I am employed by the University of Virginia as a Rotunda Ambassador, one of those friendly people at the desk who greets guests. With the University being public, that makes me a government official. I will not deny that I am sometimes unmotivated to do a good job, but luckily I have a certain level of insulation to accountability that comes with being a bureaucrat, according to Niskanen.
My output is definitely nonmarket. I’m supposed to greet visitors and provide answers to their questions to the best of my ability. This is not measurable. This allows me to be bad at my job, as there isn’t any concrete way to hold me accountable for my abilities at the end of the day. There is also no competition in the services I supply. If guests are dissatisfied with my greeting and my information, that’s too bad for them. There’s only one Rotunda and I’m the greeter. Last is the compensation structure. Unsurprisingly, I get paid by the hour. There are days when nobody visits, like when I worked during fall bre…ahem, reading days. There are other days with many visitors, like parents weekend. I make the same amount of money regardless of how many visitors come, how many people I greet, how many questions I answer, how many times I tell people that the color of the wall is pale moonlight. So if you come in the Rotunda and I’m good at my job, then I’m probably in a good mood that day.
(Brief note: the fact that I make slightly more than minimum wage could be a result of UVa, as a government agency, overproducing, if you subscribe to the Niskanen "Traditional View")
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