Ask Not What Your County Can Do For You

I’ve been volunteering for the County in one of their offices for about a
month. I wanted to share with you some of the things they’re up against:

1. Unbearable heat, while the air conditioner was allegedly being repaired. 
   They have fans, but all the fans do is blow the hot air around.  It’s stifling!  When the “repair equipment” was gone, it was still hotter than you-know-what in there.
2. Old, non-safe equipment. The file drawers do not lock to keep them from tipping over if you have more than one drawer open (newer, safer ones only
   allow one drawer open at a time to avoid this). Also, the drawers are broken and don’t function properly. I have the bruises to prove it.
3. Lack of office supplies in order to do their job. They take what’s available,
   which doesn’t always make their job smooth-running and efficient, causing
   delays and taking more time to accomplish what they need to do.
4. Unnecessary requirements to log and mark down each and every single thing they do during their shift (ex. “took call from customer”, or “gassed up the truck”, or “wrote report on such-and-such”). This is time-consuming, inefficient and bogs down the actual efficiency of a work day. It takes precious time away from getting the real job done.
5. Dekalb citizens calling in, upset, and taking it out on the County employees with verbal abuse. I listened to one caller verbally abusing one employee, as he patiently listened to her, and explained that he could not possibly be at the complaint location every day and night.  She used him to blame all her problems with County government, and he sat there and took it.  Personally, I don’t know if I could handle listening to that day in and day out, and feel as though I’m doing any good at my job.  No one gets paid enough to listen to folks rant and rave about their unhappiness all the time.
6. Low pay for a high expectation job!  Check the website sometime and see
   if you could work for that stipend!  Could you, would you work on a trash truck?  Would you put your life in danger for the sake of enforcing laws and protecting others? Could you, would you work in the middle of traffic to repair a line, and risk getting hit by one of our high-speed drivers?

Our County employees cannot possibly do everything that’s needed in this County, that’s a simple fact of mathematics. Try to imagine if you had one County worker for your specific neighborhood alone, to work Code Enforcement, Policing, Sanitation, Traffic, Watershed Management, etc. Now do the math.  Impossible. Ask your police officer where their territory is, and you’ll be
horrified. That’s just one police officer per car, not two, like it used to be. 
Ask your Code Enforcement officer about their territory, it’s even worse, and much of what they do overlaps policing, and enforcing laws, and dealing with irate residents. Impossible!

So the next time you want to contact the County with a problem, try to make it a
“concern” instead, and treat the County employee on the other end of the phone
with the utmost courtesy and respect. Most of us prefer to have an enjoyable work environment, and at the end of the day have the feeling of a job well done. 
Only positive reinforcement and appreciation aids the workforce to excel.

Ask not what your County can do for you, but what you can do for your County!  If you have the ability to complain, then have the stamina to try first and solve the problem yourself, or at least contribute to help alleviate the problem.  I regularly clean up areas I see in dire need of it, without waiting for Sanitation to do it, or calling to complain about it. I pull signs off the telephone poles, and pick them up from the intersections. I offer my time and service in the offices so those field workers can get out in the field to help us, which is what they’d much prefer to do anyway (to keep us from calling in and complaining about them).  I have traffic light malfunctions on speed dial, so when I see a malfunctioning light, I call right away and report it. The man that answers the phone when I call
knows me, and appreciates the fact I’m friendly and not yelling at him.

The Golden Rule:  Treat others the way you prefer to be treated….and ask not what your County can do for you, but what you can do for your County.