Posted on 08/05/2010 6:53:15 PM PDT by cradle of freedom
If you have ever worked at a government job, please tell us some of your experiences good or bad.
well I didnt have a gove job but my sister did..and I did volunteer work for here ...at a DHS office. She was a supervisor..I never saw so many people standing in the halls complaining because they had to go to work. They dragged their heels all week but wanted the supervisor to let them work overtime on Saturday..then they brought their kids tvs and popcorn. I am sure they got a lot of work done.It took an act of congress to dismiss anyone. My dieing sister’s office was next to an exit near handicap parking but when a new program director was sent there she took the office and moved my sister to the back of the building where she had to climb alot of stairs and parking was far. the previous program director from Kenya didn’t speak much english, went to college and played golf alot. our tax dollars at rest.
In some ways, a lot like any other job (and I’ve had some of those not involving government.) You have a boss, you get performance evaluations, you get edicts from above, which relate only vaguely with reality. If you switch from private to public sector, you find the main things different are mostly in the realm of decisions from the top being a bit slower (legislative bodies tend to haggle over things awhile) and an unhealthy obsession with procedures.
Then, they would all line up just INSIDE the workroom doorway, and wait for the clock to show 4:00pm precisely before they would leave the room. As a temp, I couldn't work when the equipment and files had been locked up, and I wasn't about to stand around waiting for the clock to tick. No one punched a time clock in there. They were all horrified when I just walked out each day as soon as my work had been locked up. It was pretty comical to me, but these ladies were angst-ridden that I might "get caught" not working until closing time. Go figure.
After grad school I worked 10 years as a contract administrator for a government contractor, primarily with the old Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. My old experience as the typing temp served me well to remind me of the people I had to deal with. When I got laid off, I swore I would never go near a govt job again.
I was forced to ride on some REALLY big boats and it had some REALLY big guns on it. Every now and then those guns were actually FIRED and it was REALLY loud. They made me fix their computers and eat their lousy food and sweep & mop the floor and then they made me go ashore and drink the local beer and get nekkid with the local wimmin. Every couple of weeks they would hand me cash and then the cycle would start all over again, it was horrible.
Thank you for your service, seriously!
AHHHHHAHAHA! LMFAO
I was a really, really crappy music teacher for one semester. I ended up pretty much hating the job. The kids learned virtually nothing from me (luckily, it was not a core subject). When I decided to move on and get another degree in another field, the principles from each of the schools I taught at and the district superintendent begged me to stay.
I knew I was bad. The kids new I was bad. I can’t imagine that the administration didn’t know I was bad, but they wanted me to stay anyhow.
I have been a university business professor for 27 years at 4 universities. Overall, most professors are hard working both in the classroom, research, and administration. There was one faculty member who was very poor in the classroom and research. I am not sure how he survived the tenure hurdle. He was not given any raises for more than 20 years so his salary was far below everyone else’s. Near the end of his career, he began ranting about his salary in the classroom. If the university had a post tenure review, he would have been fired.
University staff are another matter. The advising staff in my current school seems bloated. The dean has given the staff raises along with many staff additions. Some of the staff seem to keep irregular hours, starting late, finishing early, and skipping days. My current school has created a huge new banner promoting the new location of the business school. The banner has an image of a recent MBA graduate. The banner does not indicate the recent graduate is now employed as a business school advisor, not the type of position envisioned for MBA graduates.
Administrators seem to take good care of themselves. I have seen many administrators and their staff retire with hefty salary increases in their last few years. The administrative offices seem to have grasped the game of pension spiking very well. Adminstrators were typically retiring in their early to mid 50s with starting pensions of $100K+. One administrator retired right at ag 50 with a starting pension of $200K+. She then went back to work for a different university office part time. She snagged raises totally more than $75,000 in her last 5 years despite that her pending early retirement made it highly unlikely that she would leave before age 50.
Almost everyone in the university community feels that taxpayer support is lacking. They have little problem with typical tuition increases of 7 percent or more to support their bloated salaries. Despite difficult budget situations in Colorado, university faculty and staff have not had furloughs or salary decreases. Staff have enjoyed large compensation increases due to the pension shortfall with taxpayer contributions increasing sharply. I also believe that taxpayer contributions to health care plans have increased sharply. However, few in the university community admit that their compensation has increased. Salaries have been frozen for two years but benefits have increased especially for most staff.
Me too, I got my dd-214 in 1989, but we earned it, didn’t we? Thanks! America owes it’s veterans.
I took my first government job ever six months ago. What I see are a lot of hard-working, dedicated people who are trying to do important work under increasingly tight budget constraints, manpower shortages and increased work load. They try their best to do their job while putting up with an ever-changing parade of political hacks who assume management of their agency and also assume they know more about the task at hand than the people who have been doing it for years. FWIW, I work in an agency with considerable responsibility for public health and consumer protection. Residents of my state benefit from this agency’s actions EVERY day (multiple times) and most are not even aware of what the agency does. They are a watchdog one of the largest industries in my state and yet the agency’s budget has shunk — in inflation adjusted dollars — by more than 40 percent over the past 10 years. Staff has been cut considerably as well. In the meantime, the agency has taken on more responsibilities in some areas and the public is placing greater demands in many areas. Frankly, they do a half-ass job in a lot of their areas of responsibility, but it’s not for lack of desire or effort. The career employees are doing their damnedest because they care about the field they’re in. If there’s any fat in the agency I work for, I haven’t seen it yet.
It was well entrenched when I started in the 70s.
I think that club started about 1790.
I worked in a large naval repair facility in early 70’s for a couple years. Most workers wanted to do a good job but were dragged down by those that went to work to goof off, I’m not joking. There was a lot of hiring and unfair promotion of minorities. It would have been a secure career especially cause I was a vietnam vet which gives you an edge, but I was frustrated and stifled much of the time and just quit. Never been sorry about it.
My mother worked for the state government in Ohio. She is with Jesus now, so I can tell you her experiences.
First off, she hated the civil service. It was soooooo hard to fire anybody that when some incompetent showed up they were just promoted to get rid of them. She was always complaining about lazy so and so’s who were making her life miserable.
Politics reigned supreme in the office. They checked your voter registration to be sure you were the “correct religion”. (illegal to do) She was required to campaign on days off. (also illegal) They took attendance and randomly checked to make sure you were going door to door to drop off the campaign papers and not just dumping them in the trash.
They also flushed money down rat holes to get rid of it so their budgets wouldn’t be cut next year. They had more office supplies than they knew what to do with, and when they ran out of storage space they started spending it on idiocy.
“They made me wear an orange vest and gave me a pointy stick and a garbage bag.”
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You wuz a baaaad boy! :o)
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I would deploy for 6 to 9 months at a time. Every now and again the deployments involved actually killing people and blowing things up while others tried to do the same to us. When I wasn’t deployed, I was preparing for deployment. That was my government job, I did it for 24 years.
I’ve only subcontracted and contracted work on government property/equipment.
Here’s one example...a retired military man forms his own company to do civilian contract work for the military. Only he doesn’t know how to do anything. when he wants to bid on work, he calls up someone like me to give him a bid to do the work, then he tacks on a percentage for his cut and submits his bid. Then his buddy that’s still in the military gets his bid approved. I do the work and the retired military man gets paid.
Here’s another example. Since it’s federal property, there’s no inspections and no permits pulled to do the work. an electrician that knows jack * about anything other than wiring hires me to give him a bid to do some non-electrical work that is considered part of a “change order” on a bid job they are in the middle of doing. He passes my bid on to his boss who was once in the military and knows the guys on the base. You know the rest of the story.
In government offices there are usually one or two who do all the work, and the rest just pretend to busy but never get anything done. That was my experience when I worked for the county, and later it was also my wife’s experience when she worked for a city. (SF Bay area)
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