Public vs Private sector

So this Liberry thang is my first full-time public sector gig, and a lot of the stuff I always heard about working for The State has turned out to be true:

• There is an employee here who refuses to do her jobs, and instead of being reprimanded or fired, her job description gets re-written to remove responsibilities. I'm not talking about someone who is physically incapable of performing job functions, I'm talking about someone who is just plain lazy, inconsiderate, and largely worthless. Not stupid, not incompetent, not unqualified, but simply confounded obstinate, mean-spirited, selfish, and completely deluded about her importance.
• Often the worst slackers and worst employees get treated with kid gloves because supervisors are either unwilling or unable to cope with them.
• People who show initiative get dumped on and dumped on and dumped on. There are a couple of folks working here with very challenging workloads who keep taking on tasks ignored by others who have less to do but who complain a lot.

All of these things happen in the private sector too, but it's much more likely that someone will be fired (or at least reprimanded) for failing to perform duties as outlined in a job description at a corporate job.

Our latest re-organization of Tech Services responsibilities, announced by an email memo that I received on Sunday, is absolutely ridiculous. First I burst out laughing, then I was pissed (even though it doesn't affect me), then I was incredulous, and then I talked today to the poor soul who was nearly overburdened before, and now is doing 30% more work in order to ease the workload of the laziest person on staff, the person least likely to help out, the person most likely to while away her time bitching about how much she has to do while not doing anything, the person who shows up an hour late, leaves on time, and takes a lunch break anyhow regularly. But I can't really judge her--hell, she's succeeding at getting paid to do next to nothing, and her truly awful behavior gets rewarded again and again with less responsibility for the same pay. She's obviously a genius at gaming the system, so in a perverse way I kind of admire her. And there could be things in her file I don't know about which prevent her from getting canned: I had two salaried employees at Borders I was not allowed to fire because they'd threatened to sue the company, and lawyers at the home office decided it was better to keep writing documentation and doing "coaching and counseling" and paying the salaries of these morons than to pay a lawyer to defend the company's decision to fire them. Perhaps that's what's going on here--there could be medical issues or mental health issues or maybe blackmailing of supervisors, what the fuck do I know? Only this: I just spent a month doing a brutal and tedious project that with periodic performance of rudimentary section maintenance by said slacker would have been wholly unnecessary. And yet she's being rewarded again by having her tasks taken away and granted to others.

Don't get me wrong--there are times here where I spend great stretches of time doing ZILCH, but I always do my assigned tasks and I offer to help out when there's something above-and-beyond that needs done. I think most people here fall into that boat. Most people here. I predict I'll get fired for blogging about my job before the one glaring exception even gets a talking-to.