When I used to work on the front desk (called ‘the counter’ in my day) at the DWP (and the DSS and even DHSS, as it was previously called), part of the job was to get abused and threatened. Desperate and angry people would often lose it completely, attacking the screens or shouting at you. The abuse varied in intensity but you usually got used to it, eventually, except when there was an exceptional event. Sometimes, it was scary.
I’ve never forgotten how it felt and I felt even worse when colleagues were on the end of it. Things might kick off for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps someone had genuinely lost their money or their giro, more often they would pretend they had. They would pretend because, perhaps, they needed a fix of drugs or owed money to a local loan shark. The anger was usually genuine, but it was not, generally, personal.
I was reminded of those days when I was in a branch of a well known supermarket the other morning. Whilst passing the customer service desk, it was hard not to be aware of a very shouty and abusive couple letting rip at the customer service assistant. Everyone was watching, wondering how it would pan out. I just just about to intervene when a security guard and the store manager appeared to try and calm things down, which they managed to do, albeit not before another bout of very loud shouting. I stood and watched, I suppose just in case something else happened; it didn’t.
What annoyed me, more than anything else, was the direction of this abuse. I would imagine the staff member was on little more than than the national minimum wage and that she was working on customer service because she wanted to be and that was good at it. I wondered what the shouty customers were thinking about. Did they think that the victim of their abuse was actually the CEO of the company or even a minor policy maker? Did they think she was responsible for all the policies of the store? Did they think they could change anything by having a pop at a relatively junior employer? I rather doubt it. I doubt that they were thinking of anything at all. They had a problem, I know not what, and had come to the conclusion, probably without any thought, that the best way forward was shouting.
I knew when I was working in some jobs that abuse was part of the job. You knew that there would be confrontation because you would be telling someone something they didn’t want to hear. My situation was very different from the supermarket worker because their customers were not at the end of the line, with nowhere else to go. They could go to another supermarket. There was no alternative DWP. The way things are going there won’t be one at all.
Is it simply part of our modern world? There are loads of things I detest about visiting supermarkets, not least people who continue conversations on their mobile phones whilst being served at the till. Or people who just leave their trolleys in the middle of the car park rather than returning them to the designated areas. Or lazy people who use parking spaces designated for disabled people and families with young children. Or people who shout at ordinary people doing their jobs. The latter is bullying of the highest (or lowest) degree. Your supermarket worker is a soft target, usually restricted to one working area and unable to answer back because the customer is always right, even when he/she isn’t.
Perhaps I am just noticing these things more than I used to. I am probably going to get myself into trouble one day by intervening in an incident – as my family will confirm, once I see red, albeit on a long fuse, I tend to involve myself in situations I rather shouldn’t – because I hate seeing people going about their business, working hard, doing their jobs and unable to do anything but take the abuse, whatever it is.
There are plenty of ways of resolving what are usually very trivial matters instead of shouting.
