The Civil Service

People who work for the government are known as "Civil Servants". This is very unfortunate because, although you might think the fact they work for you, paid by your tax money, and dependant on the good will of the taxed populace for the continuance of their livelihood, the civil service finds nothing to be a greater irritant in their life than having to actually deal with their customer base, the people who pay their salaries.
A fine example would be my Saturday experience. I had a package that needed picked up from the post office. Unfortunately, the address they gave did not come up on Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, or even Google. So I made the first mistake. I called the number they had on the "You need to pick this up slip."
Now, you are probably wondering what I mean by "mistake". After all, isn't the purpose of a phone number to be called? HA! You clearly have never attempted to use a government number for that purpose. They are actually meant to distract you from laundry, dishwashing, vacuuming, and what have you for time periods ranging from 1 to 3 hours, depending on how patient you are. Well, after being routed and re-routed through about 40 connections I was finally able to get to a place I thought I could get directions...but no, they said they were open during x hours (a time frame, by the way, I was IN) and could call another number for directions.
Well, after lo, these many hours of searching I tried something bizarre on google and managed to find an address that actually worked. So I drove on over. I listened to the lady yell at the poor guy in front of her because he wanted her to ship a package that had postage on it when clearly he needed to drop it in some other bin. I should point out, I could not see the bin she referred to but...whatever.
So I hesitantly stepped up when it was my turn. She looked at me, glanced at the orangish card and walked off for 5 minutes or so. Stupid whore. Came back and, without any apology whatsoever, nor any acknowledgment she had seen me before going wherever she went, she greeted me with a sharp, "What do you want?" Except, of course, she barely speaks English so it was more "Whut ewe wunt?"
Trying to be in the Christmas spirit and not rip her face off and feed it to the dogs I said, "I believe you have a package for me." I politely handed her the card and my Drivers License since the card said I needed to show idea. I figured I would save her some time. She looked at the "You have a package card". She looked at me. She shoved the DL towards me which I only prevented from flying to the floor with my lightning fast reflex grab.
She headed off into the back somewhere. After three or four minutes she came back and grabbed my letter...from the shelves right behind where she had been standing. She shoved the "You have a package card" at me and said something unintelligible. Finally I ascertained it needed signed so I did so. With about as much grace as a pre-ghost Ebeneezer Scrooge she shoved my letter towards me and said "Next". No "Thank you", no "have a nice Holiday", nothing.
So in short, as customer service she sucked, as a human being she is just as bad. I am ecstatic to see what my taxes are paying for.
"Civil" servant indeed.