Starting Monday, November 19, 2012, local Social Security offices will close their doors to citizens 30 minutes earlier every day. Even worse, starting on January 2, 2013, local Social Security offices will close at Noon every day. These reduced hours will not apply to hearing offices, only the local District offices. That means that starting in 2013, you will only be able to go to the Social Security office for a few hours each day, and only in the morning!
A public statement by the Social Security Administration offers the following reason for these drastically reduced hours, “While agency employees will continue to work their regular hours, this shorter public window will allow them to complete face-to-face interviews and process claims work without incurring the cost of overtime. The significantly reduced funding provided by Congress under the continuing resolution for the first six months of the fiscal year makes it impossible for the agency to provide the overtime needed to handle service to the public as it has done in the past.”
Whether they like it or not, government work is a customer service business. The customer is you – the citizens of the U.S.A. I encourage you to call your Congressman and voice your protest. How can a government agency close its doors at 12:00 p.m. every day? They are only open for business for 3 or 4 hours to you the public? What about people that cannot get transportation in the morning? Can you imagine the lines…crushing a whole day of people into a few hours of availability to the public. With the increasing numbers of people aging into the system due to the baby boom, these reduced hours have the potential to be a nightmare.
