Podcast “important today”
Black box office: How authorities really tick
“Official influencer” Conny contradicts the prejudice that people in the civil service are lazy: “People sometimes work for two or three colleagues”.
© Bildagentur-online / Joko / Picture Alliance
The Verdi union and the civil service association are currently demanding 10.5 percent more money. But some think that the work-shy civil servants are already doing too well. The “official influencer” Conny, on the other hand, says: Officials are everything, just not lazy!
Drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and just not answering the phone – these are prejudices that “Conny from the Block” plays with in her videos on Instagram. She now has more than 100,000 followers who regularly watch her sarcastic videos. In her main job, she works in public administration in Berlin and wants to make the office more attractive, especially for young people. In the 382nd edition of the podcast “Today important” she says: “It’s clichés or an image that exist. I didn’t think of that, but that’s what the majority of people imagine when they think of an authority .” However, she fundamentally contradicts the prejudice that civil servants are lazy. Because many offices are also suffering from a massive lack of staff, she explains in the podcast: “People sometimes work for two to three colleagues.”
A government agency is not a startup
Conny goes to trade fairs and talks a lot with Generation Z. But she is also realistic and doesn’t promise too much to young people, as she says in an interview with “Today’s Important” editor Dimitri Blinski: “We are not yet digitized, we are not yet 100 percent the start-up from Berlin-Kreuzberg that you imagine. You have to accept that. But we also have a lot of advantages.” Above all, these advantages include continuity, even during the Corona period. “The job simply gives security, that’s a topic that has gained in importance, especially after the pandemic. Generally speaking, nothing can happen to me in an authority,” says Conny. But she doesn’t just see the non-terminability as an advantage: “We only work for the citizens of this city, this municipality, this country, so we do something for society. We have a job that has a purpose.”
The part-time influencer likes her diversity in her job
And anyone who now sees the classic civil servants sitting behind mountains of files and stamping all day long – that too is a bad prejudice. In the case of “important today”, Conny talks about the variety of options: “Public administration is a huge corporation with all kinds of departments. You can recruit staff, you can say I want to do controlling because I’m in the mood for numbers. I can Tax office, to the regulatory office, I can marry people off – you don’t have to commit yourself.” You can also work in an authority as a gardener or social scientist. The possibilities for career changers are almost limitless and that’s exactly what Conny wants to show. That’s why her goal is: to give insights into the “black box office” with her Instagram account.
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