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Dec. 12th, 2008 04:45 pmAt the end of the first hour of the shift, I had a guy - who'd already been getting very irritable and unpleasant almost from the beginning - break off from doing the interview and say "I don't like the way these questions are going." I had to sit through an ear bashing for over ten minutes, while he complained about the government and about foreigners living here, and held forth at length on how he was absolutely convinced that we were snooping for the Department of Work and Pensions and that if he answered our questions it'd lead directly to DWP agents trying to force him off disability benefit and back to work. The worst thing was that he wouldn't conclude his paranoid bellyaching by saying goodbye and hanging up; he just said his piece and fell silent, leaving me to respond in some way. Initially I felt obliged to try and get him to resume the survey, but, not totally unsurprisingly, that just incensed him. My repeated assurances that the whole thing was confidential and that nothing would be told to anybody were met with "I don't believe you." I had to admit defeat and thank him for his help in the past. My obligatory enquiry as to whether there were any questions he would like to ask just got more of the same. Still it never occurred to him to end the call; he was enjoying witnessing my climbdown.
'Cracked' interviews, while not occurring every day, are familiar enough to all my colleagues and myself; the problem with this one was the bloke's conduct and attitude, which awakened old pain in me from unhappy childhood experiences. I talked duty managers Mark and Sue #5, but Mark's attitude was absolutely disgraceful, agreeing with me one minute that "you can't just switch off feelings" and then a minute later snapping at me and doing a 180 by switching to "you can't take phone calls personally". The only "help" anyone would offer was "Take a coffee break" - thanks a frackin' load - and later on I heard Mark and Phil having a good laugh at my having unhealed wounds.
I have to get out of that shithole.
'Cracked' interviews, while not occurring every day, are familiar enough to all my colleagues and myself; the problem with this one was the bloke's conduct and attitude, which awakened old pain in me from unhappy childhood experiences. I talked duty managers Mark and Sue #5, but Mark's attitude was absolutely disgraceful, agreeing with me one minute that "you can't just switch off feelings" and then a minute later snapping at me and doing a 180 by switching to "you can't take phone calls personally". The only "help" anyone would offer was "Take a coffee break" - thanks a frackin' load - and later on I heard Mark and Phil having a good laugh at my having unhealed wounds.
I have to get out of that shithole.
