Now hear this, you whiney old farts: let me get my work done!

The BBQ Pit
21

Kimstu, I totally agree with you, and I’ve been there. If her rant was about people bugging her including older people I can see where she’s coming from. But it was only about elderly people and she flat out said she didn’t like them. I’m not saying they can’t get a little long winded. But surely they aren’t the only people that do that. You mean not one other person walks in there under the age of 65 and likes to talk?

Call me crazy but I don’t like seeing the elderly demeaned. The people she’s complaining about have probably paid taxes longer than she’s been alive, and they pay her salary.

Reading comprehension is fine and I got the point she was making. Old people are keeping her from doing her very busy job. I was just relating a story about someone with a similiar viewpoint as the OP and what I thought of her.

22

No, I didn’t say that.

23

I’m on the OP’s side in this, and think I can see why she’s specifically rankled at the oldsters.

I don’t work in an office, but I do work in a call centre. My job is to take calls from customers, answer certain enquiries and help them with certain problems. There are certain questions and problems that I can’t help people with because either a) It’s related to a product that I’m not trained in, and if I try to give an answer it’s more than likely to be wrong or b) It’s not related to our product at all.

I find that with customers who are in their 60s or under, if they ask a question I can’t answer and I tell them who can answer it or where they can start looking for information, they accept that and close the call. Usually 2 minutes tops. They have other things to do, and don’t like to be sitting on the phone for longer than necessary.

The older the person is, the less likely they are to accept that I can’t answer their enquiry and keep talking anyway, or go off onto another tangent that has nothing to do with anything I can help them with or fix for them. A good example is one of them asking me a question about a charge on their mobile phone bill. I can’t see the mobile phone bill, so I can’t answer that question. I do, however, offer to transfer them to someone who can answer their enquiry and introduce the call for them. But that’s not good enough, and they then feel the need to tell me about their grandson who ran up a $5000 phone bill calling his mates one day. Now I can’t just throw them on hold and dump them in the queue. I have to let them rattle, then suggest again that I transfer them, then once I’ve got permission I can transfer or close the call. There we’re looking at anywhere from 6-10 minutes, depending on how far into story-mode they get.

Now I’m always polite to my customers, and I certainly understand that they may be bored, or lonely or whatever. But in costing me 4-8 minutes, they’ve still not gotten an answer and I’ve had to transfer them anyway, and they’ve then increased the time that the next person in the queue is waiting and not getting any help because I’m tied up with their story about little Stanley and his friends.

When it comes down to it, the pensioners don’t have anything better to do. And some of them don’t seem to understand that other people do, so they feel it’s their right to tie up the time and resources of others, complaining or talking about something that either has no point or can’t be fixed by the person they’re haranguing. And because you can’t be rude to them and cut them off, you end up with things like this pitting, where a person is blowing off steam in a harmless environment so they can go back to work tomorrow and sit there smiling and nodding while hearing about someone’s cat who died in 1986.

24

No, “old people” in general are not the ones the OP is complaining about. She’s complaining about a particular subset of old people—to wit, “whiney old farts” who insist on talking to her at work about one or more of the following things unrelated to her work:

If you interpreted that to mean that the OP just “doesn’t like” old people, you didn’t get the point at all.

Like I said, if there were any suggestion that Sonia was actually treating elderly people in a demeaning manner, I’d be jumping on her too. But I don’t think that whiney farts who selfishly take up busy employees’ time (and also the time of other people waiting to transact business with those employees, btw) with irrelevant complaints and blather should be immune from criticism just because they happen to be whiney old farts.

Sonia is criticizing a particular group of elderly people—i.e., the ones who are so self-absorbed and inconsiderate in their leisurely retirement years that they think it’s okay to use busy municipal employees as a captive audience for their irrelevant grievances and complaints about their personal lives. That’s a perfectly legit criticism and is not “demeaning” to elderly people in general.

25

Kimstu, I know you didn’t learn that attitude in Holland.

The assumption that the rest of us don’t know what it’s like to wait in line behind someone who is old and/or confused and/or lonely and slow is unsound. We’ve all survived that experience multiple times, and we know it isn’t fatal. We’ve all been annoyed by it too, but many of us also feel a little ashamed after, because we don’t enjoy being petty and uncharitable and resentful that we lost five minutes of our lunch hour so some old lady could get five extra minutes of undeserved, totally non-business-related attention.

It’s also a little discouraging to see your acceptance of the OP’s contention that answering questions and complaints about, and requests for exceptions to, a rule that she is responsible for administering is not her job. I mean, sure, the answer may be “no,” but it’s hard to see why providing the answer, if none of her many assistants are available, can’t be reasonably expected of her. As for the other complaints, I’d have to see it before I believed there was a steady stream of old people coming in just to shoot the breeze. Trying for a little human contact under color of town business? Sure. I know someone who pays all his bills in person for (I suspect) exactly that reason.

And here’s the sad truth: no matter how important the temporary acting deputy undersecretary for pothole beautification thinks she is, if the powers that be put her in the path of these visitors, that means someone even more special than the OP thinks it is too her job to deal with the gross, annoying, unwashed and unlettered public. The alternatives are obvious: she can convince her bosses that she should be insulated from visitors, she can learn to do her whole job, not just the part she wants to do, or she can find a job dusting tombstones, where hardly anyone will try to talk to her.

And yeah, we know it’s the Pit. When we can all get the irony of coming in here expecting the sympathy of strangers when one’s complaint is about people who wander in, expecting the sympathy of strangers, Utopia will be an inch or two closer.

26

Three ancient ladies, the kind that look like Incan mummies with purple hair, are sitting in the doctor’s waiting room.

One of them says: “where’s Anna today?”

Another answer: “oh, she couldn’t come, she’s home sick.”

My SiL the doctor thought this was a joke until she started running into it. For some reason you don’t see 40 year olds going to the doctor every day to whine about their arthritis and their gases and the color of their faeces and whether their cats and dogs and canaries are pooing right or not - every day except the day when they are sick for real and the doctor has to house-visit. (And yes, I know arthitis is real, but I’ve also been sandwiched in a doctor’s waiting room between two of those women as they described their poo in detail for over one hour)

27

I have limited customer contact. I really don’t want to give away any details that might identify me.

Let’s say that I am the Bureaucrat in Charge of Gargoyles. If you want to install a gargoyle at your home or business, you have to get a permit from my office. If you want to remove an already-existing gargoyle, you have to notify us. Normally, the receptionist can issue you the permit and will accept your notification of impending removal. But if your property is not zoned for gargolyes, I will come out of my office to explain, politely, the ordinances and by-laws. If you still want a gargoyle after hearing the law, I will set up an appointment for you to come back and, during that appointment, I will assist you to apply for a zoning variance. I will not ignore the gargoyle laws just because you pout and throw a tantrum.

Gargoyles. That’s what I do. If you are one of the retirees who pushes your way into my office uninvited, please be aware that:

I do not fix parking tickets. I don’t care that you double-parked for two secs while you ran into the convenience store for a quart of milk and that the meter maid who issued the ticket is a witch.

Just because I work at town hall, it doesn’t mean I am qualified to answer questions about your property taxes.

I am unmoved that you think it’s unfair your 18-year-old grandson was required to register for the draft and that 18-year old girls don’t have to. Take it up with our Congresman.

I know nothing about trash pick-up.

I do not take complaints about the librarians who shushed you when you and your chattering friends tried to have a kaffeklatsch in the public library’s reading room.

Most of all, I am not paid to listen to complaints about your gall bladder and your sister-in-law who didn’t invite your grandchildren to her party.

And for those Dopers who accuse me of being ageist, be aware that I am gray-haired and old enough to be a granny myself. It’s likely that 30-year-olds would be as pushy as the retirees if they had the free time but the fact is that 95% of the nuisance visitors are elderly. Not all old people in my town are like this, but the ones who plop themselves down uninvited in my office are very often childish, self-obsessed and insensitive.

And it’s not just me they are doing this to: it’s every department at town hall. The wrinklies simply drop in anywhere and unload their litany of complaints, unheedful of the work that their captive listener has to do. Every man and woman who works here is thoroughly sick of the pushy geezers and the way they waste our time.

28

Time stamp 10:30 am, on a Thursday, from Boston.

Must be pretty horrible having those wrinkly old fucks interrupting your SDMB time at work, huh?

At least we know the real reason you’re hesitant about giving identifying details, eh?

29

OOOooo. Been there.
Used to work in Social Security Disability, in TN State Gov. Everybody would phone, & ask me to fix their Veterans’ Admin problems, Federal Income Tax, Water & Sewer bills, etc, & couldn’t grasp that I was a State employee, & that there is no one person who can fix it all, anyhoo.

All eldery, & all morally committed to the idea that I was a despot, for not solving all their problems instantly. :smack:

30

That’s a pretty common break time. Her other posts were after 6pm eastern except the OP which was 318pm eastern, also a fairly common break time. Why would you assume she was on the clock?

31

God forbid one take a short break when work allows them to, because that’s just as bad as being imposed upon against one’s wishes while there is work to be done.

Shame on you, Sonia. You’re just another gray-hair with too much free time on her hands. Shame.

32

What a remarkably stupid comment.

You seriously think any and all public employees should drop whatever they are doing in order to listen to pointless complaints they can do nothing about and that are not related to their job by random members of the public, merely because those members of the public are taxpayers? Do you think that taxpayers should be allowed to demand that police officers take out their trash, just because they “pay their salaries?”

Other taxpayers have a right to expect that the people whose salaries they pay do the work they are paid to do, rather than have their time wasted by clueless idiots. These folks are an imposition not only on the employees, but also waste the tax dollars of other taxpayers. A civil servant has an obligation to the public to do the job they are contracted to do, nothing more.

33

I don’t understand what (most) everyone is up in arms about. Sonia has authority to deal with X. She does not have authority to deal with Y. When she explains this to someone, they get upset, and she’s venting that because they get upset and it takes time away from someone that needs help with X.

34

One of the more ridiculous and idiotic comments i’ve seen for a while. You’re probably one of those assholes who screams “I pay your salary” at every public servant who won’t cave in to your petulant whining.

Next time you’re behind me in line at the DMV, how about i spend a half hour complaining to the counter staff about the state of the roads, or asking them if they’ll reduce the license fee on my vehicle because i think it’s too much?

As others have pointed out, the job of a public servant isn’t to be at the beck and call of whichever member of the public happens to be standing in from of them at that particular moment. They, like workers in other places, have duties and responsibilities. Sometimes that will involve listening to certain complaints. But it might also involve not wasting taxpayer money acting as therapist or complaint-taker on issues for which they are not responsible.

You say to the OP that it’s her job to deal with this shit. If you lived in her town, and her actual work wasn’t getting done on time because of all the people wasting her time with trivial and irrelevant matters, you’d be whining that she should do her actual job, rather than accommodating them.

35

I do tech support and often get calls from older people. They’re always polite, but they’ll talk your ear off if you let them. It’s not unusual for me to have to sit there and listen to a 2 minute story when they could have summed it up in 2 sentences. GET TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER PEOPLE!

Then after the problem is fixed and they thank me, that’s when they start wanting to talk about everything under the sun. I understand that, they have nothing better to do. But there are a bunch of other people needing help and I don’t need to be tied up on the phone for 10 or 15 minutes for a 1 minute problem. There’s a name for those people: Time vampires. They suck all your time away.

36

Yes, they should. They should listen up to the point where they can tell it’s not their job, then *politely and helpfully direct * that taxpayer to someone else who can help. Not bitch and whine about “whiney old farts”.

37

Ever? Anywhere? Does this restriction apply for the rest of their lives, or just while they hold the job? Is it that she feels annoyed that you think is wrong, or just that she expresses it? Your position fascinates me, please explain more.

38

Oh, I think I see another point of confusion. “Taxpayer” doesn’t mean “Emperor of the Universe”, nor does it entitle you to waste the money of other taxpayers. Everyone wasting her time might as well be reaching into your wallet and setting a dollar on fire, DrDeth! Doesn’t that bother you?

39

While they are on the public payroll of course.

40

Sorry, i guess i was assuming that you had the cognitive wherewithal to understand that the OP does, in fact, behave politely and helpfully towards these people.

She is ranting here precisely because she can’t take out her frustrations on the people who cause them in the first place.