We (My co-worker and I) took off well before sunrise this morning for a little trip through North-West Missouri and then on into Iowa. The first leg of our trip was to drop a high dollar item off at a regional State government office. I ain't even gonna bother to tell you which one because it really doesn't matter they are pretty much all the same.
We have an address and a list of three contact numbers, two of the numbers are direct lines to supposedly big-wigs of some type. Neither our GPS nor Mapquest could seem to find the address although we could get relatively close by putting in other numbers in the chain of addresses. Of course the reason is that as usual the government building of whatever flavor has to be the newest built structure public money can pay for in the area. So new in fact that a GPS of less than a year old didn't have it's address in it's software.
Long about 9AM we are getting close to our target and figure the fat cat banker.... I mean public employee types should finally be at work. We start calling. No answer at any of the numbers we have been given. After running up and down the road we finally spy the building we are looking for. We go inside and promptly stand there at a so called service counter for 10 minutes while the government employee tasked with meeting the public talks to her son or daughter on her cell phone. We never did figure out the gender of the child but it was obvious it was a teenage offspring of one flavor or another. Her two co-workers that could be viewed because they didn't have a convenient screen to hide behind were browsing the internet and discussing some fair or event they had went to this past weekend.
The switchboard phone was happily ringing and being ignored as well.
Finally we were told we had to deliver the item to a back building inside the compound. There were no fences or gates that we could see, just a series of parking lots, but it required a security employee of some type to be notified. Where this security person named Janet actually was is still a mystery because we never saw her but she at least knew we were driving a whole 100 feet to the back building. We felt safe because of it.
We got to the building and proceeded to knock on doors. The one that said main entrance didn't seem to have anyone nearby to be the main entrance opener person. Guess they used that position to fill the invisible security guard's salary. Finally after standing around another 10 minutes or so we saw someone walking in the corridor only about 20 feet from the door. She had a doughnut in her hand but she did actually come and open the door for us.
After dropping our super secret in charge names/password we were informed they were in a meeting. Doesn't that just figure. Eventually someone was found to sign for the item and we managed to get out of there with only wasting about an hour or so on something that should have taken maybe 15 minutes max.
It sure is nice to know where all that tax money we give em is going since they now claim to need more just to fix the roads.
With dysfunction and fraud like this it won't be long now.
Oh ya there were also a few posters complaining about how their raise this time around was so lousy and they demand a larger one this year.
Keep Prepping Everyone.... We are gonna need em soon.
I don't know if you're discussing State of Missouri employees, but that sure matches what I used to see of State workers when I worked at the county level.
ReplyDeleteRP - Ya it was a Mo State department. If anything it was a bit worse than the ones I am used to dealing with around the State Capital. Of course it's been this way for decades now and they just keep adding more employees (90% Women I might add) and it hasn't fell apart yet.
DeleteThere are a lot of reasons things are deteriorating, and that kind of stupidity is one of them. Some years back, I got audited by the IRS. I had to go to their office some distance away. When it was finally my turn to be seen, I'd been waiting over an hour past my appointment time. When I was sent into the agents office, she turned out to be a huge, sweating obese black woman. I told her that it might be a good idea to schedule people for realistic appointment times and she laughed and said "oh, you don' be nobody special." Things went downhill from there. You can't fire government employees. They all get good ratings because it's too much hassle to give one a bad rating, which requires counseling documentation. Government doesn't work and that's part of the reason why.
ReplyDeleteWas there anything worth stealing there when the system collapses?
ReplyDeleteI see a lot of things as future raw materials these days after all the money was stolen from the people to start with.
Sf - All we saw were office cubicles, computer screens and coffee machines with Doughnut boxes nearby. I would bet anything worth stealing will be removed by the so over worked government employees.
DeleteYour government (err...overlords) sound a lot like ours. Too stupid and lazy for the public sector.
ReplyDeleteK - It's amazing how so many people all over can have the same set of experiences and yet these government types still claim they are over worked and under paid and doing a service.
DeleteIt boggles the mind.
I feel your pain. We have had issues with county employees too. I tell my wife they are union employees they are in no rush. Here in MN the liberals are having a $77 million dollar office building built, at the Capital. The conservatives didn't want it but they got over ruled.
ReplyDeleteRob - It's amazing how well they spend our money and then cry they need more isn't it?
DeleteSo very true
DeleteThe petty bureaucrat! They have miserable lives and are miserable people. They take out their frustrations on the person below them in rank, from the top down. The ones dealing with the public are at the bottom of the heap and have no one but the people they are supposed to be helping to piss on. Government! Rotten from the top down to the bottom.
ReplyDelete