# why are government employees so...



## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

I recently renewed my passport and just received it via Xpresspost only to discover 2 really stupid mistakes on it. My place of birth is Seoul, Korea (ie. the capital of South Korea), but according to my passport my place of birth is Seoul, Canada?! Geez, since when is there a place called Seoul in Canada . Another funny discrepancy I noticed is the following: under nationality it says: Canadian/Canadienne. Having lived in Québec for over a decade, I know that canadien*ne* is the "nom féminin" of canadien, which implies that I am a woman (when it clearly says M under sex...). 

To make matters worse, my brother and my mother renewed their passports at the same time as me and my mother's is the only one without any errors. My brother also got Canadian/Canadienne under nationality. (It appears that government employees at the passport office do not have a good grasp of the *two* official languages)

This isn't the only case of government incompetence that I have witnessed either. Upon moving to BC several years ago, my brother, my mother and I applied for our Medicare cards and the names were misspelled on 2 out of 3 of them

All in all, I find it very ironic how the government is totally on our ass when it comes to collecting taxes, etc., but they can't even get our names and places of birth right on government issued documents. 

P.S. Apparently forged Canadian passports are fetching a premium on the black market. That shouldn't be too hard to do, considering the fact that even officially issued ones are filled with ridiculous crap 9kkhhd

ADMIN EDIT: I have removed the term "incompetent" from this thread title. Although many of us have had our fair share of issues dealing with the gov, incompetent would not be a term to describe all government employees.


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## kw_guitarguy (Apr 29, 2008)

I can feel your pain, however, please don't lump all Government employees together. I am far from incompetent and take great pride in my work with the public service. I take offense when people just blanket all Government employees as lazy idiots. That isn't to say there aren't any, but not all of us are like that.

Did you do the forms online and print them off? Just wondering if there was an issue with interpreting handwriting?

~Andrew


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## dufe32 (Feb 5, 2007)

They just don't care. They have a stable job, make good income, have tons of benefits and probably are bored by their jobs, so basically, they don't give a hoot. Sad. That being said, maybe you've stumbled on a "rotten apple", all employees aren't like that.

Désolé pour toi mon ami!


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

Ah I didn't mean to offend you Andrew, I guess I'm just peeved with the situation. Heck, if I was offered a government job I would probably take it, because it's a nice and stable job. I just think some of the people there take their jobs for granted and no longer care. By the way, I did the forms with the computer so it wasn't a handwriting issue at all, just an issue of not caring. 

Oddly enough, I only encountered this kind of sloppiness after moving to BC. Never had these kind of issues with the Quebec passport offices.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

oh, i just love the canadian gov. i have been here 3 years now, without the right to work, or leave the country. that means my grandson doesn't know me anymore. i haven't seen my sons or my bros, sisters and friends.
when i left the states i had 2 cars and a motorcycle, nice furniture, art, money in the bank, and a solid career. now i have none of those things and we live in poverty. i have spoken with 2 different mps and they both say they are unable to help me. they tell me "that's just the way things are".
"we understand you're frustration". no they don't. they don't even acknowledge that the system that does this to people is broken. 
just a couple days ago i learned they may make me wait another 14 months. 
i know for a fact this would never have happened in the states. hell, mexicans sneak in, stay illegally and we still give them welfare, medicaid and foodstamps. they are also elligeable for amnesty, and can easily become citizens or residents. me, i told the wife i will wait till nov1. after that i'm rollin.


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## theelectic (Mar 11, 2006)

Hm my passport says CANADIAN/CANADIENNE as well, and I'm a M  Never noticed that before. My name is spelled correctly at least!


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## kw_guitarguy (Apr 29, 2008)

Noob, no worries, just sometimes you can only take some many comments about lazy people before you snap  I do feel for you, I notice some of the public facing staff lose heart after a little while!

Cheezy..can I ask why you left all that? Don't answer if it's personal, just curious. I take it you have been dealing with Immigration? Have you tried going higher in immigration? (I don't work for them so I have no idea how to help you) but you might get somewhere.

It blows me away that you would be having these issues! I'd be pissed as hell too!

~Andrew


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

its not just government employees- its bank employees, telephone company employees, cable company employees, guitar store employees, beer store employees, the entire front office of the company i work for. hell, it seems to me that pretty much anybody you are forced to count on is incompetent.
sorry lol- i had a bad day. havent been inside a bank in years- but i now have to pay my rent at a bank. so i walk down there, stand in line for 20 minutes, get to the counter, and am told the account im trying to put money in doesnt exist. then i walk down to the beer store- its shut due to a power outtage. my feet hurt, im worn out and angry, yet accomplished nothing today. and im running out of drinks.

anyway- cheezyridr, good luck man


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

cheezyridr said:


> oh, i just love the canadian gov. i have been here 3 years now, without the right to work, or leave the country. that means my grandson doesn't know me anymore. i haven't seen my sons or my bros, sisters and friends.
> when i left the states i had 2 cars and a motorcycle, nice furniture, art, money in the bank, and a solid career. now i have none of those things and we live in poverty


Did you come into Canada as a landed immigrant? Its been 21 years now, but we came to Canada as landed immigrants and were able to find work immediately - hence the reason that we're still here. For us, the screening process was extensive - multiple interviews (trips to London funded by us) and multiple medical checks (again funded by us). I think the entire process took around 1 year, from the time we first applied until the time we were granted our landed immigrant status.


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## jcayer (Mar 25, 2007)

noobcake said:


> ...Another funny discrepancy I noticed is the following: under nationality it says: Canadian/Canadienne. Having lived in Québec for over a decade, I know that canadien*ne* is the "nom féminin" of canadien, which implies that I am a woman (when it clearly says M under sex...). ...


I can't speak for the Seoul issue, but as for the _nationality_ / nationalité thing, what I can say is that in french: the word _nationality_ (nationalité) is a "nom féminin". So you are of "*nationalité Canadienne*". :smilie_flagge17:

That part is OK afaik ... hwopv


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## kw_guitarguy (Apr 29, 2008)

That sounds right because I work for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and in French it's Agence canadienne d'inspection des aliments...so I think the official govt translation is canadienne

~Andrew


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## prodigal_son (Apr 23, 2009)

To put it into perspective, I dare you to say this to a Firefighter or a Combat Engineer. You might not like what you get for an answer.

I personally am a Letter Carrier and a Volunteer Firefigter and I see it all of the time. I also work for the Municipality in the winter months as a Snow Plough Operator. Hehe.. A better question is: Why are there so many seemingly "normal" people that seem to have difficulty being responsible for things that should be considered of the utmost importance? 

It's just the way people are. Most government workers, regardless of which level are operating at, are quite literally impossible to fire due to the power of their unions and therefore they often take matters into their own hands with little consequence or accountablity. The average worker does not have a reasonable collective sense of integrity and duty. It doesn't matter whether it's a government worker or not though. It's like that with all jobs. 

Considering how prosperous of a country Canada is, it could be much worse. Thank God it's not as bad as some places. Either way folks, Canada is still the best country on Earth to live in and we all need to pitch in every now and then to keep it that way.


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## Stonesy (Oct 7, 2008)

I am a machinist and simply cannot make a mistake. A $3000 tool or a $400000 machine or a million dollar contract gets killed if I screw up. On the other hand I am a total f'up with the rest of my life.
When you get paid to do a job whether its catch a football or push paper, you should do the friggin job right and leave your baggage at the door!


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

kw_guitarguy said:


> Cheezy..can I ask why you left all that? Don't answer if it's personal, just curious. I take it you have been dealing with Immigration? Have you tried going higher in immigration?


the woman i married has canadian children who can't leave the country because of a stupid custody agreement. (that's a whole 'nother story)
they couldn't come to the states, so i came here. i swear when i called immigration before doing all this i was assured the process was very straightforward. 99% of what i was told turned out to be the exact opposite. 
they said "don't use a lawyer, you'll be wasting your money" they said applying from inside canada was quicker. they told me i was not elligeable for a work permit when i applied for permanent residency. just recently i was told that my application is being delayed because i am "under investigation".
i have no criminal record, and i don't know any shifty individuals. i provided them with backround checks from delaware state police and the f.b.i.
they said it looks shifty that i applied from inside canada and didn't ask for a work permit. they told me when i crossed the border not to apply, i would automatically be denied until i got my permanent residency. i didn't really care at that time, i was under the impression the whole thing would happen in about 6 months. the company i used to work for wouldn't let me quit. they laid me off 2 days before my wedding so i could collect unemployment from the states while i waited. i had $$ for a little while. as time went on, i ended up selling things off here and there because my wife could only work part time, she's on odsp because of cancer. the mps office gave me contact infor for the head guy at immigration, but told me contacting him will do me no good. once the process begins it has to run it's course. they said they may approve me in principle soon and alow me to work and have a health card, but maybe not. otherwise, 12-14 months till i get my permanent residency. it won't be the forst time i've had to start over, from scratch. but at 45 i'm gettin a little old for this game.


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## Powdered Toast Man (Apr 6, 2006)

noobcake said:


> I recently renewed my passport and just received it via Xpresspost only to discover 2 really stupid mistakes on it. My place of birth is Seoul, Korea (ie. the capital of South Korea), but according to my passport my place of birth is Seoul, Canada?! Geez, since when is there a place called Seoul in Canada . Another funny discrepancy I noticed is the following: under nationality it says: Canadian/Canadienne. Having lived in Québec for over a decade, I know that canadien*ne* is the "nom féminin" of canadien, which implies that I am a woman (when it clearly says M under sex...).
> 
> To make matters worse, my brother and my mother renewed their passports at the same time as me and my mother's is the only one without any errors. My brother also got Canadian/Canadienne under nationality. (It appears that government employees at the passport office do not have a good grasp of the *two* official languages)
> 
> ...


So I guess you've never *EVER* made a mistake at your job, eh? Does someone jump on a message board to dump on you and your entire company when you do?

If you take your passport down to the office they will redo it for free. 

And the original person who made the mistake does hear about it.

The nationality thing is not an error. It is the same on every passport.

The people working at Passport Canada are some of the hardest working people in the entire public service. They're dealing with constant high volumes and maybe that's why an occasional mistake slips through. Please have some respect.


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

jcayer said:


> I can't speak for the Seoul issue, but as for the _nationality_ / nationalité thing, what I can say is that in french: the word _nationality_ (nationalité) is a "nom féminin". So you are of "*nationalité Canadienne*". :smilie_flagge17:
> 
> That part is OK afaik ... hwopv


Eh oui, je crois que vous avez raison LOL**. Par contre, je suis tout à fait certain qu'il n'y a pas de ville qui s'appelle Seoul au Canadalargetongue 

**I was thinking in "english mode". (ie. Someone asks you what your nationality is and you would answer: I am Canadian. / Je suis Canadien. /Je suis Québécois (pour les séparatistes largetongue))


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

Powdered Toast Man said:


> So I guess you've never *EVER* made a mistake at your job, eh? Does someone jump on a message board to dump on you and your entire company when you do?
> 
> If you take your passport down to the office they will redo it for free.
> 
> ...


Chillax bro. Canada is a great country and I'm glad to be living here. It's also a free country so I wouldn't give a rats ass if I made a mistake at my job and some guy decided to vent on message boards. I guess I'm just a little ticked off that they seem to be totally on the ball you when it comes to collecting taxes and all that junk, but they can't even get your damn name and birthplace right on a care card / passport.


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

prodigal_son said:


> To put it into perspective, I dare you to say this to a Firefighter or a Combat Engineer. You might not like what you get for an answer.
> 
> I personally am a Letter Carrier and a Volunteer Firefigter and I see it all of the time. I also work for the Municipality in the winter months as a Snow Plough Operator. Hehe.. A better question is: Why are there so many seemingly "normal" people that seem to have difficulty being responsible for things that should be considered of the utmost importance?
> 
> ...


Look my bad man, I suppose the title of this thread is a bit harsh and misleading. No disrespect meant to you.


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## kw_guitarguy (Apr 29, 2008)

prodigal_son said:


> It's just the way people are. Most government workers, regardless of which level are operating at, are quite literally impossible to fire due to the power of their unions and therefore they often take matters into their own hands with little consequence or accountablity. The average worker does not have a reasonable collective sense of integrity and duty. It doesn't matter whether it's a government worker or not though. It's like that with all jobs.


You are saying the same thing as noob was. Do you know most government workers? No, you don't. I know about 60 (direct contact at work) and all of them care deeply about the safety of Canadians and take their jobs very, very seriously.

I am quite easy to fire actually. With the information I have access to in my job and the consequences of my failures, I could be gone with really no cause and my union couldn't fight it.

Please people, stop grouping all, or most public service employees together. One guy at the passport office, or canada post, or CCRA or anywhere doesn't define all of us...

~Andrew


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

kw_guitarguy said:


> Please people, stop grouping all, or most public service employees together. One guy at the passport office, or canada post, or CCRA or anywhere doesn't define all of us...
> 
> ~Andrew


I totally agree with Andrew here. I was just going to keep quiet about this but saying "government employees are incompetent" or making a generalization concerning government employees just gets me. Me and my wife both work for the federal government and most of my friends too and I can say none of us are incompetent. The government employs thousands of people, so of course there will be incompetent ones that would slip through the cracks. If ALL government employees are incompetent, how do you think this country will run?


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

I can only speak for myself...but The thing with Goverment employees is SOME..and that's a very small % of them, don't give a shit. But most do. i have to deal with the CSST in Quebec, wich is the Goverment agency that deals with accident at the work place. I had a major accident at work in 1996 and have been getting physiotherapy twice a week since them just to be able to stand. The folks working their seems like people working on commission, the less they give the more pay they get, dealing with them is like dealing with the mafia basicaly. My condition is not life treathning, but sitting down for more then 30 to 45 minutes gives me insane back pain. I got a letter from them last week, they want to send me to Quebec City, for a new evaluation with THEIR doctor,...that means driving 3.5hrs straight, wich i can't do, to get an evaluation from a doctor PAID by them!..i already know his verdict.

Not all Gov employees are like that doh. But most get insanly good pay check. My sister for exemple, no formal training in anything works at the Quebec CCQ..wich is the agency that controles all construction workers in Quebec. She is a Office worker, kinda like a secretary, prepares reports and such. She makes 36.50$ an hr, gets every other friday off..PAID...6 weeks paid vacation, 100% health insurrance on EVERY THING. 12 sick days a year, nice retirement fund i ever saw, good union, i mean come on..she's not a brain surgeon!...and most Gov places have these types of conditions she told me. Am i Jaleouse!...damn straight i am, she bitches everytime she has to do 15 minutes of overtime, or else. hehe..


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## kw_guitarguy (Apr 29, 2008)

Alain,

Your sister is lucky! She is also provincial. I can assure you, if she were federal her pay and benefits would be NOWHERE near that.

If she told you most govt has that, she's talking about provincial. Federal, at least the areas that I know people in, are not THAT well paid. We are well paid, but my position at least is comparable to the private sector. 

The general reasons people think that govt jobs are so great are mostly myths...

My medical benefits (which are the same across the federal public service) are not much better than I have had at private sector jobs. The pension is good, won't deny that. The pay is comparable to the private sector, and we get a whole TWO additional days off, that's it 

I hope you get somewhere with your injury though...I hate when beaurocracy gets in the way of someone's physical health.

~Andrew


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

kw_guitarguy said:


> Alain,
> 
> I hope you get somewhere with your injury though...I hate when beaurocracy gets in the way of someone's physical health.
> 
> ~Andrew


Problem with bureaucrat is they often they think of people to much as numbers, the accident i had a sureger for in 96 was a back surgery...my chances of walking were 20% at best but i beated the odds. after 2.5 years of physiotherapy 4 times a week, my surgeon, wich was the LEADING provincial surgeon Quebec was overruled by the CSST's personnal General doctor for my condition. My own surgeon told in his report that because of my surgery, i would no longuer be able to perform my job more then 15 to 20hrs at BEST on a weekly basis. so basicaly, i could not sit down for more then 3hrs to 4 hrs a day, BUT the CSST's Doctor said he was wrong and i was fully recovered at 100%..wich is basicaly impossible with the surgery i had. SO...i had to get a job, but from 99 to 2002 i could'nt hold my job more then 3 to 4 months because after 2 days of siting in an office for 8 to 9 hrs a day, i had to drug myself so bad with pain killes, i could'nt work the next day. after 2 years i got addicted to pain killers so had to make a choice. So i started to work from home when my back was willing to sit down. Since august 2007 i have been fighting them cause after speaking with a lawyer who was kind enough to advice me freely, they are suppose to pay me any lack of fund i can not make each year. Because of this, we came close to loosing our house a few times, had to sell all my gear in 2005, real nightmare basicaly. in the last 4 years i was able to make a semi-decent salary so i can't complain, i turned to US clients so the money was better, but still, i would make a good 25 000$ a year if i never had the accidentt.


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

My apologies to all government workers on these boards. I do realize that the title of this thread is offensive to you. Obviously, many of you take your job in the government very seriously and I respect that. I've been a citizen of Canada for the better part of my life and I truly love this country, but I have always felt that I was being treated as a "number" rather than a person in my dealings with the government, but I speak only from personal experience. If anyone feels offended by the contents of this thread, then just PM me and I would be glad to delete it.

Edit: Oh wait, I think only mods and admins can delete threads. Anyways, my apologies if I have offended you.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

Workers get burned out. They would mostly just like to do the job and be left alone. But there is always some genious in charge of coming up with regulations and manditory circle jerks in order to get the job done. It ensures that the guy doing a 10 minute job will require at least 3 hours of running in circles to get that job done. The government is famous for it. The folks you deal with are just trying to do the job around the obstacles placed in front of them.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

As a federal public servant, whose job involves the study of federal hiring practices in Canada and other nations*** (yup, that's what I'm paid to do each and every day - I don't gig and I don't make pedals for a living), I can say without any doubt that I am generally impressed by the lengths that federal departments go to to attract and hire good people. As much paranoia as some people have abut hiring practices, find me a manager who would hire anyone that would embarrass them, slow down their work unit, or generally blow up in their face. That is obviously not the same as having exquisitely good judgment about prospective employees, but still I have to say that federal managers try pretty hard.

Now, once you get yourself a decent employee who is ready willing able to bust their hump for the public, there are a myriad of ways that they can be ground down to just not caring anymore. Our Treasury Board and Deputy Minister community is besotted with the idea of "employee engagement" (i.e., people throwing themselves into their work with passion and commitment), and while that is a noble and worthy pursuit, my own belief is that they have generally failed to grasp what such engagement _is_ at its heart, and what fosters and undermines it. Indeed, so mistaken is the notion, that when I participated as subject-matter-expert in an exercise to measure it last year, I found the interference from above and the entire exercise to be one of the most disengaging experiences of my entire career.

All grumbling aside, the secret of great management is simple: surround yourself with capable people, let them know what needs to be done, give them the resources to do it, and get the hell out of the way. Government is one of those beasts that never seems to be able to provide any of that despite their best efforts.

You'd be surprised how much the "mission" keeps changing for people in government. Case in point: In 2002 I was conversing with a woman who had worked at Citizenship and Immigration for some years. In chatting, she noted the sea change that had happened at CIC over the preceding year, following the 09/11 tragedy. "We used to be the welcome wagon", she remarked, "and after 09/11, we were supposed to turn into this...wall. It confused a lot of people."

Regardless of what you thought of it, the Canada Firearms Registry came in under the Liberal government in response to a number of high profile tragedies and lobbying by well-informed advocacy groups. Implementing it was clumsy because of public resistance, and it became costlier and more problematic than it needed to be. Still, some 400 people were busting their humps in good faith, trying to make it work effectively _and_ cost-effectively. Then the MP who was Treasury Board secretary at the time, John Baird, comes out approximately 5 weeks before National Public Service Week(where he would say what a great job public servants did and how much we all appreciate their fine efforts) and publicly declares the work of the Firearms Registry as "useless". Yeah, there's a real motivator to work hard.

I mention all of this to drive home the point that while a) public servants want to do a good job serving you, and b) managers strive to hire capable people, there is a whole lot that gets in the way of optimum performance, not the least of which is frequent lack of support at the top (or near it), and the "constantly changing priorities" (a survey item that has a successfully predicted a great many things for some 10 years now, since I started studying it). If you would like to have a sense of how your government functions, take a browse through this: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pses-saff/2008/index-eng.asp and feel free to contact me off-line.

As for the awkwardness of children crossing borders, some high profile news stories may lead one to think that our children are at most risk from predators who are strangers, but in fact the greatest risk of abduction is by estranged parents. And once they cross a border, it becomes that much more difficult to trace the child and assure their safety. As a result, and thankfully so, a number of policies have been imposed in recent years to prevent (or at least try to reduce) the incidence of parents snatching a child and leaping across the border, or across the ocean. My wife recently took our younger son on a wonderful train trip to NYC and Pittsburg. Because she would be the sole parent crossing the border with him, and because he is a minor, we had to get a signed and notarized letter from me indicating that I gave my permission. Even though a lawyer cousin was generous enough to do it for free, it was still a pain to have to ask, get it, and make sure it was on my wife at all times. But that's the price you pay to make sure kids are safe from vindictive parents.

This may seem to come from left field, but I think a great many complaints people have about government really stem from what I feel is a crisis in the lack of explanatory skill in our culture. When I taught university, I would occasionally ask if anyone had ever received any formal training in how to explain, and of course no one ever did. Indeed, the very idea of explaining as a skill one should acquire for adult competence, like cooking, or computing, or stick-handling, or safe sex, or driving, seems completely incomprehensible to most. Yet being able to explain something clearly is one of the most important things you will ever do in your life, whether you are a teacher, a physician, a lawyer, a car mechanic, a sales clerk in a music store, a parent, a border guard, or someone working in a Service Canada outlet. Moreover, as our society becomes more diverse, with a vast palette of diverse perspectives, and as our public policies get more intricate and interlaced with other policies (often with exotic and confusing compromises that need to be made in order for them to coexist), being able to easily and clearly explain why something needs to be done a certain way, and how to do it, becomes even more critical. The inability for people working in any field to shed a little light into your interactions with them is tremendously frustrating. And, as I'm fond of saying, whenever transparency gets up and leaves the table for a moment, fear, loathing, and paranoid conspiracy theories are more than happy to take its place.

Quite simply, the negative feelings that so many have when they deal with government is because they all too frequently deal with people who do not or cannot explain a policy or procedure, often because it was never properly explained to them by folks who never understood it thoroughly in the first place. And of course, to draw several threads together here, if you don't know why you are doing something, it is hard to feel passion for your job, harder still to breed trust in your citizen-clients, and hard to do a good job _at_ your job.

Didn't think you'd get a rant from a public servant, eh?:smilie_flagge17:

Finally, little Passport office story. So last year, I have to get a passport to go to a conference in Oakland. I generally don't travel outside my beloved country so here I was in my late 50's getting my first passport. I did the on-line thing and that expedited matters. Passport Canada hired a s**tload of people and that helped too. So, when I go to the office I was the lineup. At the first counter, the girl checks through my materials to make sure I have everything I need. confirms it and say "here's a ticket, they'll call your number soon". And of course, before I can shuffle all my papers into the envelope to carry them over, my number gets called, so I rush over to the other wicket, juggling everything. I look up at the next wicket operator, smile and say "I never thought I'd be saying this to someone at the Passport office, but sorry to have kept *you* waiting".

***And in two weeks I get to go to a conference on the subject matter in Nashville, where I'm gonna hit George Gruhn's Guitar shop before taking a plane back home. And just so you know, I looked long and hard to find a cheaper hotel a few blocks away so I wouldn't needlessly spend YOUR tax dollars. (Saved us about $450 in the process!).


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## noobcake (Mar 8, 2006)

Well mhammer that certainly makes a whole lot of sense when you put it that way. Perhaps you should pursue a career in politics? :smile:


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

noobcake said:


> Well mhammer that certainly makes a whole lot of sense when you put it that way. Perhaps you should pursue a career in politics? :smile:


Thanks. I try.

I thought about it for a while, and re-think it occasionally, but I'm not politician material. For me, leadership is easy, management is hard, and there is a need in either case to keep one's gob shut - my personal "gob-glue" never quite sets. So, possessing some of the characteristics, and the right mind-set, is one thing, but politics is a case where you need to have the complete set to do anything. Same way that an all-spruce guitar would likely sound terrific...but how long would it last? A guitar needs tone *and* durability...and so does a politician.

Then there is the small matter of finding a party you can peg down and respect enough to align yourself with. Getting harder to do these days.


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## Jeff Flowerday (Jan 23, 2006)

Let's keep politics out of this for obvious reasons!


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

In gerneral upper management (EX and above) has absolutely no idea what it takes to keep their department going on any given day. Do they care - in my experience - NO!!
In the PS executives can get up to 7% bonus pay for meeting their perfornace objectives in any given year. As you might guess very very few get less than 7%.
Executives a few years ago had an idea to reward top performing non-executives. Their suggest reward to these TOP PERFORMING public servants?
In the winter we give them a toque and in the summer a beach towel. ANY person in management that would conceive of something like that gives you just an inkling of an idea of what our leaders in the public service are like!!!

Brian


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Jeff Flowerday said:


> Let's keep politics out of this for obvious reasons!


+++1 Public servants, in most instances, supercede the political administration of the time.

One of the things that much of the public is unaware of with respect to the public service side of government is the zeitgeist which believes in the "generic manager"; the notion that once you have a "great manager", you can plunk them in anywhere, and both they and the organization will thrive. So, if department X needs a new assistant deputy minister to replace one who is retiring, you can just snag one from another department. 

There is some truth to the view that there are characteristics shared by great managers, but it is naive to think that what they share is enough. So, IMHO there are a few things wrong with the generic manager notion. First, there is much to be said for having expertise in the subject matter, and truly understanding the history of the organization and evolution of its business lines. In the music biz we've seen what happens when company A that makes an entirely different category of product swallows up company B. Second, there is much to be said about how much of a motivator it is to learning the ins and outs of your organization if upper level positions always involve parachuting someone in from elsewhere. Third, it is human nature to want to put one's stamp on things. However, one is less likely to re-invent a wheel (and a superfluous one at that) if one knows the organization well. 

In its defense, I suppose I should admit that it reduces divisive scrapping and infighting amongst internal candidates for those positions. I should also admit that the largest departments, which comprise maybe 85-90% of all federal employees, tend to have very diverse missions so there is not any real focus that any mortal could have expertise in. On the surface, you might think that someone who is a marine biologist ought to lead Fisheries and Oceans, but its a lot more complicated than that. And if you can tell me what the person heading up Heritage Canada or Canada Border Services ought to have university training in, you're a better man/woman than I. 

Of course below the level of deputy head, and maybe even assistant deputy head, you likely want people who know something about the area they are supposed to lead. After all, if my earlier summary of effective management (define the needs, hire good people, give 'em what they need to do the job, get out of the way) is true, then one would expect those with knowledge of the area to have the best understanding of those matters.

In response to Brian's noting of 7% performance pay. Those in such circles refer to it as "at risk" pay. That is, you'll get it as long as you don't screw up. So, it is not performance pay for exceptional performance, but pay for good-enough-to-not-be-publicly-flogged performance. Is that problematic? Well, in one respect, no, since we have no benchmarks for what constitutes really good performance. TBS likes to think they do, but they'd be the last ones to have any realistic appraisal. So, if you don't know what "great" performance looks like, handing out performance pay for it would be like handing out medals at the Olympics in the total absence of a stopwatch or measuring tape. On the other hand, it IS problematic in that it essentially rewards mere adequacy, and mere adequacy is not what we want. And clearly, it also has image problems of the sort that show up in Brian's comments - it is hard to stop folks from thinking that it is "reward" rather than the pay equivalent of a damage deposit being returned at the end of the year for not breaking anything.

Mostly, though, I continue to have a problem with the constant movement of executives in government. You can't stop people from wanting to progress in their career, and you can't attract talent by obliging them to sign a 10-year contract, but as I mentioned earlier, the churn in leadership undermines a great deal. I like to think of senior bureaucrats as "temp help"; they come they go, and the rest of us stay put and do the real work.


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

I really like the job I have right now at Foreign Affairs. I like my managers and I enjoy going to work each day. AND I know I give the department AND the taxpayer value for money.
That being said - after 33 1/2 years of being lied to, promises being broken and just generally being screwed over at Foreign Affairs, am I cynical. You bet!! The department seems to bring out the worst character traits in people and rewards them for it. So - I don't care what management thinks, says or tries to do anymore. Been there, done that and got a whole boat load of tshirts. Management at DFAIT can blow it out their collective a**!!! Life works much better when you ignore the management at work.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

mhammer said:


> And if you can tell me what the person heading up Heritage Canada or Canada Border Services ought to have university training in, you're a better man/woman than I.


when it comes to border services, sensitivity training would be a good place to start. when i came across the border after being married, i did not know that i could not cross into canada without my spouse at my side. i sent her ahead of me by 1 day with the kids, on a plane,giving me room in the car to fill up with my belongings. the guy at the border literally screamed at me until his face was red and spit flew out of his mouth.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

cheezyridr said:


> when it comes to border services, sensitivity training would be a good place to start. when i came across the border after being married, i did not know that i could not cross into canada without my spouse at my side. i sent her ahead of me by 1 day with the kids, on a plane,giving me room in the car to fill up with my belongings. the guy at the border literally screamed at me until his face was red and spit flew out of his mouth.


Well, there you are talking about the people skills (or "soft skills" as folks in the HR business call them), though I doubt many post-secondary institutions have diplomas or degrees in that! Managers DO look for this stuff when hiring, but unfortunately, it's hard to tell in an interview or by test if someone who seems on the surface to have decent people skills will turn into the Incredible Hulk when they have had to pull a long shift, or dealt with 20 cars before you that contained people who could not speak English or French, or who insisted on bringing their pet goat. I suppose an astute person might be able to spot tell-tale signs, but there is no way of assuring that everyone involved in hiring has that degree of astuteness; it is, after all, a relatively rare human trait.

Though I take some comfort in the way people are hired, I take much less comfort in the manner in which supervisors address such matters. A colleague who works as a research psychologist for the Department of Homeland Security introduced me to a phrase some years back: "the 30-year mistake". It refers to a hiring decision that was, in retrospect, a bad one. That certainly conveys how critical hiring decisions can be for their long-term impact, but of course, it is not as if whatever happened 30 years ago was the very last point of intervention available. I find that many supervisors, whether in government or elsewhere are unskilled at, and generally not comfortable with, addressing problematic employees. As a result problematic employees, or rather people who have *become* problematic over time, are allowed to fester. This can further entrench bad work habits and attitudes, and poison the workplace. I don't suppose I need to add that this is not just true of low-level employees, but of supervisors and managers whose own management simply don't want to face the challenge of reining in a toxic manager.


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