Earlier this month, I was tasked with programming one of the larger buildings in our inventory. As such, we met with decision makers in twenty three departments of our state.
Needless to say, it was quite a revelation for a noobie in government. What I saw were a lot of people who were working hard to get their work done with the limited resources that was allotted to them. That should be obvious after a moment’s thought, but given decades of anti-government propaganda, its not the first thing you think about when you hear “government worker”.
Furthermore, a significant subset of those folks served directly under the elected official in charge of their department. As such, many of them were uncertain whether they would even be at their job in the coming year. Even so, they took on this extra task on top of their already packed agenda and helped collect the detailed information we needed for a project which will come to fruition in five or six years.
It took me several years in architecture school to have the blindingly obvious epiphany that every single object we have around us was designed and crafted by a human being. This exercise similarly revealed that every single thing that is done in government (for better or worse) was designed and is currently executed by a person, a full person with all the strains and stresses that comes being human.
So I wish all the best those who are polishing up the customary letters of resignation this morning at the end of an election season, especially for those who know their letters will be will be accepted. Being caught among the detritus of a government transition is part of the game when you play at those higher levels, but I doubt it makes it any easier.