The apparent lack of efficiency and work ethic on the part of largely unaccountable government bureaucrats — both on the state and federal level — has long been pointed to by advocates of smaller government as anecdotal evidence for why government needs to be downsized.
A recent report released following a state audit of the California Department of Motor Vehicles only serves to buttress those arguments, as it was revealed that one particular employee was found to have slept while on the job for roughly three hours each day for at least four years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The employee, who has not been publicly identified, is estimated to have napped at her desk for upwards of 2,200 hours between February 2014 and December 2017, at a cost to state taxpayers of more than $40,000 in unearned pay.
That employee “worked” as a data operator whose responsibility included entering data into official records such as changes of address or new vehicle registration forms.
According to the auditor’s report, the average data operator employee processed around 560 documents per day, but this particular sleepy employee only averaged approximately 200 documents per day, most of which were also full of errors, the Chronicle reported.
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Incredibly, the napping employee was never disciplined by her supervisors, even as it was noted in her performance reviews that she routinely slept while on the job.
In its own defense, the DMV issued a statement that claimed the employee couldn’t be punished for her actions because her habit of napping on the job had never been properly documented.
She did, however, receive an official warning in March that she could face disciplinary measures if she continued to sleep on the job.
According to the Sacramento Bee, the employee couldn’t dispute the facts of her snoozing:
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“The DMV worker who slept at her desk might have had a medical condition that made it difficult for her to work on a regular schedule,” the Bee reported. “In 2016, her doctor informed the department that she could not perform the duties the job required.
“The DMV reassigned her to another position in January 2017, but she continued to sleep at work.”
Oddly enough, the Chronicle reported that the sleepy employee’s supervisors were the ones who appeared to be punished, as they were required to undergo additional training. There was no word on what that additional training entailed or how it related to dealing with an employee consistently wasting taxpayer money by sleeping on the job.
DMVs across the nation are well-known for having exceptionally long wait times for citizens conducting their business with the government, and wait times in California are so extraordinarily long that even the state legislature has called for hearings to address the persistent problem and utter lack of efficiency.
The Chronicle seemed to offer up a defense of the DMV, to an extent, by noting that wait times had increased in recent years due to the implementation of the federal “Real ID Act” which requires by 2020 the issuance of special enhanced driver’s licenses or state ID cards for those who wish to travel by air, which means more people than usual are submitting paperwork and seeking to obtain new cards from DMVs.
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The state auditor’s investigation into the sleepy DMV employee was launched by virtue of the state’s Whistleblower Act and was but one of approximately 1,481 other investigations within the past year by the auditor’s office.
The perpetual napper was not alone in costing the taxpayers of California thousands of wasted dollars, though, as the auditor’s investigations uncovered several additional examples of waste, fraud and abuse by state government workers.
One example was that of a manager at California State University-Dominguez Hills, who purchased in 2013 a $7,000 quick-charging station for electric vehicles that has since sat unused due to the fact that it was incompatible with the university’s electrical infrastructure and would cost an additional $100,000 to properly adapt and install.
Other examples included a Kern Valley State Prison employee who left work 45 minutes early each day, missing an estimated 312 hours of work at a cost to taxpayers of $9,000, while another involved two groundskeepers at CSU-Fresno who consistently arrived late to work, left early and took excessively long breaks — including one missing seven hours of a shift in one day — which resulted in thousands of hours of missed work at an untold cost to taxpayers.
Government spending is legendary for its waste and unionized government employees who are difficult to fire just make matters worse.
It is examples of seemingly unaccountable, uncaring and inefficient government bureaucrats and employees like these that fuel the desire among many on the right to dramatically downsize local, state and federal government agencies, with the “work” they allegedly do being farmed out to private businesses and contractors that are more easily held accountable for their actions — or lack thereof — in serving the needs of the people.
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