"You're a public servant...." *shudder*

[Ashaela]

This ends up working something along the lines of "I pay your salary!" and always makes me cringe.

You're a public servant.... So you have to tell me your last name (and any corresponding personal info they want.)

You're a public servant.... So you have to give me direct contact info for anyone/everyone in the agency.

You're a public servant.... So you must drop everything, immediately, regardless of priority, and fix MY problem.

You're a public servant.... So you have no right to ever, EVER tell me no.

You're a public servant.... So you exist only at my mercy.

The man who called on Friday intitiated a conversation that went something like this:

SC: Is this the number you call to file a complaint against a physician?

Me: Actually, you can't do that by phone... *cue standard-issue explanation of how to submit complaints by website or mail*

SC: All right, so I can do it on your website?

Me: That's right.

SC: And what's your Executive Director's name?

Me (Bwa-huh?): Her name is Jane Doe.

SC: May I speak to her?

Me: No, sir, she doesn't take phone calls.

Silence....
Silence....
Silence....
Silence....

Me: Is there anything else I can help you with?

SC: I SAID I want to talk to your Executive Director.

Me: No, sir, she doesn't take phone calls.

SC: Well this is just ridiculous! She's a public servant, she has no right not to take my phone call..... (I don't remember now exactly how it went, but he threatened to: first, have my job taken away; second, contact the media and expose us for, well... I'm not sure what for.... Third, have our ED's job taken away; fourth, contact the state legislature and have the entire agency shut down. Add a few profanities and some personal insults and the trifecta is complete.)

Basically, I made a couple of efforts to break in, but you can tell when someone has no intention of letting themselves be pacified or of listening to reason so I finally just shut up and played solitare until he hung up on me. Anyway, he had no legitimate reason to speak to the ED. I'm sure everyone agrees that the position of President of the United States is also one of public servant, but who would reasonably call up the White House and expect to get Obama on the phone just because they demanded it?

[jjllbb]

I'm sure everyone agrees that the position of President of the United States is also one of public servant, but who would reasonably call up the White House and expect to get Obama on the phone just because they demanded it?

haha! I wish you'd said that to him. I wonder what he'd have said.

[germunster]

Basically, I made a couple of efforts to break in, but you can tell when someone has no intention of letting themselves be pacified or of listening to reason so I finally just shut up and played solitare until he hung up on me.

Basically there is nothing that you could have done that you didn't already do. In the future, when this happens again, may I suggest Free Cell instead of solitare?

[Naaman]

It's not just public service, at the tech support job I had we'd get people asking to speak to the Managing Director.

"I'm sorry sir\madam, even I've never even spoken to him" (mostly because he was a living in Guernsey for tax purposes)

[jackfaire]

People can speak with our directors but only if they know to ask for them by name and even then they just get transferred to a secretary who screens the call.

[HYHYBT]

...but who would reasonably call up the White House...

That's the key word: "reasonably." Your caller might well call the White House too.

[Jester]

SC: I SAID I want to talk to your Executive Director.

And I SAID she doesn't take calls. Now that we've established THAT, let's move on to your next unreasonable and overreaching demand.

SC: She's a public servant, she has no right not to take my phone call.

Why yes, yes she does. Because as a public servant, she has a lot of work to do for a lot of the public. If she took calls from everyone who wanted to yammer in her ear about nonsense, she would never get any work done. If you really feel the need to pay someone just to talk to you, there are other ways you can do that. Just remember to keep some hand lotion and tissues nearby.....

who would reasonably call up the White House and expect to get Obama on the phone just because they demanded it?

A whole lot of idiots, sadly.

Yes, elected officials, and even many appointed and/or hired officials, ARE public servants. And they ARE answerable to us....up to a point. That does NOT mean they have to take every stupid phone call from every stupid member of the public that feels like being, well, stupid.

[thedrunkenmonkey]

haha! I wish you'd said that to him. I wonder what he'd have said.

I used to work next to the Customer Relations head at my company, and our favorite person was the guy who always, ALWAYS wanted to talk to our President or CEO.

Now both of those guys were not only people we worked for not a stone's throw away from our desk, but they were also constantly fielding questions from media and partners and other individuals, and relied on their guys in the field to handle it. In point of fact, they were the near opposite of "micromanaging" - they put something in place and we enforced it. One specific thing CEO told us was he didn't want to deal with people who weren't able to figure out how to email him politely, and if someone didn't want to take no for an answer, then they could get the people who were good at saying "No" over and over again - IE, Waldorf and Statler (my Co-Worker and I).

So we got Insistent British Man calls beginning about mid-way through my first month.

CO: Hello, welcome to Internet Company X, how may I help you?
IBM: I would like to speak with CEO Person, please.
CO: I'm sorry, he's not available. Could I have your name and a message, please?
IBM: No, this is important. I have phoned his office twice now looking for him and I cannot reach him.
CO: As you may be aware, he has a lot of business to attend to, so if you leave a message for him I'll make sure it reaches him.
IBM: No, I will not leave a message. I want his phone number.
CO: This is the only phone number that is available to reach CEO, so please, just leave a message.
IBM: I refuse to believe that he isn't there. Put CEO on the phone! I insist! This is an urgent matter!

Back story: we had -just- gone IPO public, and in a relatively interesting version, had bought a company and absorbed it into ourselves in a merger that gave us a public trading option. Some of the stockholders of the former company were SFO stockholders who believed (incorrectly) that their former stock had not, in fact, been dissolved (IE, made for pretty notepaper as many Interwebbery Stock Certificates) and thus when our company's new shiny stock went REALLY high in trading for the first couple of months, tried to sell stock they did not have, were told they did not have, had five letters repeatedly reminding them that they did not have, and would not be able to cash in whatsoever. The legal notice sent to them was, in effect, "You're screwed."

Now, if you guarantee to sell stock that you do not have and someone buys it, you have a contract to sell stock that, if you're doing it the way some of these guys were doing it, they believed the stock they once had miraculously revived itself and that their Old and Busted stock was now translated to Internet Software Company Stock. So basically it's like saying, "Yeah, my awesome Mustang convertible is for sale! You wanna buy it? SWEET. Oh wait, I don't have it. OH SHIT, NOW I HAVE TO BUY THE MUSTANG VALUED 20% MORE THAN WHAT I'M SELLING!!!"

And some of these people should have known, as this is pretty much their fiscal methodology. But at any rate, many of the investors who took a dive on assumptions began calling us up and demanding to speak with the CEO and President.

The next day, IBM called up.

IBM: Greetings. I would like to speak with CEO, please.
CO: Unfortunately, he's not available.
IBM: Of course he's available! Why wouldn't he be available? I am a stockholder of your company and I demand to speak with him!
CO: Please hold.
ME: Hello, this is TheDrunkenMonkey, how may I help you?
IBM: I'm trying to reach CEO, and I can't get through to him.
ME: Oh, I apologize. Hold on, I'll send you to the corporate voicemail. You can leave a message for him there, he usually checks that once or twice a day.
IBM: I do not want to leave a message.
ME: Oh, I'm sorry. Well, you can try back another time, or you can email him.
IBM: He isn't responding to my emails!
ME: Well, this is a very busy time of year.
IBM: This is urgent!!!
ME: Could you tell me what you need to speak with him about?
IBM: NO I BLOODY CANNOT, IT IS AN URGENT MATTER!
ME: Sir, please don't curse at me.
IBM: I didn't curse.
ME: Sir, you used the expression "bloody" which is still culturally a British vulgarism. I would appreciate it if you did not use such language with me on the phone.
IBM: PUT HIM ON THE BLOODY PHONE!
ME: Sir, I can either take a message or I can hang up.
IBM: BOLLOCKS!

Fifteen minutes later, CO's phone rings.
CO: Hello, this is CO, how may I help you?
IBM: I want to speak with CEO, this is his family doctor, and I have an urgent issue to speak with him about.
CO: Sir, CEO's family doctor is my family doctor, and his doctor does not have a California phone number.
IBM: PUT HIM ON THE PHONE!
CO: I can certainly tell him that someone pretending to be his doctor called, would you like to leave a message?
IBM: BUGGER YOURSELF!

An hour later, my phone rings.

ME: Hello, this is TheDrunkenMonkey, how may I help you?
IBM: (affecting a light Indian accent) Yes, I would like to speak to CEO, please.
ME: May I ask who's calling?
IBM: No, please just connect me.
ME: Sir, contrary to popular belief, caller ID still works regardless of whether you switch locations within the city. I am more than happy to take a message.
IBM: Why can't you fucking assholes understand that this is an urgent matter and I need to speak with CEO IMMEDIATELY!
ME: Sir, can you understand that we have given you the options we have available to us, and cannot do what you ask?
IBM: I AM A STOCKHOLDER OF YOUR COMPANY!
ME: Actually sir, we do not have current stockholders of our company as our stock has not yet gone on sale. If you are referring to Former Company We Bought, none of that stock transferred.
IBM: I AM A STOCKHOLDER AND YOU WILL ANSWER TO ME!
ME: Sir, the decibel levels of your voice are no longer in the tolerances of our system, and I cannot distinguish your voice. I will have to terminate your call. Good day, sir.

This guy would call us almost every day for a month. And each time I'd listen in and giggle madly on the other muted phone, because the public lines to the company ran to our desks, where we would route the phone calls to either voicemail or call over our offices, "HEY CEO! THIS DUDE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!" To which we'd mostly get the response, "Take a message, I'll call them when I have time."

CO and I simply were gatekeeping. The thing that most people don't understand is that their issue, for the most part, is not a life-or-death situation. It's a minor inconvienience, and CEO paid us well. He paid us well to take care of the crap work that he didn't want to take care of, and that included filtering people who wanted to call him up to scream at him. We -never- let a phone call go through without vetting it first, because it really wasn't worth his or our time.

The variations on "I pay your salary", "You work for me", and the like always crack me up. I've known people to calculate the exact change of what portion of their salary taxpayers within the municipality actually have paid. Asking if they own or rent their house modifies the payscale.

"I pay your salary!" should therefore be met with "You pay exactly $.11 of my salary assuming you pay taxes on time and in full. I am more than happy to refund your $.11 if you are unsatisfied with my performance."

[Sonoma]

Basically, I made a couple of efforts to break in, but you can tell when someone has no intention of letting themselves be pacified or of listening to reason so I finally just shut up and played solitare until he hung up on me.

I had one of those Friday afternoon. She didn't even let me open the call, just started rattling on for over a minute & a half about how she was super-duper busy, late for a meeting, and didn't have any time to spend on this. Of course, she had the time to then take 5 minutes explaining the whole backstory behind her call, going back for the last year. Every time I thought I might get a word in edgewise, she'd start up again telling me how she was so busy, she just had no time at all to take care of this.

She finally let me interrupt to say that I'd have to make some calls to see what could be done. The irony of it is, if she would have just shut up & let me do my job, I would have been able to resolve the issue once & for all in about 3 minutes. Now she has to wait until Tuesday, since Monday's our busiest day, I told her I couldn't guarantee a callback on Monday.

(I'm thinking I'll call late afternoon on Tuesday..)

[fireheart]

I really do not get where the logic of "public servant=give up privacy and bend time and spac for me" comes from.

Yes, I am aware that public servants are accountable to a point.

[Jester]

As a mostly day time bartender who works most of the same days as the Boss Man, I often find myself playing gatekeeper/secretary. So many people call and ask for him by name, or by title. Most of them he can't be bothered to speak with, usually for good reasons that I won't go into here. But I screen his calls well for him, and he likes that.

I am always amused by the people who call and ask to speak to Owner. I am especially amused by those who, when I tell them he is not there, ask when he will be there for them to speak to. This amuses me because Owner does not live in Key West, and only comes down about once a month or so, and does not actually work IN the bar, though he of course has a lot to do with how it is run, and always knows what is going on with it. But anyone who has "important" matters to discuss with Owner are either full of shit and are trying to sell him something, or they are full of shit and want something from him, like a donation or such, or they are full of shit and want to bitch about something, or they are not full of shit, they have his cell number, and they call him there and don't bother trying to reach him at his bar that he is not usually at!

[Ashaela]

Basically there is nothing that you could have done that you didn't already do. In the future, when this happens again, may I suggest Free Cell instead of solitare?

Free Cell is also a very good choice. :-D Usually, I end up playing Peggle or something from PopCap.....

As a mostly day time bartender who works most of the same days as the Boss Man, I often find myself playing gatekeeper/secretary. So many people call and ask for him by name, or by title. Most of them he can't be bothered to speak with, usually for good reasons that I won't go into here. But I screen his calls well for him, and he likes that.

That's a big part of my job as well. I have to know everything that goes on in the agency, so I can answer 98% of questions without having to transfer anyone. I'm directly in charge of many of the issues that people call about in the first place (processing registrations, applications, etc.) and it can be very hard sometimes to convince anyone that their first point-of-contact answering the phone might actually know what she was talking about. (You mean you're not just a secretary? Le gasp!)

My job function isn't secretary or receptionist, but the way people treat me when they think I am makes me amazed that people with those jobs can put up with it. You'd think that anyone with common sense would realize that (a) the secretary probably knows more about the practical day-to-day operations than the boss, and (b) they are in direct control over who gets through to talk to the boss! It may not be worth the glee one experiences in lording one's exalted status over the lowly peons, only to find out that the boss's schedule is, oh gee, look at that, completely booked for the next three months.

In a similar fashion, as intelligent as doctors tend to be, it's just as often their office manager who is able to explain the question about which they're calling and to comprehend the answer with much less difficulty.

Like I said, the vast majority of the time, I can answer someone's question without ever having to transfer them. Approximately 40% of the time, I'm the one who will make the changes they're looking for anyway! It would all go so much faster if they'd just believe me instead of wasting 4 minutes arguing that they can't afford to spend the 30 seconds required to ask me their question, because heaven forbid that they have to repeat themselves if I can't answer it.

[Nurian]

I'm sure everyone agrees that the position of President of the United States is also one of public servant, but who would reasonably call up the White House and expect to get Obama on the phone just because they demanded it?

Everyone here, perhaps.

When I worked for (government agency), I had at least 2 callers a week demand to speak with W. And were sincere in their demands.

[Shalom]

I once worked for a man whose family name was מַתִּתְיָהוּ. (Hebrew version of Matthias, in case you're wondering.) If someone called and asked for him by his first name, which was mostly what he used in business, I'd send the call through to him. If they asked for him by his last name and knew how to pronounce it correctly, I'd send the call right through as well. If they mangled it, though, then he wasn't in, can I take a message?

(And if he took the call himself and heard someone breaking his teeth trying to pronounce it, the first words out of his mouth were "What are you selling?")

[morgana]

I've worked for the federal government, and for state government in two states. Including a stint as secretary to three state legislators.

And I'm now having flashbacks.

*sigh* Good gods, I've spoken with some idiots.