my time working for the federal government in Washington, D.C. But before we get to the video, here’s the backstory.

In the summer of 1969, my wife and I were living in an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. I had just graduated from law school and needed a summer job while I prepared for the bar exam. My college friend Matt, who had just finished his third year at Georgetown Medical School, called and asked if I wanted to join him in running a summer program for “disadvantaged youths” at the Department of the Army’s Harry Diamond Laboratory on Connecticut Avenue in Washington. He had secured a temporary “appointment” from the Army and was looking for an assistant.

I jumped at the chance and applied for a similar “appointment”. I wound up working with Matt counseling about 50 black teen-agers who had paid summer internships at the lab.

The kids were fun, and Matt and I had a good time counseling and hanging out with them. But, as the summer wore on, it became apparent that they didn’t require much maintenance. They had adjusted to their jobs nicely and were doing well. In fact, they neither needed nor wanted much counseling. But the rules and regulations didn’t allow us to help out elsewhere or perform any work not directly related to mentoring our young charges. After all, the lab was run by the Army.

And that’s when Matt and I realized that, due to the established rules and bureaucratic nature of the lab, there was going to be a lot of downtime. As in having absolutely nothing to do for most of the day.

We soon got into the habit of arriving late, taking two hours for lunch, and leaving early. In this we seemed to fit in with the habits of the permanent staff. It didn’t really matter because there was precious little work to do.

One day, out of sheer boredom, we composed a new set of lyrics to Simon and Garfunkels’ 59th Street Song. You can listen to the tune by clicking on this picture:

Catchy, right?

So Matt and I changed the lyrics to this:

Slow down, you’re working too fast

We got to make this appointment last

Just sittin’ around with nothin’ to do

Sittin’ around and feelin’ useless!

La dee dah dah dah dah, feelin’ useless...

We sang it one day for our supervisor. He wasn’t amused.

Shortly thereafter, Matt returned to med school, and I was out of a job.

Three years later I returned to federal service as a Special Attorney with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U. S. Department of Justice. When I was hired, I was promised immediate assignment to an organized crime strike force in the field on the front line of the fight against La Cosa Nostra.

But first I had to report to Main Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for “processing” which included being photographed, fingerprinted and taking the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. When I received my Justice Department credentials, I was ready to hit the streets.

But then there was a catch. Heading into the field would have to wait while I did a stint of indeterminate length at Main Justice processing wiretap applications and immunity requests. Say what? No grand jury investigations? No street work? No turning mobsters into informants? No courtroom action?

All that would have to come later. Meanwhile I was to spend months at Main Justice pushing papers.

The work wasn’t very exciting or challenging. In fact, it was sub-mental and boring. A day’s work could be completed by a trained chimp in about an hour. That left the rest of the day open for blankly staring at the office wall.

Fortunately, I became friends with an FBI Special Agent who introduced me to the FBI firearms instructors who ran the shooting range in the basement of Main Justice. In those long ago days, J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI from his office at Main Justice. And when tourists visited the Bureau, they were taken to the range for a brief live fire demonstration of the different weapons carried by the agents.

Thanks to my Bureau friend, I was allowed to use the range between tour groups. I spent many happy hours using FBI firearms to shoot a mountain of free government ammunition. This helped me pass the time until that blessed day I was set free and transferred to the strike force in Buffalo, New York.

Talk about happy. I was back in the real world with a real job and free of the ennui of simulating work in Washington.

Now you may recall a previous post which featured this video of Oliver Anthony singing his epic “Rich Men North of Richmond” about the elites who run the federal government:

But now comes the artist known as Remy who has given us his interpretation of Oliver’s song. This “federal employee version” is spot on and very funny:

Happy Labor Day. And remember: your willingness to go to work, earn a living, and pay taxes is vital to keeping our leviathan federal bureaucracy cranking out useless, counterproductive and often indecipherable rules and regulations by which the rest of us must live. There are legions of semi-comatose federal employees watching the clock and counting on you to do the work that maintains their comfortable lives inside the Washington bubble.