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Part 101 Civil Service 2:
May 3, 2004:
In my last essay, I was very personal about the people who staff our local postoffice and in particular about our ex-letter carrier. I intended that and will not take it back. When I use the word indolent, I am holding up the standard I was held to as a youngster by my parents and my community. I was raised in a puritan ethic environment in spades. I was made to understand that doing your duty is the first order of behavior. If you get paid and commit to do something, you do not look for excuses to not do it. You invest effort to find ways to do it, regardless of how difficult it becomes.
I don't see much of that puritan ethic anymore. The general attitude toward responsibility seems to have changed. Therein, I believe is th crux of our current cultural crisis. We did not just lose the puritan ethic. We have lost all sense of ethics. In that sense, that letter carrier is simply representative of a general ethical dysfunction that has infected our whole culture. Indolence has become widespread and is generally excused. This problem is not limited to civil service. However, because of the rules established in civil service, it is greatly magnified there.
There is an older example I have of this problem in civil service. Many years ago I was gainfully employed by the Bendix Corporation. I was involved in a project making very sophisticated mapping equipment. It was top secret. I was one of a handful of people responsible for installing and servicing it. This was back in the time frame of the U2 debacle under good old Ike. Much of our mapping source information came from the aircraft that were exposed when Powers was shot down in Russia.
Back to the point. I really had enough clues about civil service when I installed these systems at government facilities. I should have remembered what I had learned about civil service at that time, but I had forgotten. In those facilities, if a person could manage to get a top secret security clearance he was on the gravy train for life. Some of them really took the whole tour at our expense. So, this civil service thing is not just limited to the postoffice.
As to the post office, competition would change this problem I'm sure. So, here is another law that we need. We need to make a law that takes away the postoffice monopoly completely. Currently, the post office has a law saying it is illegal for anyone but them to put stuff in any mailbox. Never mind that they do not own my mailbox. I bought it and I own it. The rational is that it will keep garbage out of my mailbox but the real reason is to protect their monopoly.
I say, we must break that monopoly. We broke the telephone monopoly for a much less noble reason. We can do that and still protect my mailbox from trash. All we need do is have a law wherein I can authorize another mail carrier or several others to deliver my mail. To protect against trash the law can also say, no unauthorized person can put stuff in my mailbox. I suspect the postoffice would suddenly find itself in head on competition with privately owned and efficiently operated carriers. In that competition, the bureaucracy and work-rule burdened postoffice would lose big time.
A law like that might help reform the postoffice, but it would not help with the larger problem in civil service. For that we need to change the civil service rules across the board. We must change them so people can be dismissed for indolence. If that were the case, a host of civil servants would be dismissed out of hand including many postmasters. It is not right for people to have jobs where they cannot be dismissed no matter what they do or refuse to do. I think we must revisit the whole civil service arena. It is the last gigantic featherbed. There are way too many people getting paid for doing essentially nothing. Civil service is managed by grossly incompetent people who acquired their power through attrition.
I could go to the ghetto of any major city and find a million people like many of these civil servants. These are people who will be very happy to take big pay for easy work. However, If the work begins to require any effort at all, they will begin to whine and finally just disappear. The difference is, in civil service, under the current rules, they would not need to disappear. They would still get big pay for not doing their job.
Now, lest I give the impression that I think all civil servants are culpable, I do not. I am sure there are a great many who do their best everyday. Unfortunately, the ones who are good, become defensive and they tend to cover for the bad ones. They try to defend the whole system against outside criticism. It is just a manifestation of the siege mentality that we are all prone to when we feel threatened. It is a very difficult problem to overcome.
This is about more than civil service. It's about the degeneration of America. It's about lowering standards. It's about allowing unqualified people to get into the system. Instead of holding to our standards and helping people to qualify, we have lowered the standards to let unqualified people in. It's not just the postoffice. It's the police, army, FBI, CIA, and all of civil service. Even universities have gotten into the act. U of M is in a serious struggle about it right now. It's all unnecessary. There are better ways to do it.
When I applied for college at Lawrence Tech. eons ago, they had entrance standards even though they were not recognized by the powers that be. Lawrence Tech. just ignored my highschool record. Instead they gave me an entrance exam to find out if I knew what the highschool said I did. I give no thanks to the highschool that I did know because I had learned it on my own. I got in. For the ones who did not know, the college did not lower the standards. They did not let people in just because they were black, female, or stupid. Instead, they offered a one year remedial cram course in which the ignorant could qualify. Many of the ones who took that course did qualify and got into the school. It worked for them.
I think we need to get back to that kind of standard setting. Behaviorism can apply here. We may not need to punish bad behavior, but we sure should not be rewarding it. If we reward at all, it should be for exceptionally good behavior. Don't send me e-mail to blow smoke at me about defining good and bad behavior. We have already done that many times. Good behavior is that which enhances the community and our value to the community. Bad behavior is that which diminishes our neighbors, our community, and our value to the community. It really is that simple. In that model, shirking our responsibility is bad behavior. End of story!
Now, here is another revelation. The United States Post Office denies they ever had a motto or creed. Here is a statement I found on their self serving website.
"Contrary to popular belief, the United States Postal Service® has no official motto. However, a number of postal buildings contain inscriptions, the most familiar of which appears on the General Post Office™ facility on 33rd Street and 8th Avenue in New York City.
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat,
nor gloom of night,
stays these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds.
---- Herodotus : 503 B.C.
William Mitchell Kendall of the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White supplied the inscription."
So this is it. When the Wyandotte Postmaster came to my grade
school class many years ago and proudly told us of this motto,
he was lying. So too were all of the teachers who smiled and approved
what he said. So too the school principal and the two postmen
I personally knew. All of these people were liars. Imagine that!
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