Member-only story
What percentage of civil servants aren’t worth their pay check?
In Croatian, the word is “Uhljeb”
It was a mild evening back in 2016, and I was sat outside with my potential mentee, Mario, and the manager of the university of Split’s student business incubator, Lana. My Croatian was at a very basic stage and everyone was trying to teach me new words. Mario chucked out the word ‘uhljeb’ and gave Lana as an example, she was offended, but laughed it off denying it, yet Mario warned me to be on the lookout.
Since then, I haven’t needed to be on the lookout, as I have had the pleasure of many trips to local, regional and national authority offices as well as attending fairs and conferences with public bodies or institutions. This breed of people exist, just as they do in the UK, and I’m sure other countries. However since all civil servants are tarred with the same brush here, I’d like to show both sides to the story.
A touch of humour
One of the best civil servants I’ve met here works at HZZO, the public health office. I went in to update my EHIC card, and found the counter for EHIC cards free from queues. I was already extremely happy as this wasn’t usually the case at the immigrant’s queue at MUP. What happened next was even better, I simply gave my HZZO number, and within a minute, I had my…
