The public service is notorious for corruption, negligence of duty and absenteeism by its workers. But thankfully, there are some public servants who do their work diligently and even go above and beyond the call of duty.
In this post I share a memorable encounter I had with such a staff at an accounts office in the University of Nigeria, my personal experience at work, and much more to encourage us to do the same.
The post is crisp and animated and I hope it moves us to reconsider the way we do our jobs if we’ve been falling short. I also hope it helps to prepare the minds of the younger ones to make a difference when they do get that job they’ve been yearning for.
Constantly Go Above And Beyond
Does anyone else dread going to government offices for any reason? That is something I try to avoid as much as possible. One fellow rightly remarked that you can scarcely get an answer out of people in government offices. I know it is so in Nigeria and many other countries, if what we see in movies is anything to go by.
Many public servants will do anything but attend to official visitors with the courtesy required of their positions. And the treatment they give you gets worse if you’re small statured or they deem you poor. You can spend a whole day trying to get attention from an officer. If he’s not pretending to be busy by glaring at a file before him, he’s chatting with friends and colleagues seemingly oblivious of your presence. And when you finally get a word in edgeways, he’ll bark at you to come back tomorrow, the reason which you gleaned from his endless chatter being that salaries have just been paid and he probably wishes to dash off to the bank. If you’re bold enough to state that you came from 500 kilometres away and have made no overnight arrangements, he’ll simply bark louder and dismiss you.
The guy may have an unwritten rule that you must drop lunch money for him before he attends to you but since he doesn’t openly demand gratification, you may think he has a cogent reason for delaying you. But the more galling thing is that while you’re made to wait, he promptly attends to friends, relatives and VIPs that come on a similar mission to yours.
Many of us intend to own businesses someday. If we apply the same lackadaisical attitude we do to our pubic service jobs to those businesses, they’ll probably collapse.
Such incidents occur everyday in the public service. In the university where I teach, for example, workers just see people and classify them. These ones must be students, job applicants or candidates seeking admission, they conclude. Having pigeon-holed them, they feel they deserve to be treated shabbily. But everyone we meet at work should be given civil and decent treatment irrespective of their age or social status.
This problem is rife among junior workers. It appears that having an official position, no matter how lowly, gives people a sense of power which they exercise by being harsh and rude to those they ought to serve. On many occasions, I’ve been dealt the rough edge of junior workers’ tongues on campus while making routine demands. But I never cease to be amazed at the spectacular reversal of roles that transpires once another staff who knows me comes into the office where I am being abrasively addressed and gives me a deferential greeting. The raging staff quickly simmers down and, before you know it, our proud patrician is grovelling like the lowliest of slaves.
Why? Because the smart fellow that he is, he has quickly calculated that he may need to get a degree from my department and who knows, I may want to settle scores, or he may have a child taking one of my courses for whom he may seek a favour or he may be posted to my department someday …. The list of self-serving reasons for which some staff do what they are paid for can go on.
But how about doing the job and actually earning the money we receive? How about doing unto others as we wish them to do unto us? How about the joy that comes from serving and putting a smile on someone’s face? How about setting a good example that others might follow?
The last reason above inspires my interactions with students. I feel bad when I send a student out of my office without rendering the help they asked for because I was busy reading or writing, although reading and writing are part of my job specs. Or the times I wasn’t patient enough to explain that I was incapable of offering the help they needed and pointed them to the right people or sources. I find myself bending over backwards to make up for those times because those kids are mine too (they belong to all of us) and if I’m unkind and insensitive to them, they may go out malformed and continue the vicious cycle of misbehaving in their official capacities.
Many times alumni refuse to attend reunions at the university or give back to their alma mater because of the horrendous treatment they received as students. Some scars from those ghastly experiences are so deep while some of the wounds just refuse to heal. Many put off collecting their certificates and use their Statements of Result for decades because they don’t want to go through the nightmare of dealing with unreasonable and heartless staff.
That is why I cherish one experience I had with a non-academic staff early in my career at the University of Nigeria. I had spent a greater part of that particular day in the heat and crowd at the only bank on campus then trying to get the sum of allowances recently paid into my account by my employers (who did not send me a pay slip). The fellow who was supposed to operate the computer at the enquiries desk was absent and overstayed my patience, which had been long enough! Since the option of sailing across the sea of heads and the security barrier to see the accountant was clearly out of the question, I shuffled my feet to the Senior Staff Emoluments Unit of the bursary as a last resort.
In this post I share a memorable encounter I had with such a staff at an accounts office in the University of Nigeria, my personal experience at work, and much more to encourage us to do the same.
The post is crisp and animated and I hope it moves us to reconsider the way we do our jobs if we’ve been falling short. I also hope it helps to prepare the minds of the younger ones to make a difference when they do get that job they’ve been yearning for.
Constantly Go Above And Beyond
Does anyone else dread going to government offices for any reason? That is something I try to avoid as much as possible. One fellow rightly remarked that you can scarcely get an answer out of people in government offices. I know it is so in Nigeria and many other countries, if what we see in movies is anything to go by.
Many public servants will do anything but attend to official visitors with the courtesy required of their positions. And the treatment they give you gets worse if you’re small statured or they deem you poor. You can spend a whole day trying to get attention from an officer. If he’s not pretending to be busy by glaring at a file before him, he’s chatting with friends and colleagues seemingly oblivious of your presence. And when you finally get a word in edgeways, he’ll bark at you to come back tomorrow, the reason which you gleaned from his endless chatter being that salaries have just been paid and he probably wishes to dash off to the bank. If you’re bold enough to state that you came from 500 kilometres away and have made no overnight arrangements, he’ll simply bark louder and dismiss you.
The guy may have an unwritten rule that you must drop lunch money for him before he attends to you but since he doesn’t openly demand gratification, you may think he has a cogent reason for delaying you. But the more galling thing is that while you’re made to wait, he promptly attends to friends, relatives and VIPs that come on a similar mission to yours.
Many of us intend to own businesses someday. If we apply the same lackadaisical attitude we do to our pubic service jobs to those businesses, they’ll probably collapse.
Such incidents occur everyday in the public service. In the university where I teach, for example, workers just see people and classify them. These ones must be students, job applicants or candidates seeking admission, they conclude. Having pigeon-holed them, they feel they deserve to be treated shabbily. But everyone we meet at work should be given civil and decent treatment irrespective of their age or social status.
This problem is rife among junior workers. It appears that having an official position, no matter how lowly, gives people a sense of power which they exercise by being harsh and rude to those they ought to serve. On many occasions, I’ve been dealt the rough edge of junior workers’ tongues on campus while making routine demands. But I never cease to be amazed at the spectacular reversal of roles that transpires once another staff who knows me comes into the office where I am being abrasively addressed and gives me a deferential greeting. The raging staff quickly simmers down and, before you know it, our proud patrician is grovelling like the lowliest of slaves.
Why? Because the smart fellow that he is, he has quickly calculated that he may need to get a degree from my department and who knows, I may want to settle scores, or he may have a child taking one of my courses for whom he may seek a favour or he may be posted to my department someday …. The list of self-serving reasons for which some staff do what they are paid for can go on.
But how about doing the job and actually earning the money we receive? How about doing unto others as we wish them to do unto us? How about the joy that comes from serving and putting a smile on someone’s face? How about setting a good example that others might follow?
The last reason above inspires my interactions with students. I feel bad when I send a student out of my office without rendering the help they asked for because I was busy reading or writing, although reading and writing are part of my job specs. Or the times I wasn’t patient enough to explain that I was incapable of offering the help they needed and pointed them to the right people or sources. I find myself bending over backwards to make up for those times because those kids are mine too (they belong to all of us) and if I’m unkind and insensitive to them, they may go out malformed and continue the vicious cycle of misbehaving in their official capacities.
Many times alumni refuse to attend reunions at the university or give back to their alma mater because of the horrendous treatment they received as students. Some scars from those ghastly experiences are so deep while some of the wounds just refuse to heal. Many put off collecting their certificates and use their Statements of Result for decades because they don’t want to go through the nightmare of dealing with unreasonable and heartless staff.
That is why I cherish one experience I had with a non-academic staff early in my career at the University of Nigeria. I had spent a greater part of that particular day in the heat and crowd at the only bank on campus then trying to get the sum of allowances recently paid into my account by my employers (who did not send me a pay slip). The fellow who was supposed to operate the computer at the enquiries desk was absent and overstayed my patience, which had been long enough! Since the option of sailing across the sea of heads and the security barrier to see the accountant was clearly out of the question, I shuffled my feet to the Senior Staff Emoluments Unit of the bursary as a last resort.
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