In my job, which involves public service (some of you might know what it is, but it’s not entirely relevant to the question), I have encountered, not one, but two people who display the exact same characteristics.
They appear to need a lot of help with their particular situation and ask you to help them. They have very involved backstories that are likely imaginary or greatly exaggerated.
As it turns out, their situation not only doesn’t need any help, they are asking for assistance that is impossible to provide. Asking for phone numbers of people or businesses that don’t exist is a common one.
Whatever assistance they needed, they could have figured out on their own with minimal difficulty.
They will not accept the fact that you can’t help and will stand in front of you for 30-45 minutes refusing to leave, so you can help someone else. If you walk away from the desk, the person will not budge. They will persist in their behavior. And sometimes become hostile.
To me, it seems that people like this do want attention and probably don’t have anyone else who pays attention to them at all. This may be the only way that they can get attention. They don’t seem to mind that the attention they draw is really more annoyance and anger from those who are trying to help them.
This pattern tends to get repeated on different people when it is their turn to take over the public counter.
If a mod feels this belongs in a different forum, I would understand.
No, they aren’t elderly. They are likely suffering from a form of schizophrenia after I read about all the variations.
These characters will often follow staff people outside to ask them questions. My approach to dealing with them is to set firm limits. I just say “No, I WILL NOT help you anymore. You CANNOT take up the staff’s time this way.”
They don’t seem to like it, but they leave me alone.
Schizophrenia has quite a few criteria in the DSM, but there are a couple of disorders that are similar and don’t require quite the laundry list. Off the top of my head, I can think of schizoid and schizotypal personality disorder.
To add to the “schizo” list, schizoaffective disorder. An ex of mine had this diagnosis, which he used interchangably (but apparantly incorrectly so) with “borderline schizophrenia.”
I think if someone is standing in front of you for 30-45 minutes, beligerantly refusing to leave the property, you (or the owner or manager, if that’s not you) can call the police and have the person arrested for trespassing and bar them from the property permanently. I have a friend who used to work for the university and city and county libraries, and they each maintained a list of people who were permanently barred.
I’ve got this feeling that Otto is wanting to be more helpful than that, although I’m dead-on with you as far as trespassing pains-in-my-neck goes.
Perhaps he has a facility that CAN’T trespass people?
I’m sure there are some government offices that HAVE to allow visits from anyone. There may be no provisions for remote service for, let’s say, paying your water bill the day before shut-off without walking in, or checking certain tax records.
I’m not suggesting that trespassing them should be the first resort, but if after 45 minutes of trying to help someone who pretty much refuses to be helped or can’t be helped, and being unable to assist other customers as a result, well, that’s what the police are for.