The other day I had an appointment for a Covid booster at a nearby health centre. I arrived at the appointed time and made my way to the relevant sector. I was the only human being in the vicinity, apart from a super-sized bleached-blonde in a private security uniform and seated at a desk.

As I arrived at said desk the incumbent greeted me with the welcoming gurgle of the cry used by jobsworth's island wide: "Yessssssssssssss!" She chose to regale me with the muted version, which sounds more like a protracted grunt - or - as a colleague once described it "a fish breaking wind". What she omitted to do was look up from the magazine she was reading. In fact, during the whole of our discourse, that lasted some seven minutes, she did not once even glance up from her mag.

So... I decided not to give her any space for aggression; I merely placed in front of her the paper, indicating the time that I should attend for my inoculation. As with most of her ilk, she then turned this paper over a few times, glanced at it once or twice, then slid out a larger sheet of paper from beneath her magazine. Fetching a ruler from a drawer she then placed it on this sheet and moved down, what appeared to be a list of names typed thereon. Arriving at, what was presumably, my name and ID number, she drew a biro line through it and grunted in my direction "in there". She also pointed vaguely in the direction that was "in there".

Normally I would say a cursory "thanks" and move towards the direction obtusely indicated. On this occasion I decided to omit the pleasantry and moved straight into the vaccination "clinic". There things were radically different, I was greeted cheerily by a young Indian nurse who took care of the booster jab professionally and - more importantly - painlessly. When I exited the vaccination area, the jobsworth at the desk neither registered that I had done so or indeed showed any signs of life whatsoever.

In Malta we meet such basic humanity on a daily basis in its many life (and sub-life) forms. Individuals who are there to do so much and no more. In other words, to do just what they consider their job is worth.

Some of the worst offenders are employed (although the word "employ" might not be the right one here since it implies some form of industry) in the public sector and I have come across some of the most grotesque mutations in the Inland Revenue offices in Belt-Is-Seheb. There is an air of revenge about many of their employees, as though they are assuming that every single member of the public is an inveterate tax dodger.

A while back I was summoned into the presence of the Inland Revenue Gestapo, to answer questions on some (wrongly as it happened) perceived fiscal misdemeanour. I was given a name and a block number, so on the appointed day and at the time stipulated I turned up at Block whatever and entered the building. I was faced by a corridor containing doors and - at the end of the corridor sat a grey jobsworth, studying a newspaper at a grey desk. I approached this apparition and said the name of my soon-to-be interrogator. Jobbie did not reply - is speech a no, no among jobsworths? Or something they are not paid for? - he merely pointed upwards above his head and went back to reading l-orizzont.

We are truly in the age of the jobsworth... sadly.