Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Northwoods' Government Workers

At the end of spring, I got a notice from a Northwoods' state tax office about a mistake I made on a property tax thing.  They were right, I'd made a mistake, so I sent off a check.

Then yesterday, I got a second notice from the same office.  So I looked up, and sure enough the check had cleared, so this morning I called the office.

You know what I'm going to say, right?  I was put on hold for an hour, hung up on, had a surly government person, and so on.  Except you're wrong.

The person who answered the phone was the person whose name was on the letter.  She was courteous and pleasant, looked up the thing, made whatever correction was necessary, and reassured me that all was fine.  Then she suggested that I call the local county tax folks so that the same thing won't happen again.

And I did that, and the county person was just as pleasant, looked up my stuff, and made the adjustment.

Our governor trashes state workers, but the state workers I've encountered seem to do a good job and do it pleasantly.  (I've pretty much had pleasant experiences with people in government offices here, and that includes the drivers' license folks.)

3 comments:

  1. This has been my experience, too. Though I think it helps that Fort Smith is a small city, our civil workers are generally reasonable, helpful, and very nice (at least to me, I gotta add, a white lady).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice! I'm afraid that I haven't had that experience with some of our government folks here in Adventure City. I wonder if, as delagar points out, that the size of the city has something to do with it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've had positive experiences with most of our government folks, but yesterday I needed to get a title notarized so I could transfer ownership of my old car, and the notary did not know how to do it. Notarizing an auto title has to be the simplest task a notary will ever tackle, with instructions clearly written on the back of the title, but this notary had to keep wandering off to ask someone else how to do it. My luck choosing the line with the trainee.

    ReplyDelete