They have staffing shortages. My office was never fully staffed, now they have 3 people. I took the early retirement. It's a dumpster fire and I feel bad for my coworkers.

On SS now. Fingers crossed for me and the rest of America.

Most of us who already receive benefits are getting direct deposits regularly and on-time.

I haven't needed to visit the SSA office in Pittsburgh since my benefits went into effect. Luckily I was able to make arrangements during Biden's term about 4 years ago. (The Covid lockdown was over by then.) It was a positive experience for me then, but I hate to think what it would be like now.

and my wait was an hour or two, it did move quickly given how many were in there and for what.

The last thing I did in there was last year to "hand deliver" a "W-4V" form to have voluntary withholdings of federal income tax taken from my check.

That process couldn't be done online, so it was either mail it in or hand it in personally. Took the CSR all of 5 minutes to confirm the % and enter the info into the system. I had chuckled to her beforehand that I was hoping that I would be an "easy" one for her!

A retirement claim is not that hard to do. It's the disability claims that are time consuming. i spent the majority of my time working on eligibility. It took years to learn. The new hire pipeline is shut down. They are kind of like air traffic controllers. The system is so complicated, training takes years and they got a big fat F on their training processes. The training is so bad, most new hires quit. The perfect storm is here. I've been saying it for years. Doge did not help the situation.

it seemed the problem was trying to help what are obviously "older" people, to navigate the "online" stuff and the data entry not working! I know there were a couple customer windows near the seating area and I watched one poor woman working with one of the frustrated CSRs, to try to get an entry for an online form to work correctly!

I know with my former agency, with all the lab closures and reorgs, the employees had had it and I know at least 8 of my former coworkers went on and either retired or took whatever (illegal) "Muskrat deal" was offered. They had one big retirement party for them (including one of my former direct reports).