"Government Workers are Lazy and Inefficient" attitude?

In My Humble Opinion
21

That’s a good question, but I didn’t ask him at the time and haven’t encountered him since. (This was a guy I once met at some sort of event.) I would guess he was exaggerating a bit and “never showing up altogether” was also enough to get him fired at some point. But the general point is valid.

It also applies to some extent with union jobs. My wife once worked in the front office of an outfit that also had an attached warehouse in the back. One of the women in the office had a boyfriend who worked in the warehouse. This guy did very little work. He would circulate around the office and warehouse, drinking his coffee and yakking with this one and that one. Eventually they had enough of him and fired him. His GF later reported that he had found the perfect job for a guy like him - a union job on a road-building crew. They had to do very little actual work, being constrained by strict union rules about work roles and conditions. The specific example she gave was that if they needed to use a certain piece of machinery and it was a small distance away (e.g. on the other side of the road) they could not just go get it - they had to wait for a specific work crew whose job it was to go get it. Meanwhile, they just sat around …

22

It is a valid point that a government worker can’t be just “fired”, at least not normally. But they CAN eventually be fired, but usually aren’t because their supervisors don’t want to do the paperwork. It’s not like the supervisors have to run a marathon or anything - it is simply completing some forms.

Best quote I’ve heard in a while and use it all the time at the government place I work - “That sounds hard. Of course nobody is going to do it”

23

One point that strikes me is that in the awarding of government jobs, there are way too many criteria that must be met that are are completely unrelated to the applicant’s ability or even willingness to do the job. A great majority of people who would do a very good job are weeded out or skipped over in favor of many other mandated criteria.

24

I assume you realize that this is a gross understatement of what is involved in firing most government employees - at least at the federal level, where I have worked and managed the past 3 decades. Termination of an individual who has passed their probationary period requires considerably more than completion of some forms - even moreso if they are part of a union/bargaining unit.

ON EDIT - I have disciplined and terminated employees. I’m familiar with several union contracts, as well as the specific steps that need to be taken and, yes, even the forms that need be completed. mansonPlease explain to me what I’m doing wrong. What are these forms that simply need to be completed?

While it might be easier for private industry to fire employees, I submit that it may also be easier for private industry to hire replacements. Our component has been subject to a hiring freeze for 2 years. With a hiring freeze, some managers (and I disagree with this mindset) think it would be better to retain a poor employee who is doing 50% or even less of their expected work - when they won’t be able to replace that individual.

Also, when allowed to hire, it is rare to have completely open hiring authority. Often you are limited to accepting transfers/promotions from within your own agency or component, or within current gov’t employees. So offices are continually poaching the best employees from other offices, or trying to misrepresent and foist off their bad employees onto other offices.

In some circumstances you are allowed to hire certain categories of military veterans. IME, the fact that someone is a military veteran does not mean they would be competent at any specific job.

Under our hiring freeze, we have seen an ongoing reduction in staff, as people retire or obtain employment elsewhere. IME, the most capable people are more likely to be seeking and obtaining alternative employment. So the result is that we have numerically fewer staff, and the entire body of employees has lower average ability/skills/motivation, than before.

I wrestle with this daily, trying to figure out how we are supposed to continually “do more with less.” It will be interesting to see how poor service will get.

While many if not most federal employees I’ve encountered are willing to do somewhat more than their bare minimum expectations, that attitude becomes less appealing when the backlog of work becomes more insurmountable. I generally work overtime and will probably lose 100 hrs of annual leave this year. But I could work 16 hrs a day, and still not make a dent in my component’s backlog.

I don’t know the answer - but I don’t hear anyone - inside the Agency, within government, or outside - suggesting a realistic answer.

25

Q: Do you know what they call someone who makes sure the same regulations apply to everyone?
A: A bureaucrat.

As someone once said, we give a lot of lip service to honest government that’s fair to everyone, but what we want is for government agencies to favor us when we want them to.

Now, it’s not that there aren’t lazy government workers. And the regulations can be very complicated and difficult to interpret (I once had one DMV worker tell me one thing, and another tell me something completely different when I returned. Luckily the first one was there and remembered me).

Also the rules set up for government workers are designed defensively so that people don’t complain about government waste. I once did a stint with technical writing for the state government. I finished two days early, but the insisted I come back and sit around those two days because I had a contract and they were required by their regulations to follow all the terms of the contract.*

But most government employees are doing as conscientious a job as a private sector employee (and there is plenty of waste and bad service in the private sector, too).

*It worked out well. I spent the time writing a short story, which I later sold.

26

Could you explain what steps you took to fire an employee? Steps that didn’t involve filling out a form, or creating a plan of action (just a type of form).

Did you have to go to the employees house for anything? Monitor where they went? Go with them to educational classes? Find them housing/clothing/baby-sitter? Give them money if they had an emergency car breakdown?

Or did you have to counsel them (described on a form) and give them lower evaluations (another form)?

Please let me know what the all-so arduous things you needed to do were.

And on a side note, how can you possibly lose leave? Isn’t it mandated that you take it? Just take leave. Do you think you are so important to your organization that it will shut down if you aren’t there?

27

OK - you’ve got nothing. As I assumed.

If you want to know what is involved/required, feel free to look into it yourself.

28

Very true, but not only that, but you are required (in my Department anyways) to hire the military veteran first, if they satisfy the criteria. They may be well worse than the other person, but they get priority. Not that that is as bad as a hiring freeze. That usually will be something that may constrain firing employees, because you don’t know when you can replace and you may leave a team short handed for a long while.

When there weren’t hiring freezes and the Department (Labor) was treated very well (interestingly during the Bush Administration), there was far more willingness to fire underperforming folks.

29

It is in large part true because of the difficulty of being fired from a government job as well as the fact that government employees have no incentive to give good customer service. If a private sector person consistently gives bad service their company loses money. Even though you “pay their salary” your inability to affect in any meaningful way a government workers salary means you don’t.

30

I KNOW what the process is. I wanted to know what YOU thought was so arduous about it. Counseling subordinates and filling out forms is not my definition of arduous.

31

I’ve worked in industry and in government. THis is my humble opinion

The short answer is: this attitude has always been around. Every society throughout ages that has a governing group of people will have this attitude.

I think the reason is, that there is no inherent mechanism built into government to reduce the cost of governing.

In business, its a balance between revenue and expenses. People are expenses, there is a driving force for them to work faster, better and more cheaply; at the same time as efficiently enough to bring in maximum revenue.

There is no such pressure in government jobs. From a practical point, government supervisors aren’t measured by how much money they save or bring in. Their function includes making sure their employees are happy and this is above any effort to save money.

When I was in govt, it was a spectacular job. Best I ever had. I submit that the disparity in real income is not there…I don’t believe that govt employees really get paid less than corporate. Sure CEO’s get paid more, but by the time you factor in retirement and benefits for the regular office drone, its probably the same, or govt workers get the better end.

I’ve worked with people who’ve been in govt, their entire career. i’ve seen some terrible workers there, terrible production, don’t do anything, lazy, other things are more important to them. They will fail in corporate. Others are fine. They will do ok in business…but I’m willing to bet given a choice 90% would prefer the ease of a govt job over the stress of a private job.
By the way ever see someone in their 50s who is ‘retired’. Ask them what they retired from…good chance it was a govt job.

32

How do you establish and monitor an AP/OPS through the completion of forms? How long do they take to administer? What do you think the minimal time needed to terminate a union employee - from initial consult to “don’t let the door hit ya”?

Also - what discretion does what level manager have to act independently to terminate someone? How many people from how many components is the minimum needed to successfully terminate someone based on performance?

33

Hmm - during my stint in gov - it was a hell of a lot more than a form or two. I needed documentation of failure to perform, execution of a performance improvement plan after that, several meetings with the union rep and HR, and then I MIGHT be able to get the person off of my team. This assumes I did not run into counter claims or charges.

It was easier to keep a C player shoved in a closet somewhere, and simply reward the others as that person fell further and further behind due to no raises, bonuses, or other perqs.

34

you work for the postal service ?

35

Government workers are immune to market discipline. Private industry workers aren’t.

Add into the mix the sword of damocles that is unfunded public pension liability dangling over the evonomy and it’s easy too see.

36

How do you establish something without writing it down? How is the monitoring anything different than normal subordinate work monitoring? Who cares how LONG something takes. WAITING for something is not arduous. Who cares what the minimal time needed is? WAITING is not arduous.

If somebody told you “You can get a free car, but you have to fill out forms and wait 3 years to get it” would you consider that arduous? Something is impossible to do because it takes 3 years? 99% of the time you aren’t doing anything.

All agencies have a process, probably clearly described in the agencies’ HR procedures, policies, or manuals. I’m looking at the one where I work right now. Sure, it’s a process. Might take a while. But, again, so what?

I just don’t understand that concept - “Something takes a long time, most of which I won’t really need to do anything extra, but I’m not going to initiate it cause it takes too long”

37

What field do you work in that you can have what looks like 5 layers of bosses until you get to the director level? And what were those titles for all the levels? Lead, Supervisor, Manager, Manager Pro, Director? That must’ve been quite the org chart.

I also want to apply - I think I would like sitting at a desk drinking beer all day.

38

I’ve always thought that looking how poorly the government runs things is a perfect testimony of why we would NOT want a socialist government.

Imagine if the government ran EVERYTHING?

39

Couple of other factors that came to me:

Many gov’t jobs involve large numbers of discrete matters. When you are dealing with the public, trying to properly handle a large number of cases, being nice simply takes time. Sure, saying “Good morning,” “please” or “thank you” only takes a fraction of a second each time, but a desire for efficiency can lead one to appear abrupt, and to forego pleasantries. You might bemoan the DMV personnel appearing abrupt, but as you stand in line, you don’t want to hear them exchanging pleasantries and chatting with the people ahead of you. Something I am aware of and try to balance daily.

Another factor, while your situation is critical to you, it is only one of 10s, 100s, 100s that that staffer will handle this day or this week. It can be difficult to appreciate the individual behind each work assignments. Moreover, many regulatory decisions are made with no consideration of the individual. Either you fit in one pigeonhole or another. You WANT your gov’t to act impersonally, rather than on individual employees’ preferences or biases. Whether you are a nice person, or not, ought not enter into the decision. Again, can lead to depersonalizing individuals and their cases.

Many gov’t functions have to do with folk who are not terribly sophisticated, often WRT some pretty complicated issues. Yes, that should be even more reason to be sympathetic and understanding, but I suspect most gov’t employees who deal with the public could tell stories to match those shared by sales clerks, waitstraff, IT folk, etc. Working with the public is difficult.

Many people dealing with gov’t staff, are less than happy. And may have an attitude that they have already paid (through taxes) for whatever outcome they may desire. Or are being inconvenienced by having to go through a process. Again, nothing that isn’t experienced by any customer service rep.

All in all, however, I think the controlling factor is the confirmation bias mentioned above. No one thinks or cares about the millions of matters that were handled perfectly. Gov’t employees are a convenient target for many folk in politics, the media, or on the next barstool to criticize. Very human for people to remember the few instances in which they were poorly served - or heard of other people being poorly served - instead of the far more instances (which they may not even be aware of) that things went swimmingly.

40

I worked in both the public and private sectors, mostly the former. I ran into deadbeats and assholes in both venues, no surprise. By and large, I preferred the government (except for the pay). There were set rules to use to do your job and which protected you from capricious assholes, unlike in the private sector, where you have to constantly watch your back because some asshole makes it his mission to fuck with you. I did my job no matter what, but I have to say that while I was almost always loaded with work with the government, the same wasn’t always so with businesses. I had two jobs where I was hired to fix a dysfunctional office. After six months they were both running fine and I had little to do but monitor things.