All Greeks I've met that had a government job made it a point of pride of how little they worked and how they spent their days openly in leisure or working a second job on government time. The private sector employees envied and cajoled them. It was surreal. Maybe it was the alcohol.
This is a real problem, as far as civil services are concerned. If you want to go to some service to do some work, their opening hours are frequently 10am-1pm. It's ridiculous, and really makes things hard for the public. I'm not familiar with any service that stays open to the public after 2pm, post offices, hospitals, whatever.
Meanwhile, employees in the private sector work 11-13 hour days, 6 (sometimes 7) days a week, so calling Greeks lazy is unfair. Most of my friends are amazed and envious when I tell them I don't work on Saturdays.
I've heard that kind of boasting from Americans working at dysfunctional large corporations also. Get people over beers and they'll tell you about how in all of last month, what they did is played 5000 games of Bejeweled Blitz, made 3 bullshit Powerpoint presentations, attended a few bullshit meetings, and carefully tweaked their .vimrc while pretending to work. It seems to be the sort of culture that crops up when people are in dysfunctional settings and cynical about whether their job is actually doing anybody any good; kind of a coping-mechanism I guess.
