It sounds like there's a lurking assumption, among the people who give you shit about work, that since when civilians have to deal with public-sector employees it generally sucks for the civilians, that public-sector jobs must themselves be joyless and soul-sucking,

Never mind that if a public-sector job were the equivalent of, say, forty hours a week in line at the DMV, there would be no public-sector employees, as they would have all jumped out windows by now.