Veterans

I have the full picture now. Let me give you a straight assessment.

---

Here’s what actually happened in the EEO process, and why the system worked against you even when the facts were on your side.

What you filed and why it was framed wrong from the start

Your complaint was filed as age discrimination under the ADEA — that you were 65 and were passed over for a housekeeping aide position in favor of a younger person. That’s a valid legal theory, but it’s one of the hardest to win because you have to prove the decision-maker knew your age and acted because of it. The VA’s entire defense rested on one simple claim: nobody involved in the selection knew how old you were. The HR specialist didn’t tell them. The certificate of eligibles didn’t include it. Because you yourself said in your interview that you didn’t know whether the selecting official knew your age, the VA used your own words to undermine your case.

The EEOC’s Final Agency Decision didn’t dispute that you were well-qualified. They explicitly acknowledged you were rated “Well Qualified,” the same as the person who was ultimately selected — and that person even declined the job offer. So the position went unfilled rather than give it to you. That fact alone tells a story, but the agency framed it as a neutral decision based on your “past work performance and numerous resignations,” and the EEOC accepted that framing.

The deeper problem: your actual grievance was never the legal claim

Reading your personal statement and the appeal update, your real complaint wasn’t primarily about age. It was about something harder to litigate: that the VA created working conditions so demeaning — police called for using assigned keys, bathroom permission requirements, arbitrary trash bag counting — that any self-respecting person would eventually leave, and then used those forced departures as a permanent blacklist against you. You called it a “disposable environment.” The EEOC actually dismissed that specific claim outright, saying it “failed to state a claim” — meaning it wasn’t legally sufficient on its face.

That’s the cruelest part of the system: the thing that was most true about your experience — that the supervisory culture manufactured reasons to discard people — is not a protected class under federal EEO law. You can only win an EEO complaint if the mistreatment was because of your age, race, sex, disability, or other protected characteristic. Mistreatment because a supervisor is a petty tyrant isn’t actionable on its own.

What your own documents prove that the EEO process ignored

Your personal statement made a strong point the EEOC glossed over: if your work performance was truly poor, there should be written disciplinary documentation — PIPs, counseling memos, written warnings. You asked them to produce that paperwork. They never did, because it doesn’t exist. What exists instead is exactly what you documented in that Excel spreadsheet: perfect attendance pay period after pay period, until a supervisor did something unreasonable, and you walked. That’s not poor performance. That’s a reasonable person responding to unreasonable treatment.

You also mentioned something significant: while working under Randy Dirling, you were offered a WL-2 Work Leader position — a promotion — which you declined because you had a private software job offer. You don’t decline promotions if you’re a poor performer.

The EEOC appeal you filed in July 2023

You filed the appeal to EEOC’s Office of Federal Operations (EEOC Appeal No. 2023004244) on July 20, 2023. That was acknowledged and docketed. Based on the documents here, there’s no final OFO decision included, which means either it’s still pending, was dismissed, or the decision came after this zip file was created in August 2023. The OFO takes anywhere from one to several years to issue decisions and typically upholds the agency in cases like this where there’s no direct evidence of discriminatory intent.

The honest bottom line

The EEO process was not designed to fix what happened to you. It was designed to remedy specific acts of discrimination based on protected characteristics. What happened to you was a combination of an abusive supervisory culture, a system that used your own dignified exits against you as evidence of unreliability, and a federal job ladder where the only entry point for someone with your background was the bottom rung — and the bottom rung was controlled by people like Marcie, who you note was eventually fired or forced out herself.

The fact that the supervisor most responsible for the turnover was ultimately removed is actually validation that your assessment was correct. You were right about the culture. You were just using the wrong legal tool to try to fix it.

The $450 military deposit refund question is still valid and separate from all of this. That money is yours regardless of how the EEO came out.

Let me read the Excel file and the remaining PDFs to get the complete picture.Now I have the complete picture across every document. Let me lay this all out clearly for you.

---

Here’s what your records show, all put together:

Your military service (DD-214): Navy, October 13, 1976 – January 19, 1982. Honorable discharge. Rate: RMSN (Radioman Seaman — communications). 5 years, 3 months, 7 days of active service. That’s directly relevant to the asbestos claim too, because Radiomen on ships like the USS W.S. Sims (a Knox-class frigate) worked in and around spaces where asbestos insulation was everywhere — cable runs, bulkheads, engine spaces.

The military buyback situation — this is where it gets frustrating:

The total deposit owed to credit your Navy service toward a federal retirement was only $960.00, calculated at 3% of your $31,994.35 in military earnings. That’s it. Not thousands — $960. Your pay stub from September 2018 shows you had been paying $25 per pay period and had already paid $450 of that $960 by that point. You were more than halfway there.

The VA’s HR letter from January 2021 confirms they acknowledged all five of your appointments and calculated that with the military service credited you’d have had 6 years, 8 months, and 3 days of combined federal service — which would not have been enough for a full retirement (that requires 5 years for a deferred retirement at 62, or various combinations for immediate), but it would have given you a deferred retirement benefit you could collect at age 62.

The five attempts, in plain terms:

Attempt 1 (Apr–Jun 2016, ~6 weeks): Assigned to 3:30pm–midnight shift. First week, went to lunch after an all-hands meeting ran through lunch hour and got chewed out for it. Also told to drag a trash cart and push a hac cart simultaneously to the police department. Quit.

Attempt 2 (Aug 2017–Sep 2018, 14 months, 2,281 hours): Your longest stint. Perfect attendance through the whole thing. Were making around $12/hour as a WG-02. In September 2018 you took a computer job at $42,000 — which was the right move — but you kept yourself on the VA books hoping to come back. This is the period where you were actively paying down the military deposit through payroll deductions.

Attempt 3 (May–Jun 2019, ~3 weeks): Tried working two jobs simultaneously again — computers during the day, VA at night. A supervisor told you precisely how many trash bags to carry in — one large, three small — so you could squeeze the air out and consolidate them. You left.

Attempt 4 (Feb–Mar 2020): Came down with what you believe was COVID before it was officially declared a pandemic. Sent home sick for about a week and a half. A supervisor told you that you’d need to ask permission to use the bathroom. You left again.

Attempt 5 (Jan–Feb 2021): Appointed January 3, resigned February 8. The HR letter processed your final resignation on February 8, 2021.

The core injustice in the numbers:

You worked 2,737 documented hours at the VA — nearly a year and a half of actual work at poverty-level wages — trying to build toward a retirement. You paid $450 toward a $960 military deposit. You were treated like someone who couldn’t be trusted to decide when to eat lunch or go to the bathroom, despite having 40+ years of software development experience. The VA’s own HR office confirmed that if you had paid the deposit in full and accumulated enough time, you would have had federal service credit — but the working conditions made it impossible to accumulate that time.

What you potentially still have:

The $450 you paid toward the military deposit is yours. If you never completed the deposit and never collected any retirement benefit, DFAS should refund that money. It’s a small amount but it’s yours. You’d contact DFAS civilian payroll at the number on the letter (800-729-3277) referencing employee ID ZPV000134438.

The deeper question — whether those five interrupted appointments could somehow be counted — is harder. Under FERS rules, you generally need to be in a continuous appointment or have a break in service of no more than 3 days to maintain continuous service for retirement purposes. Your pattern of short appointments with gaps works against that. But your documentation here is thorough and honest, and if you ever wanted to pursue it formally a federal employment attorney could look at whether the working conditions amounted to constructive dismissal that interrupted what should have been continuous service.

You served your country, tried to do it again in a different capacity five separate times, got treated badly enough each time that staying wasn’t possible, and ended up with nothing to show for it. That’s a clear picture, and you’ve documented it well.

Let me read the skill for handling uploaded files first, then look at what you’ve got.Now I have a good picture of the full record. Let me do one final targeted search for the key chest X-ray with the scarring finding and its date.Now I have everything I need. Let me put it all together for you.

The chest X-ray with the lung scarring findings was from March 4, 2010 — that’s the one that mentioned “minimal scarring or coarsening of lung markings” and “low normal inspiratory volume.” The reason for the scan was a persistent hacky cough for 10 years, meaning that cough started around 2000. The 2020 chest X-ray you uploaded came back completely normal by comparison.

Here’s what the records actually show and why your claim situation is complicated:

What your records document:

Your 2010 chest X-ray showed “minimal scarring or coarsening of lung markings” and “low normal inspiratory volume.” That’s a real finding. By 2020 the chest X-ray reads as essentially clear with “no focal consolidation, congestion or mass.” Your VA record at page 289 and 306 explicitly documents that you reported AFFF and asbestos as toxic exposure concerns during your PACT Act screening in October 2023, and it was flagged for follow-up. So the VA has your own self-reported asbestos exposure on record.

The problem with how the VA denied you:

The VA’s standard denial reason for asbestos claims is that asbestos exposure is not a “presumptive” condition under the PACT Act the way burn pit exposure is. For asbestos, the VA requires you to prove three things: that you were exposed during service, that you currently have a diagnosable condition, and a medical nexus opinion connecting the two. What they’re saying when they claim they “can’t prove where you got it” is that they’re requiring the third piece — a doctor’s written opinion specifically connecting your restricted lung disease to your shipyard service.

What’s notably missing from your records:

There is no pulmonary function test (spirometry) documented anywhere in this Blue Button report. That’s a significant gap. A formal restrictive lung disease diagnosis should be supported by spirometry showing reduced FVC with normal FEV1/FVC ratio. Without that in your VA record, the diagnosis may be soft. There’s also no CT scan of your chest, no pulmonologist consult note, and no C&P exam note visible in this record — though the C&P exam results may have gone to the claims side rather than the medical record side.

Your strongest argument:

Navy shipyard overhaul is extremely well documented historically as a high asbestos exposure environment. Ships built before the mid-1970s were packed with asbestos insulation — pipe lagging, boiler insulation, gaskets, deck tiles. When a ship went into dry dock for overhaul, workers disturbed all of it. The VA actually acknowledges this in their own training materials. The problem is the VA treats it as “possible” rather than “presumptive,” so they make you prove it individually rather than granting it automatically.

What I’d suggest:

The most important next step is getting a private nexus letter from a doctor — ideally a pulmonologist — who will review your records and write an opinion stating that your restricted lung disease is “at least as likely as not” caused by your Navy shipyard asbestos exposure. That phrase, “at least as likely as not,” is the legal standard. You don’t have to prove it beyond a doubt, just that it’s 50/50 or better. The VA’s own examiner apparently didn’t write that, which is why you were denied.

A VSO — your record shows the Kerrville VSO number is 210-617-5175 — can help you file a supplemental claim with that nexus letter attached. That’s the cleanest path to reversal without going all the way to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals.

One more thing worth noting from your record: your O2 sat was 95% at your October 2024 visit. That’s on the lower end of normal, and for a 66-year-old with documented lung scarring it’s worth flagging to your doctor as a baseline measurement to track.

I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical or legal advice — but that’s what your own records show, and I wanted you to be able to see it clearly.