I get upset when people cry around me. And even more upset when they cry over something I said or did. And more upset still when they’re full of shit and I can’t say so because I it would be “poor customer service”.
This woman called yesterday trying to enrol in a birthing education class. She’d looked at our website and saw that the class she wanted was full so she couldn’t sign up online. Could I please put her into the class? (She started politely).
I explained politely that we don’t overfill our classes. There are only so many tables and chairs, and it’s already a snug fit with 12 pregnant couples and a teacher in a room for 3 hours straight for 7 Wednesday nights. While we do occasionally allow a 13th couple in, it’s to a single session because they can’t make it to some session on the night they are originally were booked for.
Besides, she was due November 3, and the class ended just a week before her due date, which is too close. We wouldn’t have stopped her for that reason, of course, but she was calling way too late. Every one of our 7 week classes was filled.
But I had other options to offer her. I told her about our two-day weekend course on labor and delivery, and two other one-night courses on breast feeding and infant care to get the same information as the 7 week class. She could even take a one-night “basics” course that packed as much as we could into 4 hours, for people who have serious time commitment problems.
Now she got angry. “My husband only has Wednesday nights off. He’s the general manager of one of the biggest restaurants in town – maybe you’ve heard of it – XXX (a national restaurant chain). We can’t take weekend classes, or anything other than Wednesday nights.” AFAICT, it seemed she thought the place might burn to the ground without his presence.
I then suggested she could come without him and/or bring someone else as a birth coach. That REALLY set her off, and she begins to alternate sobbing with shouting. You mean to say I have absolutely no options?" Actually, I offered her several options, none of which she would accept.
Then she started asking about the other couples in the Wednesday class. Could we look up their due dates, and ask a couple with a later due date to move to another class to make room for her? That was the first point in the exchange that I let my exasperation showed as I said, “There are no circumstances under which we would ask another couple to reschedule for your convenience, ma’am.”
Then she asked whether couples in the class are delivering at other hospitals, because she was delivering at our hospital and should have priority over couples delivering elsewhere. I told her that we don’t know where they plan to deliver, we don’t even ask. She said, “Don’t you think you shoud?” That was the second time I violated an unwritten policy and delivered a flat “No” response (‘Nos’ are supposed to be delivered by management). But I said, “No ma’am, our classes are open to the general public, and I think that is a pretty good policy,”
Finally, to my relief she demanded to talk to my manager, and I transferred the call. I talked to my boss later about the second conversation, and was pretty pleased that she backed me 100%. The woman told my boss that I was “unsympathetic and so matter of fact that it was disturbing”. My boss congratulated me – the last person I sent along had called me “rude” (my boss has heard my half of many similar conversations and knows very well that I’m not rude to customers). The two comments above I made during the exchange were about the rudest I’ve ever made, and I upset in retrospect that I even made them. But my boss brushed it aside after I repeated my comments. She said, “Boyo Jim. I had to tell her myself that we would need to continue this discussion some other time after she calmed down. I tried to explain that her reasons for being in that Wednesday class were no more or less important than every other couple in it, but she didn’t get it.”
My boss did correct my language once. Later in the day when I described the woman as a “nutcase” to another staff person, my boss said that “overly fretful pregnant woman” would be a better turn of thrase, to which I had to agree.
I wish I had the… I don’t know what… strength?.. serenity?.. to let this kind of thing wash over me. But I don’t. I feel shitty and guily for hours, even though I did absolutely nothing wrong. So maybe my title is wrong – maybe it’s more accurate to say I fucked up my own day by allowing myself to empathize too much with the troubles of emotionally disturbed people.