Are Local Authority staff trained to not smile at their customers, or is it just the weight of
working for a dull, humourless bureaucracy that drains them of any warmth?
The first makes sense, as it prepares the client for what is probably going to be a fairly unpleasant experience, but the second would also be understandable.
Their website said that you can get parking permits for courtesy cars but on arrival the scowly receptionist gave me a standard permit application which I had to fill in, despite it being seemingly inapplicable. When my number came up I was told by the next surly operative that the person who applied for the original permit should be the one signing that form. I explained that she came in at 8.00am yesterday to do so, (the opening time according to the website) but was told that it didn't open till 9.00am. "It's changed" I was told.
Anyway I signed it anyway and when I handed it back to he she seemed to brighten up, and stapled it to something else without even looking at it. Conclusion: all they want is to make people fill in forms. It doesn't matter what you say, or whether it is the correct form, just fill in a form and you make them happy.
Oh yes, there's a form for everything and nobody who isnt a director can make a decision
I think they go through a "breaking" process on induction
Does Local Authority mean cahncil?
It would make you bitter, wouldn't it? If you awoke in the morning, looked in the mirror, and faced another day at the Civic Centre, with a timetable of Diversity Training and Health & Safety Courses :-(
That;s the thing. Can we really complain or be surprised about people with miserable jobs being
Yes. I applied for a job once at one, long ago.
At the interview I had to swear my allegiance to their policy of positive discrimination.
I think I ticked 19 out of their 20 competencies boxes for skill set, but the fact that my Unix experience was on a different version to theirs meant that I didn't tick box one, and so couldn't be considered.
I probably got lucky there.
People choose to be miserable, happy, rude, obstructive, helpful, cheerful or hurtful.
There are no excuses. Stop looking for excuses; it's your fault you're a nasty piece of work and no one and nothing else is to blame.
Perhaps you would have been positively discriminated against, in any case.
You haven't turned black since I last saw you, have you?
I think many large institutions are pretty much the same
It's sad really, Locakl Authorities could make a massive difference to their patch by being a bit more innovative or entrepreneurial but they are usually so mired in funding cuts, KPIs for funding and dealing with de-motivated and unproductive staff that they never seem to manage to do anything but exist, and grudgingly at that.
That's basically bollocks, though, isn't it.
It's not even a political position about individual responsibilty. It's just horsehit.
