I have overheard so many conversations where people claim that all government workers are lazy, stupid, inefficient, etc., to the point where they “probably couldn’t even get a job in the private sector”. How long has this attitude been going on?
I have noticed it since the 1980s, when I first entered the workforce. Did people think like this in the 1940s - 1970s, as well? Or is it a more recent phenomenon?
Ancient Rome?
It comes from people who begrudge paying one penny for the continued existence of America.
“Its a Free Country, Aint it? Like a Free Club!”
“You can act free while here, yeah… but you have to pay to keep the buildings open. Just like at your free club.”
“Thats Unconstitutional!”
“Go to a different club then. You’re money is good at any club on the planet. Door’s Thataway.”
Because taxes are taken from their checks, any person or service that is paid with The People’s Money to keep America open as a “Going Concern” must be lazy.
Its also resentment because “FICA” doesn’t mean they can’t hi their butts down to those workers offices in muddy cowboy boots and boss people around to get their ‘25 cents worth’.
This attitude is not unique to the USA… we have it to a certain extent in the UK (but not as bad, for sure). Perhaps it’s prevalent in capitalist countries, where the idea persists that people only work hard in order to make money for themselves.
Instances of lousy service abound in the private sector as well.
However, special angst is directed towards government employees because of the perception that “we pay their salaries!”.
Also, stuff like this doesn’t help.
I really don’t think it has as much to do with the “we pay their salaries” thing as is being suggested. In the military, there are a lot of offices that are 100% civilian run. Government employees. We’re all being paid by the same taxes. We military and those civilian government employees are being paid by the same taxes. And we also both pay taxes, but if I argued that I was paying that civilian’s salary, he/she could argue the same about me, because he/she is also paying taxes that pay me.
Anyway, so there is clearly no “we pay their salaries” mechanism at work.
Yet, without fail, it is very well accepted that all civilian government employees are lazy and often stupid. It sure does feel that way. I’m sure there is a lot of confirmation bias going on. But the opinion mentioned in the OP very accurately describes the opinion that most of the military has about most of the civilian government employees. And it has nothing to do with taxes or paying of salaries.
I think there is a great deal of confirmation bias in most tales of stupid or lazy government workers. People tend to remember the problems and forget the hundreds of other times that government workers have come to their aid and worked hard on their behalf. I’ll admit I’ve got a good dozen or so stories of morons behind agency desks I’ve encountered. However when I look back at all the various agencies and departments I’ve dealt with over the decades the morons were clearly a very small percentage of the people I encountered.
I also think some of attitude is old-fashioned envy by people who wish they had the kind of job security and protection civil service and other government employee systems offer.
The issue is that protections against firing a government employee are strong. For managers, it is easier to promote an incompetent person than to fire them, if the goal is to get them out of the organization.
This is combined with the fact in the private sector, generally there is a profit concern – even if there are similar protections against termination, the company’s financial health creates a strong motive to remove under-performing people that can mitigate the difficulty.
So government provides an environment where there is no strong motive to get rid of the under-performing employee and a great barrier to doing so.
Frankly, I am amazed at the substantial percentage of government employees that have a strong work ethic even in the face of their ill-performing colleagues. It’s one thing to show up, work hard, and leave on time when not only your boss but the corporate culture demand it; it’s another to do so even when you know you could get away with slacking.
Probably has much to do with the places people most frequently have to deal with a government employee: the DMV, post office, the airport. These are all near-universally unpleasant places, all prominently featuring long lines and the perception that the employees are taking their sweet-ass time, when really in a many cases it’s simply because of limitations in staffing, outdated equipment, and insistence on adherence to convoluted procedures and regulations.
It’s not that great of a barrier, it’s just that the government managers who would have to fill out some forms to fire someone are too lazy and inefficient. 
I think another factor is the perception that, since government jobs pay less than private sector jobs, the government has to settle for employees who “can’t make it” in the corporate world. I used to hear the same thing when I was working in the non-profit sector. Since the non-profit couldn’t pay as much as for profit jobs, there was an attitude that we were working there because we couldn’t find anything better.
I don’t share that view of government or non profit employees, but I think it’s fairly common.
As far as how far back it goes, probably a damn long way.
ETA: Damn, the OP already mentioned the “couldn’t get a better job” angle. I need to read better. 
This is a particular irritant of mine. I spent 11 years on active duty followed by 26 years working for the Navy as a civilian. The vast majority of my coworkers over those years were well-educated, self-motivated, and extremely professional. We’d do our share of bitching and whining, but we did what had to be done, even if it meant working different shifts or traveling when we really didn’t want to.
Anyone with half a brain would realize that government employees come from the same pool of potential workers as any company you can name. And in that pool, you’ll have people who do their jobs competently, those who go above and beyond, and those who aren’t worth the oxygen they consume.
Part of the problem in the government is that firing anyone is a royal pain in the patoot. The supervisor needs to counsel and document and do whatever to make the slacker a valuable employee again. Many supervisors don’t want to mess with this, and they shuffle their problem children to other departments, sometimes repeatedly. I had one coworker who literally slept at his desk. I believe he was moved around 5 different times before he got a boss who established the paper trail. It took something like 10 years from hiring to firing, but he was fired, and last I heard, he was working at Home Depot. (He was an engineer, allegedly.)
On the other hand, I had coworkers who would put in all kinds of hours and not clock them, since overtime was not authorized but they felt they had to get the job done. Personal work ethic has a lot to do with it.
All government workers are as alike as all retail employees or all auto mechanics or all brain surgeons… well, you get the idea. I had 37 years of government service in several different facilities, and while anecdote isn’t necessarily data, you can trust me. I was from the government. 
I think that a lot of it is a notion that many government workers have jobs that are unusually stable* when compared to the private sector, and that promotion/pay increases are more linked to seniority than performance. As a result, the perception is that this situation encourages sloth, bad attitudes and poor customer service.
That is the perception and it is totally false. As for the “bad attitudes”, if the public at large knew how stressful it is working for “the man” they would have a lot more sympathy for the poor schmo behind the counter. As for inefficiency, one is discouraged, nay, *forbidden *to step outside the established protocols, regardless of what benefit it could bring.
PG Wodehouse published a story in the December 1970 edition of Playboy called “Another Christmas Carol”. It was about a guy who had never shown any talent at anything whatsoever and had therefore been set up in a civil service job. But though he could drink his 4 PM tea as well as the next person, he longed to be an interior decorator. Etc.
So it was certainly prevalent as early as 1970.
I used to work for the government, I could write a book about the waste and corruption, the theft, the drugs and alcohol. I had never met such a lazy bunch of losers, most of them wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in private industry.
As an example, my boss came in everyday with a bag of pot strapped to one leg and a bag of coke strapped to the other and would lock me out of the office while he sold to the other employees.
Two bosses up from him lied on his time sheet each day so he would accrue enough comp time to take off the month of December.
The boss above him sat at his desk drinking beer all day and was usually drunk.
The boss above him (the director) was my boss’s biggest customer.
My boss once picked me up and threw me in a chair and threatened to beat me up if I moved because I was working too fast and making everybody else look bad. Since nobody saw him do it it was my word against his.
I could go on and on with all the bullshit that went on in that place.
My father told me he had seen the same thing working in the federal government. He always said government work was a form of welfare for the rejects from society that can’t make it in the real world.
I know it’s not all government employees, and not all agencies. When I went to work for a different state agency (that required back grounds checks), the atmosphere was almost normal. People were still a bit lazy, but then again we had to stretch our work out because there was never enough to go around.
Because it’s always been a seemingly easy target, and an easily understood punchline. Even when it’s false.
When I went to college orientation, I frequently heard about how bad the cafeteria food was. And guess what? It was actually good. It was just fashionable and easy to complain about it. Similarly, the DMV has always been an easy target. Yet, where I live, they are quick, efficient and I have no complaints. Go fig.
I once spoke to a government worker (something involving maintenance of government vehicles) who told me that explicitly. He could only be fired for drug abuse and even that only after a whole counseling process. He had no fear of anything or anyone.
He said his supervisor once told him to do something or other and he said he wasn’t interested and that the supervisor should get someone else to do that. The supervisor told him he had the wrong attitude and he responded “I don’t have the wrong attitude; you have the wrong attitude. I’ve been here [X number of] years and I know my rights. There are all sorts of guys around here that you could get to do that, and you need to get one of them to do it.”
Why would that person even show up to work at all then?
There’s also, in certain circles, a tendency romanticize the efficiency of the private sector. I’ve worked in the private sector my whole career and I’ve seen a whole plethora of lazy, bureaucratic nonsense. When times get bad the fat sometimes gets trimmed (but sometimes not), but when times are good it accumulates.