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Or, to channel Gravekeeper : In which I outrank a high court judge.
When we are open to the public people walk directly into the waiting room and get a ticket to be seen if there aren't too many people already waiting. A receptionist sits behind a desk in the waiting room, and the advisers and other staff members are walking through the room quite often as we take people through to be seen and use the photocopiers etc.
On this occassion the receptionist was my friend M. who is pretty awesome. She's a paid admin. worker, and also a volunteer adviser. She's pretty good at dealing with the public.
It's rare to see her struggling, but I wandered through to call another client and found her trying to talk to this guy who is getting very angry and raising his voice.
She is telling him we can't help him. He is saying we have to help him because a high court judge told him we would.
The problem is that if a high court judge said that we definitely can't help. We give basic advice about court cases only where they are small claims that don't require legal representation. We certainly don't help with anything that's already ongoing in the high court. M. is desperately trying to tell him this, but she just isn't as impressive as the judge and this guy won't listen.
Possibly the judge actually directed him to a related organisation that would help in such circumstances. Possibly the judge was talking rubbish, or just didn't know where else to send him, or reckoned we could work out somewhere to send him on...
I absolutely will not stand by while anyone gets abusive with either the volunteers or anyone "lower" in the pecking order than me. I sometimes annoy M because she worries I think she can't handle things but in this case she's pleased to have some help.
I tell the guy the same thing she's said. We do not do this type of work. I offer him details of related organisation that will help.
He's not having it. The high court judge said we'd do it, so we have to do it...
Repeat as above. This time emphasising that we don't do it, and don't have the expertise.
But the high court judge said...
So I had to say "I'm sorry. We cannot help with this. I am one of the advisers here, and if you were to see me I would not be able to help with this. I cannot help because I do not know how to do this work".
Unfortunately just as this starts to sink in the manager walks past, fails to identify himself at all but tells the man really agressively that he has to leave
Undoing about 5 minutes worth of calming.
But repeating it again and offering the other details again work, and he finally leaves without any further fight.
I just don't get why someone will try and change your job description based on some random figure of authority. I don't care what a high court judge says, or the police, or the member of parliament, or your doctor.... they don't employ me, pay me, didn't make my contract or job description, or choose what training I get. In this one matter I outrank them all.
The only people who get a say are my manager, the trustee board who run the place, and indirectly any major funder giving us lots of money to do the work. (And pay for training !)
But even weirder is why someone would fight so hard to make you help them, when any help you'd give would be worthless. Why did this guy spend 10 minutes trying to make me give help that would have been inadequate and incompetent ?
Older and even worse version of this phenomena:
I previously worked giving assistance to people making complaints about the national health service. About half of all the in depth work I did was with people with mental health problems - and the one day I got a call from a real EW of a woman outraged that they'd built a new mental health centre down the road from her (it was a nice area you see !), they'd challenged the planning permission and failed and there was nothing further to do but she had to make a complaint and she had to have someone do it for her.
We only actually did the complaints for people when they couldn't do it themselves - even if she'd had a valid complaint under the relevant procedure we wouldn't have helped. We helped the mental health patients, and the people who couldn't speak English, or couldn't write because of physical illness, or those traumatised by recent bereavements. Not EWs who could speak up for themselves only to loudly and clearly.
But she would not accept no for an answer.
I made the same argument I made above. I said to her up front that if she won the argument I was one of the people who might be helping her and I (a) did not believe she had a complaint covered by the procedure we used, (b) knew absolutely nothing about planning matters and had no training or expertise that would be of help to her, and (c) considered a major part of my work to be advocating for those with mental health problems to get the treatment and facilities they needed - and as such supported the opening of new centres (down the road from EWs or otherwise).
Still wouldn't take no for an answer.
She made me refer the matter to the regional manager because there was nothing in policy that said she couldn't use the procedure with our help. (The manager just pointed out that nothing said she could, or that we had to help everyone anyway).
Bonus M story.
I wasn't there to defend her for this - but she admits I thought of the best come back.
We were closed to the public, but some workers had appointments. The doors are locked, and people have to ring the bell to be buzzed in.
She was sitting at the reception desk and saw the door open, a couple walk through and someone not very subtlely sneak through behind them. She asked him pointedly if he had an appointment and he started arguing that as he was inside we had to give him advice.
When she pointed out that was not happening he got very rude and started saying "What do you know, you and your £5 an hour!"
She managed to glare him out of the building. She earns more than that as a receptionist, and nothing as an adviser because she gives her time for free. And either way she is more valuable than some rude idiot like this.
I told her she should have smiled, said he was absolutely right - he deserved a much better service. Then handed him a list of local solicitors and point out there rates will start from around £200 an hour.
Possibly related sighting
On Tuesday I tried to get my hair cut. The first place I went to were rude, and told me there was no appointment system (I know, thats why I walked in) and I had to come back later (er, no - you write my name down so I'm on the list).
I could have argued. The woman did not treat me correctly and did not do her job. And as it's a chain she definitely isn't allowed to do what she did.
On the other hand I'm not going to fight anyone and then make them stand behind me with sharp scissors, and allow them to do what they want to my hair.
I got it cut somewhere else instead.
Victoria J
When we are open to the public people walk directly into the waiting room and get a ticket to be seen if there aren't too many people already waiting. A receptionist sits behind a desk in the waiting room, and the advisers and other staff members are walking through the room quite often as we take people through to be seen and use the photocopiers etc.
On this occassion the receptionist was my friend M. who is pretty awesome. She's a paid admin. worker, and also a volunteer adviser. She's pretty good at dealing with the public.
It's rare to see her struggling, but I wandered through to call another client and found her trying to talk to this guy who is getting very angry and raising his voice.
She is telling him we can't help him. He is saying we have to help him because a high court judge told him we would.
The problem is that if a high court judge said that we definitely can't help. We give basic advice about court cases only where they are small claims that don't require legal representation. We certainly don't help with anything that's already ongoing in the high court. M. is desperately trying to tell him this, but she just isn't as impressive as the judge and this guy won't listen.
Possibly the judge actually directed him to a related organisation that would help in such circumstances. Possibly the judge was talking rubbish, or just didn't know where else to send him, or reckoned we could work out somewhere to send him on...
I absolutely will not stand by while anyone gets abusive with either the volunteers or anyone "lower" in the pecking order than me. I sometimes annoy M because she worries I think she can't handle things but in this case she's pleased to have some help.
I tell the guy the same thing she's said. We do not do this type of work. I offer him details of related organisation that will help.
He's not having it. The high court judge said we'd do it, so we have to do it...
Repeat as above. This time emphasising that we don't do it, and don't have the expertise.
But the high court judge said...
So I had to say "I'm sorry. We cannot help with this. I am one of the advisers here, and if you were to see me I would not be able to help with this. I cannot help because I do not know how to do this work".
Unfortunately just as this starts to sink in the manager walks past, fails to identify himself at all but tells the man really agressively that he has to leave
Undoing about 5 minutes worth of calming. But repeating it again and offering the other details again work, and he finally leaves without any further fight.
I just don't get why someone will try and change your job description based on some random figure of authority. I don't care what a high court judge says, or the police, or the member of parliament, or your doctor.... they don't employ me, pay me, didn't make my contract or job description, or choose what training I get. In this one matter I outrank them all.
The only people who get a say are my manager, the trustee board who run the place, and indirectly any major funder giving us lots of money to do the work. (And pay for training !)
But even weirder is why someone would fight so hard to make you help them, when any help you'd give would be worthless. Why did this guy spend 10 minutes trying to make me give help that would have been inadequate and incompetent ?
Older and even worse version of this phenomena:
I previously worked giving assistance to people making complaints about the national health service. About half of all the in depth work I did was with people with mental health problems - and the one day I got a call from a real EW of a woman outraged that they'd built a new mental health centre down the road from her (it was a nice area you see !), they'd challenged the planning permission and failed and there was nothing further to do but she had to make a complaint and she had to have someone do it for her.
We only actually did the complaints for people when they couldn't do it themselves - even if she'd had a valid complaint under the relevant procedure we wouldn't have helped. We helped the mental health patients, and the people who couldn't speak English, or couldn't write because of physical illness, or those traumatised by recent bereavements. Not EWs who could speak up for themselves only to loudly and clearly.
But she would not accept no for an answer.
I made the same argument I made above. I said to her up front that if she won the argument I was one of the people who might be helping her and I (a) did not believe she had a complaint covered by the procedure we used, (b) knew absolutely nothing about planning matters and had no training or expertise that would be of help to her, and (c) considered a major part of my work to be advocating for those with mental health problems to get the treatment and facilities they needed - and as such supported the opening of new centres (down the road from EWs or otherwise).
Still wouldn't take no for an answer.
She made me refer the matter to the regional manager because there was nothing in policy that said she couldn't use the procedure with our help. (The manager just pointed out that nothing said she could, or that we had to help everyone anyway).
Bonus M story.
I wasn't there to defend her for this - but she admits I thought of the best come back.
We were closed to the public, but some workers had appointments. The doors are locked, and people have to ring the bell to be buzzed in.
She was sitting at the reception desk and saw the door open, a couple walk through and someone not very subtlely sneak through behind them. She asked him pointedly if he had an appointment and he started arguing that as he was inside we had to give him advice.
When she pointed out that was not happening he got very rude and started saying "What do you know, you and your £5 an hour!"
She managed to glare him out of the building. She earns more than that as a receptionist, and nothing as an adviser because she gives her time for free. And either way she is more valuable than some rude idiot like this.
I told her she should have smiled, said he was absolutely right - he deserved a much better service. Then handed him a list of local solicitors and point out there rates will start from around £200 an hour.
Possibly related sighting
On Tuesday I tried to get my hair cut. The first place I went to were rude, and told me there was no appointment system (I know, thats why I walked in) and I had to come back later (er, no - you write my name down so I'm on the list).
I could have argued. The woman did not treat me correctly and did not do her job. And as it's a chain she definitely isn't allowed to do what she did.
On the other hand I'm not going to fight anyone and then make them stand behind me with sharp scissors, and allow them to do what they want to my hair.
I got it cut somewhere else instead.
Victoria J
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