Advice or willingness to do things is not consistent across public servants

I’ve learned that when dealing with public servants and not getting resolves, often you just have to go again somewhere else with the same request and talk to a different person until you have the right outcome. This is… not very efficient.

I have also learned to take advice from public servants with a huge piece of salt. Often they say it’s done like XYZ, but someone else says ABC, but really it is KLM (or it might just be XYZ after all, but only if you know someone who can do it for you).

I get that some public servants may not be fully knowledgeable about everything. Some inconsistency is always to be expected. But even accounting for this, I feel that with government interactions you’re often left guessing. Even lawyers can give conflicting information.

To run a country smoothly it’s essential that rules are applied consistently, and that your ability to get things done doesn’t just depend on the mood of the person you happen to be dealing with that day.