For a specific location they’re paid less. Overall:
Did you miss that part? In my example, private sector employees overall are paid far less.
OF COURSE IT’S NOT RIGOROUS. You’re disputing a very basic mathematical point here based on a misunderstanding of exactly how cost-of-living indexing affects things, and I’m trying really hard to simplify it so you can understand that mathematical point. Concede this straightforward mathematical point so we can return to the real numbers.
gah
A few points that need reiterating:
Government workers are not all lazy, although most are inefficient. The issue isn’t usually the workers themselves, but the incentives. People respond to incentives and government workers are not rewarded for doing their jobs well. They are rewarded for staying out of trouble, following procedures, and not making waves. There are still quite a few nice people in government service that will go out of their way to help you. And then there are the ones who are always tired and rude because any initiative they might have had was beaten out of them by the system.
Yes, there is bad customer service in the private sector as well. But not usually because the incentives are bad. You get bad customer service in the private sector for the same reason you get good service in the public sector: someone went out of their way. You’ll also find that management is more responsive to your complaints in the private sector.
The public sector’s incentives mean that people drawn to public sector work are of two types: those who aspire to public service, and those whose highest ambition in life is job security. The private sector on the other hand draws people who want to do better in life and are willing to take risks for it. And I think you’ll find that most crappy customer service comes from the private sector doing what the public sector won’t: give young people their first opportunities.
I love the idea that Wells Fargo’s multi-million fake account scandal is all down to a bunch of angsty teens :).
What you’ve offered is a load of conjecture, theories, and broad brush strokes. Got any data to back it up? Otherwise I can offer an equally plausible set of theories to explain why public sector service is so much better.
Go right ahead. I’d be interested in how someone could make that seem plausible.
Your Wells Fargo argument proves my point. Incentives are everything in the workplace. Wells Fargo’s incentives encouraged employees to open up fake accounts. Look at Uber vs. taxis. Uber customer service is usually TONS better, because of incentives. You rate your driver and that rating can take them off the road. Whereas your cab driver can be generally unpleasant to everyone for years and get away with it. Heck, much like government workers, cab drivers(at least American ones) have long had a reputation for being rather curt and taciturn at best, loud and inappropriate at worst. These reputations are often stereotypes that don’t apply to everyone, but they don’t come from nothing either.
My large federal component/agency, has HQ in Baltimore/Falls Church. Regional offices are in 9 (IIRC) of the US’s biggest cities. But we also have offices in every state - 1 each in AK and HI, and several in every other state. If I cared to, I probably could figure out the number of employees in HQ as opposed to district offices, but - frankly - I’m not terribly interested in that exercise. My guess would be that a relatively small percentage (<5%) work in the DC area, and probably at least half in big cities.
OK - here’s another exercise to opine how well gov’t staff should be paid. The largest group of clerical staff in our office is GS 5-8. That means a starting salary of $27.9k, up to a max of $49.9k. Now these are likely going to be the first person you meet when you have a question or concern about my Agency’s programs and your particular benefits.
What level of competence do you expect to receive from someone being hired in at $28k? IMO - whether that is considered a good job or not depends largely on the location. For example, in a more rural area, that might be a decent, secure job -especially if a family’s 2d income. In a bigger city, I’d imagine more competent, motivated candidates might expect higher pay.
What private sector employee are you (or is the CBO) comparing this gov’t worker to? The person overseas who you finally get at the end of a phone tree? The sales clerk in a store? Or a private industry secretarial/clerical staff - like a law firm/medical office receptionist/secretary?
Heck, I can imagine getting behind the argument that gov’t employees should be paid less, so long as you acknowledge that you get what you pay for, and are willing to accept lower services in return.
Sure. Folks who go into government service tend to do so because they believe in a social good, and therefore care more about the result of the work they do. Folks who go into private sectors tend to do so because they believe in maximizing their own good, and therefore care only about whether their actions get them ahead. Public workers will do well even when they don’t need to; private workers will act as lazy as they can get away with and still meet their own needs.
Not saying that’s what happens; I’m saying if we’re spinning fairy tales with no evidence, there’s more than one fairy tale to spin :).
That wasn’t your point. Your point was that “most crappy customer service comes from the private sector doing what the public sector won’t: give young people their first opportunities.”
If you’d like to argue that incentives are value-neutral, that sometimes they further customer service and sometimes they impede customer service, go for it. I’ll agree with that. But you were suggesting shitty teens cause most poor private-sector customer service, and that’s silly.
I know it’s untrue; my father worked for our city’s (Houston) water department for 20 years. He was dedicated, conscientious, etc…
But… there is some merit to the idea that for some government jobs there is no competition, and therefore customer service is more often observed in the breach.
For example, almost exactly 9 years ago, my wife and I went down to the county courthouse and got our marriage license. The woman at the window was far more brusque and rude than would EVER fly for a customer-facing person in a for-profit enterprise with any sort of competition. Like never come back to that location kind of brusque and rude. And she had a sort of pro-forma way of doing it which implied that she wasn’t just having a bad day or something; this was how she interacted with the public every single day.
I realize some is probably from dealing with morons day in and day out, but again, regular old retail people have to deal with that too, and they don’t act like this woman did.
Sounds terrible, but where else are you going to go to get your marriage license? And I imagine as long as she makes sure the actual paperwork has its ducks in a row and is filed properly, etc… her bosses don’t really care as long as the office runs smoothly and nobody gets hurt.
So in some sense, the marriage license was neither lazy nor inefficient, but just rude and ill-mannered. But a lot of people perceive poor customer service as being a symptom of a lot deeper systemic issues, because that kind of thing usually IS a symptom in private customer-facing organizations. If your bosses let your customer-facing people get away with bad customer service, what else are they letting slide?
But that concept doesn’t quite work for government offices, and a lot of people don’t quite think that through; they just apply their rule-of-thumb and conclude that the office must be run incompetently if the people facing them are rude or not accommodating.
Still only anecdotal: I went into govt service because it was an easy job. I was well respected by my colleagues, but mostly I made the jump because I got great benefits, was VERY MUCH LESS LIKELY to get fired and I would get a guaranteed sweet retirement package paid for on the backs of the taxpayers.
I didn’t do it for the social good so much, but that did definitely play a role.
If you ask a govt worker directly and not anonymously, I’m expecting they will be less forthcoming about why they prefer govt work over a private job.
Belated congratulations! That said, if you go nearly a decade between bad customer service experiences with the government–and if in that case they did the job fine and just didn’t smile enough–maybe they’re not doing so badly after all.
Hell, twenty years ago I was at a Denny’s, and the waitress brought me spoiled half-and-half and openly insulted me and my group, and when I asked for fresh half-and-half she yelled at me. Another Waffle House worker told me in delight how much she enjoyed licking the blade she cut the pie with. A waiter at a local restaurant didn’t come back to our table for half an hour. A kitchen at another restaurant served my daughter a sandwich with mold growing on the bread. The dude who was supposed to fix my car window earlier this month skipped out on three consecutive appointments. The guy that was supposed to fix my gutter over the summer sent a teenage worker who was a douchebag and who totally failed to do the repair, and when I complained, the company referred me to another company that flaked out on their appointment. The guy I hired years ago to haul away some debris from our house never showed up to finish the job because I foolishly paid him in full when the job was like 75% done. I could obviously go on and on.
Do I conclude from this that the private sector is broken? Or do I conclude that there are good private sector workers and bad private sector workers?
Government systems are often inefficient by design. My department processes release orders for prisoners who have been paroled. Those orders can be reviewed by multiple offices to make sure that a) they’re correct, and b) that certain information isn’t inadvertently released to the parolee. Those steps are in place because there are consequences if those steps aren’t followed. The former may result in legal consequences, and the latter can (and has) resulted in retaliation against the victims or others by either the parolee or an associate of the parolee. Therefore, inefficiency is in the public’s interest. The incentive here is to do no harm.
Not so. Government agencies generally have to operate within a framework of rules and regulations that private industry generally doesn’t. What you consider to be bad service is simply me working within that framework. Working outside of it is breaking the law. Surely a law-and-order guy such as yourself can understand that.
Again, not so. Many of the people I work with work in this field because they love it and they want to make a difference. They work long and crazy hours, frequently travel away from their families, put themselves in danger, and deal with all kinds of people. They do it because they wanted a challenge, which isn’t always possible in the private sector.
By the way, many of the entry-level people in my office are in their early 20s, and many of the senior people started here in their 20s. This is true for a lot of agencies in my state government.
This is true for a lot of govt agencies. Mostly because you don’t have to do an excellent job to stay employed, you just have to do an adequate job. There is no incentive in govt to fire people as a cost saving measure. And govt jobs are often easy, with administrators often focused on making sure the employees are happy and treated well.
Hence you get a lot of people who start in govt service in their 20s, put in 30 years, then retire with a nice pension in their early 50’s.
Who wants to work in private business where you are run a high chance of getting fired for no reason, don’t get a pension unless you put a big chunk of your own money in it and still have to work until you are in your 60s or longer? I’d much rather put my time in with a govt job
I’m only going to say this once. Government agencies do not have a bottomless supply of money. Our elected officials see to that. We may not have to make a profit, but we do have to show that we’re being good stewards of taxpayer money, and, yes, that does mean that people are laid off if the budget won’t allow for those positions. Right now, 600 people who work for the unemployment compensation department are facing layoff on December 19 because of what is essentially a political pissing contest between one state senator and the governor. That means that UC claims will be delayed and calls will go unanswered because some state senator doesn’t want to fund those jobs.
But those things never happen in the private sector. :rolleyes:
And you did what about it?
Well, as we’ve seen the last few years, whistleblowers get ignored at best, fired at worst:
The irony is that he was whistleblowing on the Whistleblowing agency that supposedly is fit to oversee whistleblower complaints in the private sector. “Whistleblowing for thee, but not for me?”
And as the Washington Post points out, it’s really better not to say anything:
defenders of big government have tried to portray the VA scandal as a case of a few bad apples, but the rot was everywhere and those who reported on it were treated as the enemy. And if you can’t rely on people working for the VA to be there because they want to serve the public, what government agency can you rely on to have your best interest at heart?
I’m not clear on your point here. Do you think I, or anyone, is arguing that government workers are always excellent? Do you think I’m arguing that all government agencies are equally great?
Of course not. Any organization, public or private, may have effective or ineffective leadership. Any organization, public or private, may do a good or a bad job. My understanding of the VA system is that patients who actually get in are more satisfied with their care than their private counterparts. The problem is with ensuring reasonable access to care for all vets. Comparing this to the private sector is unreasonable: the private sector deliberately excludes millions of people from access to care, based on inability to pay or other factors, and so doesn’t face the same hurdles.
So yeah, the VA is a good example of entrenched terrible leadership, in much the same way that KMart is. If that’s all you want to point out–that sometimes government institutions are as poorly run as private companies–I’ll agree.
Except there won’t be an Amvazon or a VAl-mart to deliver better service. The VA will be the shits as long as the government makes fixing it anything less than a top 3 priority.
The VA isn’t across-the-board “the shits.” They’re really good at part of their job, and terrible at another part.
And the tradeoff you get for not having competition is that you also don’t have people who can’t afford the service. With a private hospital, you can’t pay, you don’t get in at all.
This isn’t new information. Acting like the private sector is always better than the public sector is ignoring major pieces of the puzzle.
A better thing to examine might not be the starting salary, but rather the opportunity for pay raises and advancement. From what I understand, government workers have a lot of red tape surrounding job titles, pay grades, seniority and other advancement related stuff that doesn’t really exist in the private sector.
I mean, if my company decided to, there’s nothing stopping them from bumping me up to a VP-level position and paying me 2x my current salary tomorrow. I don’t think government supervisors can do the same thing, although maybe I’m wrong.
Plus, at least for the Federal government, the GS pay grades seem to be about a step lower than what I see in corporate IT; I’m paid in the GS-12/13 range, and I’m hardly the sort of supervisor they’re describing. At best, I’m a very competent mid-level employee (in military terms, probably a senior NCO would be the best fit to what I do)