In the Service of the Public
It has been a long time since working for the government looked like an episode of Sir Roger Hall’s “Gliding On”.
Those of us old enough (and lucky enough!) to have been around to watch New Zealand’s first sitcom classic can still picture Jim at his desk, fag in mouth, and Beryl tut-tutting mildly as she emptied the office’s overflowing ashtrays.
I suspect many of you are at this very moment humming the theme tune, right? “My old desk, does an arabesque…” Ah, simpler times.
Roger Hall had brilliantly captured life in the public service with his 1976 stage play, “Glide Time” – a reference to the flexible work schedule enjoyed by government workers which was envied and/or scorned by private sector workers living a rigid nine-to-five.
It was a satire, premised on the idea that, not only did civil servants glide in and out of work whenever it suited, they spent the hours in between finding ways to… well, fill those hours in between.
Jim, Beryl and the rest of the office moved to television in the 1980s with five seasons of their “working hard/hardly working” banter, poking gentle fun at Wellington public servants.
A public servant myself in 1985 – the Health Department’s Education and Information Unit, specialising in sexually transmitted diseases (you’re welcome) - I recognised one or two of the characters, and some of the mood.
Though I was also aware we were doing valuable work – this was the in the early years of the AIDs epidemic and the seriousness of that disease and need for accurate public information was certainly felt in our offices at the end of The Terrace.
Government workers I meet now don’t look at all like Beryl, Jim or Wally – there’s hardly an overall, clipboard or fag-in-mouth to be found, and the women have found their voices.
I’m fortunate enough to MC events that bring employees together for leadership training, personal development and industry networking. Many are privately-owned companies, getting together either as large nationwide corporations or as industry sectors. Government agencies do this, too.
One of my favourite events is for women who work in the public sector – police, defence force, health, education, finance, justice and social services. These events are like the ones for private companies except for one thing – a conscious and explicit acknowledgement by participants of the “service” part of “public service”.
There is an awareness that, if you choose to be a public servant, it comes with some different demands – that you are working for the public good, that the people you serve aren’t just “customers” but “citizens” … That you are part of the very networks that make our society function.
It’s not just me who meets these people – you interact with them, too. Every time you send the kids to school, drive on a highway, pick up a prescription, use your passport, contribute to KiwiSaver, check the MetService weather forecast, read a national statistic, see a police officer, listen to the radio or hike in a national park you are making use of the work that a public servant provides.
When we read headlines now about public service cuts and planned redundancies of thousands of workers, it would be easy to picture a bloke with a clipboard and a fag. But that was a 1980’s sitcom. I worry for the people about to lose careers, and for us who rely on the work they do.
I’d write a letter of complaint but – ha! - there might not be anyone left to read it.