I'm not sure how much more I can take...

[Victoria J]

I feel like screaming "Stop coming to me with your problems" but unfortunately that's my job. I like my job, I like helping people BUT between the insolvable insane problems, the people who make no sense, the people who just won't be helped and management I will eventually snap and hit over the head.....

All from the last couple of weeks, except for management stories which are all the last month :

I never dreamed, that it would turn out to be the bees

A couple came in with a housing complaint. They had just moved in and they weren't happy with the state of the property. They had a 3 page typed list of problems organised by room. Glancing at the list it started with a complaint that the bottom of one of the doors was scuffed.

This is going to be a waste of time.

Then the woman started talking about the property :

"...and the boiler won't shut off and it gets so hot you can smell the pipes..."



"...and we;re worried about the washing machine, it's in a little cupboard/room and theres a big hole in the floor. We're worried it may fall through the floor..."



"...and then I was stung. We have bees...."



I didn't even know it was possible to have bees. Run now. Get a safety inspection. I think even Gravekeeper would consider this an emergency.

Oh - and rewrite that letter. List in order of importance and not room. Seriously.

In the evening I was very upset because I missed the opportunity to quote the above title. My mother claims there may be another opportunity, but how likely is that ?

And the bees have always been our friends.

Oh, that beep !

Customer - "and it was making a silent beep"


A step up from landlord problems

Customer - "and then my landlord knifed my tires"

A step up from marriage problems

Customer's wife went to have dinner with her mother, stayed 2 months then said she was seeing someone else.

Customer went out drinking with friends and returned to find the house empty. Bed, fridge, cooker, personal possessions....

I can try to help, but when the universe is being that cruel to you I think it's beyond my powers to help. Just keep out of lightning storms and hope things improve.

I am a bad bad person

I'm not the only one. Customer had a log of "incidents" to support that he was being harrassed by work. Unfortunately said log was funny - which must make me evil as the customer is so stressed he had health problems.

I once went to a museum exhibit titled "The Fire of London Experience" which consisted of a tiny badly made model of some historic London buildings with a red bulb underneath that lit up as an audio recording of eye witness accounts played. In the same way that was an "experience" these were "incidents"

"[Coworker] made physical gestures at me"

Aren't all gestures physical ?

"[Coworker] made a crude remark about my vehicle saying it was held together by tape"

Mean. Not crude.

"[Coworker] saw me and grinned and danced in the aisle"

OK......

There wasn't anything more substantial either. It wasn't that these were mixed in with complaints about being sworn at or threatened or, well, anything.

The less funny thing is I am sure the coworkers know perfectly well they are being jerks and upsetting the guy.

I hate your friend. You will soon hate your friend.

We don't really advise on criminal law. However there's a weird discrepancy where there is no free legal advice for criminal matters with no possible prison sentence - I can get someone a solicitor for a £500 debt if they are on a low income, but not for a criminal offence which could lead to a £5000 fine. So we do give basic advice about filling in the plea forms for these types of low level offences - mainly driving, parking or fare evading offences.

Customer was being charged with failing to obey traffic lights, driving on a provisional (learner) license when not accompanied, and driving without insurance. He wants to know how to plead guilty.

The answer is - as quickly as possible. If you know you did it and you have no argument you should plead guilty as quickly as possible as you get a reduction in sentence for doing so. So I explained the form, showed him where to tick, showed him where to put his income details and explained how important this was (low income so if he explains this he'll have a lower fine). I explained how he could make a statement in mitigation (basically a formal statement that "I did it but...") and the kind of things it was good to mention. He looked fairly blank when I gave examples of the sort of thing you might include so I suggested he think about, but stressed he should send the form back ASAP , preferably that day or the next.

That was last week.

He came back yesterday.

Apparently "My friend said you know about the law and you should fill out the form"

So I explained that no one was going to fill out the form. The court date is tomorrow. He doesn't have time to send the bloody form. He now needs to attend in person. His fine is likely to be at least slightly higher.

I can only hope he will learn to hate his friend as much as I currently do.

Is it a consumer issue ?

We don't advise on consumer issues. Our funders insist we don't and any work we do we don't get paid for. If we work for free we don't have enough money to run any kind of service.... so no consumer.

So yesterday I saw a nice woman who came in and wrote on the little sheet we give people that she wanted advice about "a deposit paid to a furniture shop". She got turned away, came back because the place we sent her to couldn't help, and we agreed to briefly see her (basically because we felt a bit sorry for her). The problem was really about repaying a loan and absolutely something we could help with.

At the same time I saw a man who had written "bank account". He'd lied (he knows the service we offer so I'm pretty sure it was deliberate) - he didn't want to pay his mobile phone bills.

He'd signed up to a contract but kept getting high bills. First month it was because he had phoned "non geographical" numbers, so next month he's careful about that. Unfortunately he has 600 minutes and made 900 minutes calls. Same kind of the thing the third month.

The choices are
1) the company might place him on a higher call plan - but we can't help him take out a consumer contract (can't assist people to give money to profit making companies basically - we can't recommend one or help them choose etc.)
2) pay up. Limit your use. Be able to at least use the service you are paying for.
3) don't pay up. Pay for a further 19 months but not be able to use the actual service.

He didn't like those options.

He claimed he couldn't have made the calls. I asked him to point out any he hadn't made - "how could I know that ?"

He kept interupting me to say "but the problem is..." and eventually I snapped and said "If you keep talking through me I cannot advise you. I understand what the problem is. I am trying to tell you your options. I understand you may not like those options but they are the only options".

I'm happy with what I said, but not how I said it. I apologised to him for my tone of voice, because I thought that was the right thing to do.

Eventually I told him if he can find one call he knows he didn't make I'll look into it - suggesting he checks new calls each day (the company is the one I use and they put them all on the internet for you to see within around 24 hours), or turns off the phone for 24 hours and see if there are any new charges.

It's not work we do but I'm 99.9% sure he won't find any, and if he does I'll help to make up for losing my temper.

At the end of the interview he asked for my name and wrote it down. I was worried he wanted to complain but he said "I want to make sure I see you next time".

I will not waste my time

Customer wanted advice about immigration. He didn't like what he heard (basically he'd need to pay a huge fee to register his children as British Citizens, it wasn't automatic - because of dates of birth, and dates he obtained his own status).

He just kept trying to argue with me : "but if the Home Office had given me status earlier", "But they should give status to people who are born here"...

So I said "I can only advise you about what you need to do given the current law, and the actual circumstances. There are many Home Office policies I disagree with but this is what you need to do. I will not spend any more time arguing with you about how things should be".

He started shouting that he wasn't arguing and stormed out with a complaint form. The supervisor saw him stomp out and he made a bad impression on her

Supervisor "Was that your client ? What an arsehole !"

So I know if he does complain I'm covered. Plus, you know, I didn't do anything wrong.

Half way

I have more to add but I'm running out of time. Will add the rest.

Victoria J

[Mondestrucken]

You know what is the saddest part of your entire post? I can tell that you care, you really care. I'm a fairly nice person, but the guy with the phone contract? I wouldn't have apologized, and I probably would not feel bad. A ding-dong who can't stop flapping their gums for 30 seconds so I can get a word in edgewise to help them is not someone who gets much sympathy from me.

Here, have some virtual dried apples. I know it doesn't sound that great, but trust me, this brand is awesome. It's like a mini apple pie, all cinnamony and sweet and tart.

[chainedbarista]

i'm with mondestrucken; that guy's an idiot, period.

you're a caring person and people who leech see this and latch on to it...sadly, it just drains you.

i recommend mac and cheese therapy. *hands over fresh hot baked mac*

[Victoria J]

Thanks - particularly as Macaroni Cheese (I cook a proper version that is very good) and apple with cinnamon are 2 of my favourites

I do care. But to be honest most of my customers are great. I'll finish my post - there is even a positive story.

A bad day

We are open to the public in the morning - on a good day we finish at 12.30, on an average day between 1 and 1.30. Yesterday we all finished well after 2 and one person finished after 3. It was 4 by the time we went out and got lunch.

A really really bad day - and I blame management

We were running our morning session. At the best of time it's chaos - 3 or 4 of us taking in walk in clients, with appointments also going on. People walking in the building. Other organisations share parts of the building. Phones going.

We're used to it.

Then someone arrived from the landlord, to "test the safety equipment". He claimed we had agreed to this - and however much we argued that we would never agree to doing this while we were open the public he wouldn't go away.

First he set of the fire alarm for a few seconds. It was obviously a test, we reassured the people in the waiting room. Life went on.

Then he turned all the lights off to "test the emergency lights" which are just on in the corridors.

I was looking something up in the main room which has a window. My client, a man with mental health issues including severe anxiety, was sitting in the interview room with no windows. I had to rush and tell him what was going on, and he went to wait in another room instead.

It took the man about 10 minutes to put the lights back on, at one point he said he didn't know how.

We go back into the interview room. I go and look up something else. The alarm goes off again and keeps going and going and going.

Reassured everyone in the waiting room it is a test, reassure my client.

I go back in, we wait until the fire alarm stops and I start to explain the information. The alarm goes off again. It stops it starts.

My ears are ringing.

Eventually I cover the most important bits, and the client is booked to an appointment. I tell him that everything will be covered at the appointment, I'd normally give more information but "I have to put up with this, you don't.".

So we're walking through the corridor to the door, ears still ringing with the alarm, when another client comes out and confronts me. My useless coworker G (otherwise my coworkers are very good) has been seeing her and hasn't been as careful as me about letting her know what's going on.

She's quite justified in being angry - but it isn't my fault and she just won't drop it. I apologised, I explained. She kept saying "I used to do professional work and I know how to handle it". I apologised again and agreed it hadn't been handled well - but she won't go away and she's still yelling at me.

She wants to wait for her advised and I try and guide her back in the direction of the room and she shouts at me "I'm trying to get back to the room" and tries to push past me in the other direction.

"I know - it's this way, let me show you".

Afterwards when I groused about the woman G was saying "well she has mental health problems", and a couple of other people were agreeing. I don't care - she was a cowbag - my client had mental health problems and she terrified him.

You CAN do that but I wouldn't recommend it

We are open at set times but we give out a certain number of tickets depending on how many people we have working (basically we do a good job and we're free but unfortunately we are quite hard to get in to see - we know, we're sorry, we don't have enough money. People prefer us to the people who are easy to see but don't do anything...)

So this woman came in just before we closed and no more tickets were available.

SC "OK, well I'll just sit here".

Receptionist "OK, but you won't be seen by an adviser, you'd need to return on our next open day, or you could call this number for telephone advice...."

So she sat there. We should have then thrown her out when we closed the door - anyone can sit in the waiting room until 12.30, but afterwards you need a reason to be there. Unfortunately we forgot (it's the same day we all finished after 2).

We threw her out at about 2.



Sadly our deputy manager is so diplomatic she left happy because he wittered at her for 5 minutes as he saw her out and it sounded vaguely advice-like. He told her to come back when we are open for "full advice".

Personally I wish she knew what we do - that she just wasted 3 hours of her life.

Why I love our queue

We open at 9.30 and people start queueing up before. There are normally at least of couple before 9am.

So the other day I got to the office at 9.10 and there was a queue of maybe 10 people and the last person was standing there on crutches. The only people in the office at that time where my coworker D and I. There was no one to watch the waiting room so I couldn't let him in, but I felt awful about him standing there.

I gave him one of the chairs from the waiting room, and asked him to please please make sure I got it back (particularly as I couldn't check with the manager). I apologised for not being able to let him in, but he was very grateful.

At 9.30 the receptionist opened the doors. We have one way mirror glass window in the main office and you can see the queue. As people moved forward they passed the chair down the queue over people's heads and it came in at the front of the queue

Our clients as a group are very nice. We ask people to fill in a form while they're waiting (if they can) to make everything a bit faster. The receptionist explains to the people at the front and they pass the clipboards back and explain to anyone new arriving. We also sometimes have to move chairs to let in larger wheelchairs - most of the time the clients will do it before we even know about it.

Victoria J

[MoonCat]

Re: that lady that just sat there for three hours...you never know, maybe it did her good to not have to go home for a while. Sometimes home can be a bad place, so sitting there may have been a respite for her and it may have been helpful even though you guys didn't do anything.

[Victoria J]

Re: that lady that just sat there for three hours...you never know, maybe it did her good to not have to go home for a while. Sometimes home can be a bad place, so sitting there may have been a respite for her and it may have been helpful even though you guys didn't do anything.

We get some people like that - one guy who turned up early for every appointment, and we found out it was because we had heating and he didn't. After that we also started sneaking him cups of tea. It took a couple of weeks to get his electric back on.

I don't think so for this woman though. Her problem was that she might lose her housing, no issue with it at right now. Really oddly she was there with a child who wasn't hers. Who takes someone elses child to sit in an office for 3 hours when you've already been told you won't be seen.

Also - forgot the following random pieces of news I was going to add to my long list of stories :

more time in the day

I have moved. I can now walk to work in 10 minutes, instead of travelling for 50. Plus after 6 months I am out of my mother's house again, Yay.

emails you shouldn't answer

Any email that says "phone me at once, I can't use my email at all"...

It was from my mother. It was her normal email account.

When I phoned she claimed her computer hated her and was lying to her. She was almost in tears at one point

She asked how things were at work and I said (hint hint) "busy" so she talked for 10 minutes about random things incuding squirrels.

See the YAY above for not sharing a house with her.

just horrible

the reason I cut short my original post was a text from a coworker. A is obsessed by her pet rabbits - and really loves the mother rabbit. She's had them for 2 years, then she lost 2 to a fox, and another when missing. Last night she came home and the remaining 3 had been killed by a fox.

I phoned and she was crying, and there was shouting and wailing in the background as she has small children.


I had to phone my mother and check on my cat - she'll be moving to the new place next week as my mother is away 2 days next week so I'll be at her house looking after my cat and hers.

Victoria J

[Andara Bledin]

I have moved. I can now walk to work in 10 minutes, instead of travelling for 50. Plus after 6 months I am out of my mother's house again, Yay.

Good job on that.

Last night she came home and the remaining 3 had been killed by a fox.

My family lost a lot of cats to coyotes when I was little and we still lived on the ranch.

I don't remember much crying, however, as we knew that was one of the dangers of allowing cats to roam outside in an area known to have wild predators.

It's still hard to lose pets, though. Moreso if you end up witnessing what happened to them.

^-.-^

[wagegoth]

Victoria J, I have to say how much I admire you for the work you do. I simply could not do it. The main reason I'm still gainfully employed and reasonably sane is that I work at a large law firm with mostly smart people, and I don't have to deal with clients.

[Stryker One]

Born with it

I will not waste my time

Customer wanted advice about immigration. He didn't like what he heard (basically he'd need to pay a huge fee to register his children as British Citizens, it wasn't automatic - because of dates of birth, and dates he obtained his own status).

He just kept trying to argue with me : "but if the Home Office had given me status earlier", "But they should give status to people who are born here"...

So I said "I can only advise you about what you need to do given the current law, and the actual circumstances. There are many Home Office policies I disagree with but this is what you need to do. I will not spend any more time arguing with you about how things should be".

He started shouting that he wasn't arguing and stormed out with a complaint form. The supervisor saw him stomp out and he made a bad impression on her

Supervisor "Was that your client ? What an arsehole !"

So I know if he does complain I'm covered. Plus, you know, I didn't do anything wrong.

Victoria J

Wait, if you're born in the UK, you're not automatically a citizen?

[Victoria J]

My family lost a lot of cats to coyotes when I was little and we still lived on the ranch.

I don't remember much crying, however, as we knew that was one of the dangers of allowing cats to roam outside in an area known to have wild predators.

A lives in the middle of the city. She had 6 foot high fences round her tiny back garden and she added wire to the top. She strengthened the run.

We don't really think about having predators. We seem to have more foxes than the rural areas but that was always because they were here essentially as scavengers, going through the bins and other rubbish. Not eating pets.

Victoria J, I have to say how much I admire you for the work you do. I simply could not do it.

Nope - I'm very very lucky. I have a job that matches me very well. I get bored very easily and after a few weeks of doing anything abstract I can't motivate myself - this job means I can't do that. You are always reminded of why it is important. I also get to be both kind and angry at the same time which isn't something most jobs have room for. It keeps me honest, or more importantly is a good way to prevent feeling superior, trying to help people who are literally and not pejoratively "ignorant" but not stupid, or lazy. I love the variety of working with people (best way to keep a job interesting) but I couldn't in a million years to anything requiring more emotional work (social work etc.).

Then I get to work with some wonderful people. I don't make friends easily but in a fairly small office I have 2 close friends - and am pretty close to a couple of other people including A.

Lots of my work is easy. Most of the people are nice. Sometimes it is very satisfying. It's why I don't post that often - just when I have a run of extra stressful days.

Wait, if you're born in the UK, you're not automatically a citizen?

No. Automatic citizenship is only acquired where a child is born in the UK and has a parent (always a mother, sometimes a father due to paternity being more problematic to establish) who is themselves a citizen or has "settled" status in the UK - i.e. has been given permission to stay indefinitely. There are also some more complex rules for some children of people holding some commonwealth passports.

There are other ways to become a citizen later.

I like your amazement - because it always seems so weird to me that anywhere does have that as a rule. I would have British Citizenship if I was born to my parents regardless of where my mother gave birth - and couldn't it just lead to kind of random citizenship where people travelled ? I think of it as something that shows a strong connection of you family to the place, OR your choice later in life - not where you were on a certain day. I guess our respective laws affect our ideas of citizenship which affects how we think the law should work. I am fascinated by the relationship between law and social attitudes etc.

Victoria J