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Oct. 29th, 2008 03:32 pmAt 2.09 I got a foreign lady who, after initially claiming surprise, and seeming a little narked, that the interview she'd done last year wasn't a one-off, eventually agreed to answer for her whole three-adult family. Her limited English made interviewing her a challenge, but we were getting along OK when at 2.20 I stood up and waved around a piece of paper asking someone to relieve me. The supervisors didn't react. After I'd been waving my paper about for over a minute, carrying on asking the foreign lady the questions the whole time, someone finally moved. I sat back down and Sarah #4 appeared. When she took my note to read it, I told my respondent "I'm going to hand you over to my colleague now" and made to hand my headset to Sarah. Sarah looked at me and asked "Is she doing just herself?" I replied that she was doing all the family - "If you're not finished by three wind up and make an appointment."
Sarah dropped a bombshell. She too had to leave at 2.30.
I rushed over to the supervisors' nerve centre and explained the situation to Val, trusting that Sarah would carry on the interview just to fill the gap. I asked Val to get someone who was working till three to relieve Sarah, but she said only two people today were on till three and both were on interviews. She said she'd "keep an eye" on Sarah.
When I got back to Sarah, she hadn't talked to the lady but had just stood around waiting for something to happen the whole time. She put the headphones on and the lady had hung up. I thanked Sarah, coded the case out as a withdrawal, paid a much needed visit to the jacks and hurriedly entered my payclaim before rushing down to the bus stop.
What a farce! The supervisors should have known better than to send a fellow 2.30-er to relieve me, which was obviously a complete waste of time. If the alternative explanation is true - that the supes never did notice me and Sarah had simply come over to me to see what was up - then either she or somebody else should have alerted the supes instead. As it is, we might well have lost a respondent for good.
I came out of the office really quite irrationally annoyed about this episode. Although working extra time is the last thing I feel like this week, a part of me thinks I should have stayed on to complete the interview myself. But I just couldn't. I needed food for goodness' sake, and on the later bus I might well have hit the A32 crawl and not got home far north of five.
Got to go make a sandwich.
Sarah dropped a bombshell. She too had to leave at 2.30.
I rushed over to the supervisors' nerve centre and explained the situation to Val, trusting that Sarah would carry on the interview just to fill the gap. I asked Val to get someone who was working till three to relieve Sarah, but she said only two people today were on till three and both were on interviews. She said she'd "keep an eye" on Sarah.
When I got back to Sarah, she hadn't talked to the lady but had just stood around waiting for something to happen the whole time. She put the headphones on and the lady had hung up. I thanked Sarah, coded the case out as a withdrawal, paid a much needed visit to the jacks and hurriedly entered my payclaim before rushing down to the bus stop.
What a farce! The supervisors should have known better than to send a fellow 2.30-er to relieve me, which was obviously a complete waste of time. If the alternative explanation is true - that the supes never did notice me and Sarah had simply come over to me to see what was up - then either she or somebody else should have alerted the supes instead. As it is, we might well have lost a respondent for good.
I came out of the office really quite irrationally annoyed about this episode. Although working extra time is the last thing I feel like this week, a part of me thinks I should have stayed on to complete the interview myself. But I just couldn't. I needed food for goodness' sake, and on the later bus I might well have hit the A32 crawl and not got home far north of five.
Got to go make a sandwich.
