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A follow on from how they describe us.
When people come to see us they fill in a form. If they choose not to, can't do it, or just fill in part of it - that's fine ! But everyone gets one.
They're ....interesting.
The one in front of me right now includes :
When did you last make contact [with us] ?
Moths ago.
Now to be fair her English is a lot lot better than my Polish. It just tickled me. The more common problem here is that the forms will say last week if we haven't seen them for months, months ago if they were here the other week and "never" if they didn't like what we told them and they hope to hear something different this time.
First Name :
Surname :
I don't care what you write. You can make up a name. Anything at all.
Just write the same thing everytime if you expect us to find your file. If you give a different version of your name each visit (switching first and last, adding hyphenated bits...) we will get confused.
Also - it's your name. Please spell it correctly.
(Yes, really).
Date of Birth
This is not today's date.
National insurance number
This is the UK equivalent of a social security number, not your nationality. Not your job. If you don't know or don't want to tell us leave it blank. Don't tell us something random instead.
Which adviser did you see
Don't describe us ! See my other thread for reasons.
Monitoring
Our major funder makes us collect "monitoring information. Ethnicity, age, blah blah.
We'd rather not, and we're very happy if people just take the time to tick the box that says they won't tell us.
Religion
Our statistics are interesting here. It's one particular customer who does it. His answers include :
Football.
Football and [specific team].
Football and playboy.
We always enjoy his answers.
Sexuality
It turns out a lot of people don't know the terms for this. A huge number of the Asian men think "Bisexual" is "Heterosexual".
Other's ask the receptionist "which one is normal ?". Which we can't answer. Their value judgement not ours. (This is how we know the Asian men are confused, rather than just surprising us by the way).
The female client who stalked out female supervisor and sent inappropriate gifts and wanted advice on being pardoned by the king of [foreign country] for being a lesbian (no, we don't understand it either) ticked heterosexual though.
The down right baffling
This is the case that got me posting. We see people at our own office, but we also have some workers who go out and see people at local mental health centres. Fairly obviously there are some specific challenges to that kind of work - but they are able to really help people. Unfortunately some people come in to see us here and don't tell us they're also being seen by our more specialist colleagues.
Yesterday I saw someone who outright denied it. I knew she'd seen my coworker because we'd discussed the case, but the poor customer couldn't remember this at all. She was thankfully willing to take my word for it.
We certainly remember her because she's been coming here for years and years. Some problems we can help with, but she also has a certain paranoid delusion which is very much linked to her own ethnicity. (And which I can't really explain for privacy reasons).
She is a black African woman.
At her last visit she turned up, asked what country we were in and stated she was French. She isn't (and didn't come here via France).
She's filled out my sheet to state that she is "White British". Everything else is correct.
We're a bit worried about her. I saw her a couple of years back and until you got onto the subject of [delusion] you couldn't tell she had a mental health problem. Now she's in a terrible state.
Wishful thinking
Some people completely ignore what's on the form and write down answers to their own questions. So you'll get forms with someones address showing the details of the employer they think has underpaid them, the date they've seen us showing the date they think it happened, and all the other information just randomly inserted into their forms
Which reminds me of assisting people with forms when they were applying to have cases heard by Employment Tribunals. You fill in your details, and why you think you're employer has done something wrong and owes you something. One hopeful person had filled it out with all her bank details included (in the spaces definitely not for that purpose). She'd already sent it before I saw her too - I think I suggested she change her bank account given how many people would have seen the form.
How I describe customers
From my write up "client works as a plaster".
...er...
Victoria J
When people come to see us they fill in a form. If they choose not to, can't do it, or just fill in part of it - that's fine ! But everyone gets one.
They're ....interesting.
The one in front of me right now includes :
When did you last make contact [with us] ?
Moths ago.
Now to be fair her English is a lot lot better than my Polish. It just tickled me. The more common problem here is that the forms will say last week if we haven't seen them for months, months ago if they were here the other week and "never" if they didn't like what we told them and they hope to hear something different this time.
First Name :
Surname :
I don't care what you write. You can make up a name. Anything at all.
Just write the same thing everytime if you expect us to find your file. If you give a different version of your name each visit (switching first and last, adding hyphenated bits...) we will get confused.
Also - it's your name. Please spell it correctly.
(Yes, really).
Date of Birth
This is not today's date.
National insurance number
This is the UK equivalent of a social security number, not your nationality. Not your job. If you don't know or don't want to tell us leave it blank. Don't tell us something random instead.
Which adviser did you see
Don't describe us ! See my other thread for reasons.
Monitoring
Our major funder makes us collect "monitoring information. Ethnicity, age, blah blah.
We'd rather not, and we're very happy if people just take the time to tick the box that says they won't tell us.
Religion
Our statistics are interesting here. It's one particular customer who does it. His answers include :
Football.
Football and [specific team].
Football and playboy.
We always enjoy his answers.
Sexuality
It turns out a lot of people don't know the terms for this. A huge number of the Asian men think "Bisexual" is "Heterosexual".
Other's ask the receptionist "which one is normal ?". Which we can't answer. Their value judgement not ours. (This is how we know the Asian men are confused, rather than just surprising us by the way).
The female client who stalked out female supervisor and sent inappropriate gifts and wanted advice on being pardoned by the king of [foreign country] for being a lesbian (no, we don't understand it either) ticked heterosexual though.
The down right baffling
This is the case that got me posting. We see people at our own office, but we also have some workers who go out and see people at local mental health centres. Fairly obviously there are some specific challenges to that kind of work - but they are able to really help people. Unfortunately some people come in to see us here and don't tell us they're also being seen by our more specialist colleagues.
Yesterday I saw someone who outright denied it. I knew she'd seen my coworker because we'd discussed the case, but the poor customer couldn't remember this at all. She was thankfully willing to take my word for it.
We certainly remember her because she's been coming here for years and years. Some problems we can help with, but she also has a certain paranoid delusion which is very much linked to her own ethnicity. (And which I can't really explain for privacy reasons).
She is a black African woman.
At her last visit she turned up, asked what country we were in and stated she was French. She isn't (and didn't come here via France).
She's filled out my sheet to state that she is "White British". Everything else is correct.
We're a bit worried about her. I saw her a couple of years back and until you got onto the subject of [delusion] you couldn't tell she had a mental health problem. Now she's in a terrible state.
Wishful thinking
Some people completely ignore what's on the form and write down answers to their own questions. So you'll get forms with someones address showing the details of the employer they think has underpaid them, the date they've seen us showing the date they think it happened, and all the other information just randomly inserted into their forms
Which reminds me of assisting people with forms when they were applying to have cases heard by Employment Tribunals. You fill in your details, and why you think you're employer has done something wrong and owes you something. One hopeful person had filled it out with all her bank details included (in the spaces definitely not for that purpose). She'd already sent it before I saw her too - I think I suggested she change her bank account given how many people would have seen the form.
How I describe customers
From my write up "client works as a plaster".
...er...
Victoria J
Eric the Grey
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