Dealing With People Story

 There's an opinion piece written in  WELT today....by Lauren Meyar.  Topic?  Well....civil servants (gov't workers).

Meyar brought up the experience of going to a NY City car registration shop and the  personal feeling that the people she was trying to deal with.....were....well, sort of incompetent.  

As she tries to weave the story....Germans complain a lot over incompetent gov't workers here.....so she tried to look for the better situation in NY City and FAILED.

This is a big subject with me.  I'm 64 years old, and have dealt with various local, state and fed gov't workers (I've been one myself, with 3.5 years in the Pentagon).  

I could probably lay out more than 100 negative experiences in my life (in Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, Arizona, Washington, and Colorado).  

But I've also spent around around three decades of my life in Germany.  On various occasions....I've come across both competent and incompetent people.  

The German Telekom folks?  I've had two five-star episodes where I was dealing with incredibly stupid people, and ended up walking out in a state of frustration.  

The Kaiserslautern city garbage folks?  They went and put my 7-year-old son (at the time) as a private resident of the house and he needed to pay the yearly garbage bill.  My German wife attempted over the phone to explain this and got nowhere.  I ended up taking the bill, and the kid....down to this shop and introducing the lady to the 6-year-old kid.  That required an hour of my time to get there and park....then 12 seconds of her time to admit they screwed up.

My own opinion is that once you cross the line and get into a career as a gov't worker....it doesn't matter if talking American or German....your best and brightest folks don't work civil service jobs that much, or customer service.  A few might come in....try to fix things, and discover it's too much crap to fix (as I discovered).

My all-time favorite experience?  I had two or three times to visit the Kaiserslautern car registration office.....in the days prior to the computer network arriving, and they were still using typewriters.  These were all folks in their 40s, and the least customer friendly folks that you could possibly imagine.  Every visit meant 30 to 40 minutes of processes.  

Around the last year I lived there in Kaiserslautern......I walked in and found that the one-hour waiting business did not exist.  Within two minutes of pulling a ticket....I got in.  The room?  A lighter shade of paint....new carpet....new desks....the old folks gone, computers on each desk, and most of the clerks were all around 20 years old.  

It was a Jesus-moment....the young lady took my papers.  She even offered to speak English.  In three minutes....she'd completed my tag paperwork.  I paid at the money-clerk, and walked out at the 12-minute point.  I asked the lady what happened to the old crew, and she responded....they were told computers were coming and none of them wanted computer training (they refused).....so the whole staff were farmed-out to places where computers were not required.....every single one of them.

My general advice....either way in dealing with support functions and incompetent people....try to be friendly and treat them like a 10-year old kid.  The incompetent folks have to work somewhere, and you'd prefer them in jobs like this....rather than nuclear power plants, banks, or emergency room situations.  Also remember that little mustached guys with wallpaper experience have to be hired for something....even if they are incredibly lacking in skills....like say Chancellor-work.