I retired from the government in 1997 after 33 years federal service; I also had four years active duty in the military. A lot of those years were spent overseas, in a lot of pretty undesirable posts, and put in quite a lot of uncompensated overtime. My daughter, who works for my former employer, is on her third deployment to Bagram Air Field. Not all federal employees sit at their desks, doing their nails or playing solitaire.
But an extremely significant number are.
That's the issue.