Pros
The retirement pension, the ability to take off from work with little notice, the co-workers. We meet and help people from every day walks of life and the work can be very rewarding in that respect. It is actually possible to make a change in people's lives from a public contact job. The older you get, the more you see the value in having a job that has a decent pension package and the ability to contribute to a deferred savings plan such as our TSP. If you work in an office close to your home, that is a plus too.
Cons
Employees are treated like white-collar factory workers----it's a production line mentality. There are so many layers of management and each layer is so afraid of the layer above them that they tend to make everything look good so that their superiors don't know (as if they want to know anyway) how bad things actually are at the public contact level. Staffing is constantly reduced and the remaining employees, many of whom may not be particularly adept at their current position, are expected to produce more and more. Since we do little outside hiring, the talent pool within SSA is getting real thin.