5 Fallacies: Clock watching with a pro who knows

Salamone said not only do most feds put in hours, the higher the pay scale, the more hours feds work!

The higher you go up in the rank throughout the GS system and into the Executive Schedule, you have more and more time demands, more and more meetings that you are responsible for attending and participating and leading. So certainly, the higher you go up, I think the greater the demands are on you as an employee, which obviously would lead to working longer hours, maybe coming in at 8, leaving at 6, so putting in a 10 hour day and maybe even working longer than that with everybody having BlackBerries. Being on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, pretty much.

That small block of technology in the hands of a federal manager can mean losing hours upon hours of time, said Salamone.

It probably adds at least one, maybe two to three hours a day, and it could vary during the course of the year too. You know, getting toward the end of the fiscal year, if you're a CFO or if you work for the CFO, you could be working eight to 10 to 12 hours a day and then you add a couple of hours on time with your BlackBerry answering e-mails home, you could be working, easily a 12 hour day, depending on the time of the year.

Salamone said perception is probably at the root of the fallacy. When Americans stand in line, whether it's a their local DMV or Post Office or Social Security office, it's all "the government" to them.

For more on today's "5 Five Fallacies of Government" topic, "Federal employees are clock watchers", click here.