This thread is partly fueled by my perception of the distinctions between my interpretation of what .gov does, and everyone elses interpretation of what .gov does.


The thread shall begin with some locating questions.


Which of these businesses would you rather patronize?

Business A, where the employees know everything about their business and the products they offer.

Business B, where the employees don't know anything about their business or the products, but they are employees.


Which of these businesses would you rather patronize?

Business A, which is cheap but has unskilled workers.

Business B, which is expensive, but has exceptionally skilled workers.

The answers are obvious but your questions far less so. Why would you think that .gov has unskiled & unknowledgeable workers?

Depends on what you're in the market for. If you're in the market for something that you need third party expertise to help you with, then knowledgeable, skilled, employees will be important. If not, then no. If I go to a grocery store, the only thing I need employees for is maybe to tell me in which aisle something is stocked. If I go to a computer store and need to find out if a piece of hardware is compatible with something else, or I need a solution to a problem, then I need the expensive, knowledgeable, employee.

There is no "answer," let alone a "better answer," to your questions. Commodity products and applications can get away with commodity employees. Others cannot.

Ok, good. We hit paper with that one. Thank you, moxieman, for your contribution.


After establishing that in some cases incompetence is acceptable, let us now focus on situations when incompetence may not be acceptable, and also may not be obvious to the customer.


(NOTE: Below when I use the word obviously, I mean "obviously after talking to/observing/etc that individual, I can safely say that individual is intelligent!" and NOT "That individual sure looks intelligent.. I wonder if it is the bleach she uses?")


Which service-oriented business would you rather patronize?

Business A, where most of the employees only work there because it is the only job they can get.

Business B, where most of the employees love that line of work.



Which specific auto-repair shop would you rather patronize?

Business A, where most of the employees are obviously not very intelligent.

Business B, where most of the employees are obviously intelligent.



Which business would you rather patronize?

Business A, whose owner is systematic in his approach, and well mannered.

Business B, whose owner is disorganized and disrespectful.

In question 1, how are you determining this? Are you interviewing the peopl or are you making an assumption?
Question 2, which employees?
Question 3, how are you determining this?

From your questions, I can only conclude that you have an initial hypothesis "government employees are lazy, rude, unhelpful, unintelligent and incompetent" and are going to use these results to confirm this.

I don't know what "hitting paper," means, but we have not established anything of the sort with respect to incompetency being acceptable.

If you look at my post, you'll note that I said commodity products can get away with commodity employees (no special skills, a modicum of general knowledge on the subject). I said nothing about incompetent employees.

Trust me, if the grocery store clerk pointed me in the wrong direction at the store due to his lack of knowledge and refusal to either learn where things were or a refusal to seek further assistance from other employees who did know (thus 'incompetent'), that would not be acceptable. It might not be more than an annoyance, but it would not be acceptable.

Certainly, however, the time and effort required to be a competent grocery store clerk is not going to be as great as the time and effort to be a doctor, let's say, but that doesn't make the clerk incompetent.

Let me close with this, using your logic and approach: You have failed in your attempt at creating a straw man to knock down, do you now admit that you are incompetent?

^^^