Public vs. Private

Yesterday I had two particular interactions with certain institutions. The first, a publicly run and funded health care service, the second a privately owned and operated retailer of pharmaceutical products.

At the first, I was making an appointment. The receptionist was bitter, somewhat angry and seemed genuinly unhappy with being there. I asked for an appointment, and she firmly answered me that 15.00 would do. I politely asked if she could make it later (or even earlier, perhaps?) as 15 was not a very good time for me.

- 15.00 or nothing, now leave. 

Thank you, oh humle Party Representative, for rationing according to what you see fit, and distributing the available resources regardless of my wishes. I am thee eternally thankful.

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The second interaction was with the pharmacy retailer, who looked up when I entered, greeted me politly, had a look on my prescription and excused himself for a moment in order to look for that particular drug. A minute later he returned, apologizing heavily - perhaps three times - explaining that it won't arrive until the day after at 11 o'clock, if I would be ok with that. He asked if I was in a lot of pain, and I answered that I was, though not worse than the days before. He apologized on behalf of the firm again, and promised to have it readily available and waiting for me at 11 the next day. I thanked the nice man, left, and felt somewhat happy anyway.

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Now, this is not an attempt to prove that private is better than public, although I firmly believe that is the case. Besides, this is probably more of a personal issue than anything else; if the awful women in the reception would have been in the pharmacy I suppose she'd still be awful, bitter and unkind whereas the nice man placed in a public situation would still be nice. And again, the women was probably held back by silly regulations saying that appointments had to be allocated in the exact order people came in etc.

But, I still can't get that feeling out of my head; in private organisations/companies there tends to be a lot nicer people, they treat their costumers with dignity and respect, whereas the opposite tends to be the case in public organisations. There certainly is something weird about that, and I am inclined to believe that it's due to the format public-private.

Responses? Experiences?