Probably not before doing it, no. Sometimes that comes after.
Not really. If you work for income tax, no matter how well you know you do your job you are still "the taxman", the faceless bureaucrat, the tea-swilling overpaid, under-worked cossetted incompetent who's biding time until they get their gold plated inflation proofed pension.

If you're a social worker you're to blame for the latest child killed by a parent or heavy handed and uncaring when you do recommend a child should be taken into care.


While it's nice having people say "I couldn't do your job" when they've witnessed what a tough time you just had or is appreciative in some other way, I think you are looking at the wrong people when it comes to regard. It's not (just) clients, customers and patients, it's from everybody.

Get introduced to someone, or meet someone from schooldays and they ask you what you do. Their reaction tells you a lot.

You sit at the breakfast table and the newspaper is telling you, once again, how easy you have it, or how colleagues in your occupation have just ruined someone else's life, caused them to kill themselves, left them homeless or penniless etc

If I had just had a tough day with the people I had been dealing with, and not one of them recognised it in some way and then some arse on the bus told me I was uncaring, inefficient, heartless, overpaid and all the rest of it that's not going to help me through the day is it? Of course appreciation, or regard, makes it easier.

A combination of things. The criticism for the majority of public sector roles is constant. You have no comeback. You can't put the record straight because of confidentiality rules.

Sticks and stones ... isn't it?

Did you define yourself by what others thought about your occupation? If so, why?

Isn't that their problem? Why make it yours?

Who cares that some journalist writes such nonsense?

I am very different to you. If that happened to me, I wouldn't care what the arse said.

That does not only apply to public sector roles. Lawyers can be slagged off on review sites, without being able to respond, other than to sue for defamation, which affects their income. Such is life.

I'm sure everyone is subject to a certain amount of unjustified or ignorant criticism. But there's a massive difference between a review site only seen by a few (where you could actually respond anyway, perhaps anonymously) and the mass coverage in the media and the subsequent comments that follow an article.

But it's not just the criticism of an individual. It's the effect of what the newspaper report says and the impression it creates of your occupation.

Layers don't have a great rep. But for every lawyer who suffers there's a winner too. You win some, you lose some. Ever see a Traffic Warden win? They're always little Hitlers or Jobsworths aren't they.

Ever see a good word for a social worker on the front page?

But you do see "Lawyer to the stars" or Successful Lawyer or Lawyer who specialises in this type of case...

Yes, but words also have an effect.

Absolutely not. I think I got enough plaudits in my time to cancel out the negative stuff.
In particular for four years I went to work (still for DWP) in a multi-agency advice centre with a bunch of people from organisations (public and voluntary sector) who would normally be completely at loggerheads with the department. I won them over and I know they thought very highly of me.

Now that I've written that, clearly what people thought about me makes a difference to me. But what if I'd never had that? Over 30 years of feeling nothing but contempt and you think it wouldn't get to you?

And then, when the latest pay review study shows how far behind other workers you are that you need a 25% pay rise just to catch up but you don't have a cat in hell's chance of getting anything close because the government knows you have no sympathy in a pay claim.

So now, not only do you feel undervalued by everyone your standard of living is negatively affected too.

(And saying get another job or go self employed doesn't really work)
It becomes yours because every which way you turn, someone repeats it and becomes a truth.
Again, it's not just some journalist writing nonsense, the nonsense continues - it used to just be the letters page but now it's hundreds and thousands of comments in the on line version.

It's all very well saying ignore it but it seriously affects the way people behave towards you in your day to day work. And if they are negative or even hostile, your job is already more difficult to do and you haven't even started.

Well, most people these days review everything before purchasing, using etc. So, as with most things, people will review the prospective lawyer prior to attending a consultation. Someone saying, "Do not use this lawyer, they will charge too much and will screw up your case" is likely to result in that lawyer going hungry. No issue if the review is true but, if it isn't, the lawyer cannot respond as their professional conduct rules prevent them from doing so.

I imagine doctors face similar issues.

I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for lawyers. I was merely pointing out that shitty opinions do not only affect those employed in the public sector.

As you can probably tell, I don't give a shit about what anyone says about an occupation as a whole as I believe that that says more about them that the slighted group. There is good and bad in all occupations and one cannot tar them all with the same brush will any credibility.

You can with lawyers. They never make a situation better apart for themselves.

That might not be the case in the circumstance of a death row defense.

Public sector workers though have made the decision to take a job which offers a reliable income and fabulous benefits, including steady work for life, usually in return for less money than they might make in the private sector. It's not wrong but it is a specific path and it's easy to see why those who have not had that option might think poorly of those who have and who have settled for it.

You've been away from the UK far too long if you think the security is still as it was. And less money means less pension too, of course,

I suppose it rather depends on what job in the public sector but you don't really believe people choose that job over others do you? Nurses, social workers and teachers maybe. But Town Hall clerks, dept of transport employees? Social security officials, NI Inspectors? Rent collectors?

I've never heard the idea that anyone aspires to these careers jobs.

Yes. I know someone very well who took a public sector job because it has maternity leave you can actually take and lots of holidays. It's a sensible choice if what you value is a lack of stress and time away from work. It's a doubly good choice if you live with someone who has a financially remunerative but high stress, high risk, job, so long as you're able to deal with the differences in work style.

I was right, you have been away too long.

You know one person who deliberately chose public over private. Oh well, that's conclusive proof then.
Most people I know went to the private sector. Proof it must be better and easy.

Oh come on, people choose public sector jobs because the hard part is getting one, after that it's a matter of coasting until retirement. People choose to do the same job in the private sector because, although there's some risk involved, there's also more money and, possibly, excitement. As noted above, there's nothing wrong with choosing dull and safe, it's definitively the sensible thing to do; with luck one can retire early.

Did you leave the UK before or after BBC introduced the second channel?

Some people enter teaching for this reason - I'll be home by 3:30 every day!
Summer holidays! - and then very quickly have what I call the "Oh, f***" moment when they realise the actual workload they have signed up for.

Another factor is that by definition a teacher has to have a university degree, and quite often a post-graduate qualification - so in high school many of these people were academically talented and in university-prep classes themselves, and mistakenly think that environment is standard. When actually it's about 10%.

PISA just released some behaviour statistics that said in Australia, 46% of students were behaviour challenges in some way - that sounds very high to me (I haven't seen the methodology but assume with that figure they are counting non-disruptive behaviour as well such as work avoidance, truancy etc - maybe 46% would make sense then) but you only need about 10% of your students to be disruptive to unsettle and throw off an entire school.

That's the environment these public-sector employees are walking in to.

Many other people in other public sector jobs re dealing with high-maintenance people and situations too - social work, police etc. Ask a bus driver about some of the passengers.

So I don't think "public sector" is an easy gig.

Perfectly put!

Friday's Dilbert