What does "civil servant" mean to you?

[MrsTingly]

If you hear someone is a civil servant, what image comes to mind? For me, Sir Humphrey etc- I imagine someone with an important and senior job (or on the track to one) working at the heart of government. DH says for him it conjures up someone working in the dole office.

Obviously it's a very broad category and encompasses both, but where does your mind go? (Context is we just that we were watching Mastermind and someone gave their occupation as civil servant.)

Well it's both, your everyday person who attended the local comp will be working face to face with people in DWP and then it's still more likely to have attended private or public schools to be a senior civil servant although they are attempting to address the balance. Entry level into the civil service is £20kish whereas seniors are on £100k.

I go for the lower end I guess, I work for an arms length body and regularly work with people from the civil service who are similar to me.

Ha! I always think of quiz shows when I hear 'civil servant'. I remember hearing it loads as a child and not understanding what it meant. I think it's a broad category, as you say.

These days I'd take it to mean someone employed either by their local authority or central government...? Could be way off the mark though.

Could be someone working for MI5 or someone working in the DWP, but I'm a financial adviser so see all of the civil service spectrum in my job.

Sir Humphrey.
I should really Google what they actually do shouldn't I.

I have never had a clue what it actually means and what the job actually is. It always sounds so vague and mysterious.
Maybe I will finally find out from this thread.

This is probably unfair but when I hear someone call themselves a civil servant I generally think middle to lower tier office work with possibly some low level management. That's mainly based on people I know though.
Edit to add- I do know that the senior civil service is well paid and does a lot of in depth work.

There's a lot of specialist roles in the civil service, but for some reason I can't imagine someone in more these roles in the civil service calling themselves a civil servant over their actual job area like engineer, software developer, accountant, project manager, data scientist, policy advisor, lawyer.

Tbh most are probably pen pushers. Literally just describes anyone who works for the government.

https://www.civilservant.org.uk/information-definitions.html

"Civil servants are usually - but not always - in practice employed by 'Ministers of the Crown' - so most civil servants work in government departments and are therefore employed by Government Ministers.

"Parliament is quite separate from the Crown so those who are employed by Parliament are also not civil servants.

"And those employed by other public bodies -such as local authorities, the NHS, the police service and the BBC - are also not civil servants. Indeed, only 1 in 12 UK public servants are classed as civil servants."

So it wouldn't include someone who works for the local authority. I've learned something today.

Someone who works for one of the Government organisations but who is NOT political.

They might not believe in the policies but they do their best to enact them*

*Unless they are part of the woke blob activists

*Not my words

Local authority employees in the UK are ‘public servants’, not ‘civil servants’, though.

Yeah, normally people who work in governmental roles for 'The Ministry of...' or 'Department for..'

I tell people I'm a CC because they glaze over & move on, which saves me glazing over as I tell them about my cut & thrust life in policy delivery and audit.

I nearly fell asleep typing that.

Large office with 50 staff doing the job of 100 staff with 20 managers of varying degree all doing the job of 5 managers.

the people are suited in grey suits and sit in small grey cubicles and look pale and gaunt through stress, over work and long hours.

The managers, OTOH, saunter in when they feel like, wander about the office looking down their nose at the workers doing the work they don't understand how to do, they all look like Thérèse Coffey in that cigar photo and spend their undeserved over inflated wages on crap they don't need because they're hollow inside.

I was a Civil Servant for 32 years.

HMRC.

In regards to quiz shows, I'm sure Richard Osman explained previously on Pointless that Civil Servants aren't allowed to specify where they work. So it could be someone high up at the MoD or someone working in the post room at Companies House.

Funny you should mention the dole office though as most of my friends who are civil servants do work at the DWP. It's a big department.

I always thought it meant someone who worked anywhere within central government but isn't elected like a politician.

That they work for a government department, possibly in a normal office job. But that's because I had family members who did those types of jobs. Without that, I'd probably think Sir Humphrey.

@BMW6 what's HMRC ?
That's what I mean by vague and mysterious?

I immediately think of Sir Humphrey and Bernard (or the real life equivalents like Robin Butler, Gus O'Donnell or the appalling Simon Case) but if I met someone who said they were a civil servant I'm aware of the full range of jobs from the typing pool (which presumably no longer exists?) up to the top.

To be fair HMRC isn't that obscure. Most people get letters from them every year, they're the tax chappies.

ETA they also pay your child benefit if you're on a low to average income.

His Majesty's Revenue and Customs! Surely everyone knows that department?

About as "vague and mysterious" as beans on toast!!!

It's the Government department responsible for gathering Taxes (Income tax, Corporation tax, Capital Gains, VAT etc etc)

Everyone employed in HMRC is a Civil Servant, from the very lowest to the absolute top.

Same with every Government department.⁹

I think it means "His Majesties Revenue and Customs"

They run Tax and National Insurance and i think they run some of the benefit system, but I'm not 100% sure.

DWP - Department of Work and Pensions - administer a lot of the benefits like Universal Credit and run the Job Centres.

I am one, but refer to my job as the profession I trained in. Think lawyer, scientist, engineer etc. I've never called myself a civil servant and I work solely from home!
I'd always thought that those that say 'civil servants' are either in a secretive role like MI5 or a pen pusher in a massive office and don't have any other professional title to use.

Unsackable no matter what they do.

I was a civil servant for 15yrs. Left 20yrs ago. The description covers such a wide range of roles from junior administrators, messengers (yes I'm that old!) to policy makers, advisors to Govt etc. I did some interesting jobs as I worked my way up through the grades on what was the Department of Trade and Industry. In one role I basically filed and typed, another role I managed a team of administrators and responded to more complex queries from service users, another I used to advise the Minister on replies to Parliamentary Questions, another I was an advisor to industry regarding their licensing. I never described myself as a civil servant. Used to tell people what I actually did ie Policy Advisor for DTI, Admin officer......

@BMW6 no I genuinely didn't know what those letters stood for - no need to be so rude about it .
I used to work in retail. We had a lot of acronyms too - do you know what they all mean...?
POS
NEPOS
EPOS
SOR
BOGOF (you might know that one).
Edit: most people usually don't know the acronyms for jobs they don't work in.