Pissy takes the cake...

Sometimes, in working where I do, specifically in the line of work that I am in (call center, inbound), I am faced with the horrible reality that some people just don't want to take personal responsibility for their own actions at the time of the issue, and want to blame it all on someone else...

Take, for instance, Liter Liner*, who called in today to speak with the doctor on call because their baby grandchild had an issue. No big deal - it's something that happens fairly often. After finding out first off that Liter doesn't know who the baby's doctor is, and then looking up the information to FIND said doctor, the correct on-call person is found.

Dear Liter calls back not 10 minutes later, and gets the same operator, Sweetie*. Sweetie is subsequently yelled at by Liter, and told that Liter wants someone "smarter" than the last doctor Liter spoke with - specifically, Liter wants the attending physician, because the doctor originally paged was "dumb". When it was explained that the doctor called *was* the attending, Liter then stated that there HAD to be someone else there who wasn't as DUMB as the on-call doctor, and wanted someone "smarter" than Sweetie.

Sweetie places Liter on hold, and gets our lead, Orbit*, on the line. Orbit goes through and lets Liter scream and rant and rave about everything, and then explains that we have a Patient Advocate office that can deal with the issue, and provides the number for them. Mind you, it's a Saturday night, at 8pm... Liter demands to speak with the President of the hospital... Because that's a reasonable request... The request is refused, and Orbit explains again what the options are. Liter hangs up.

Liter's significant other, Planar*, calls in. Planar gets yours truly, and goes off on me on how this is an issue that started back about a month ago, and wasn't addressed by the hospital, so Planar is addressing it now... Seems that the grandchild was born and had what Planar and Liter feel was inadaquate care, as did the grandchild's mother... But it's an issue that's almost a month old... I, having NO idea at this point that Planar's family has called twice already about the issue and has been abusive both times, offer the patient advocates office - which Planar immediately wants to know WHY this office would be offered, since the issue is with the hospital administration and the head of the delivery unit.

I let Planar know what our Patient Advocate office was able to do, but that's not good enough because they're not open right then - Planar wants to speak with someone *RIGHT NOW*. So - I offer to page the Administrator on Duty for Planar, who agrees. I get a call back from the Administrator, and am told that they're very busy, but to please let them know what the phone # is and they would call Planar back as soon as they could.

I let Planar know, and am told that there should be someone above the Administrator. I quietly point out that said Administrator is given that title for a reason, and they're there to oversee all issues within the hospital during the off hours. Since their main focus is issues within the hospital, it could take some time to get back to Planar. Planar makes a snarky comment about how nice it would have been to have had such a thing when the issue was still going on, that way the grandchild would not have had their life threatened. I pointed out that there had been ample time to address the issue at that point, however, unfortunately, apparently it hadn't been addressed and I was sorry for that.

After taking down Planar's number and sending it on to the Administrator, Sweetie and I start talking about the family - and Orbit gets into the discussion and we all compare notes - apparently the issue had to do with not getting the physical equipment necessary to breast-feed or store breast-milk from the hospital... Something that I was never aware that ANY hospital gave out normally. And apparently the issue was never addressed at the time, but instead was only now being brought up to hospital administration. Apparently at one point Liter threatened legal action, stating that they were "lawyering up".

No more than 10 minutes goes by and, unknown to either Sweetie or I, Liter calls back, AGAIN - this time getting the third of our little quad crew of the evening, Cookey*, who pages the Administrator again at Liter's demand.

The Admin calls back, and after talking with Orbit, gets transferred over to Cookey, who connects the Admin with Liter. We all commence to talking about the whole issue, and how idiotic it is that someone is going through all of this trouble for something that could have been taken care of at the very beginning of the issue - had they only said something then.

The Administrator ends up calling back yet again, and says that apparently, Liter decided to be JUST as rude and uncooperative to them as Liter had been to all of us - and we were not to page for the family again, but instead let the Patient Advocate's office take care of things on Monday. At this point, I'm totally amazed. They finally get the one person who could have at least listened to the issue - and instead of being polite and positive, they're rude, pushy and downright arrogant regarding everything - thus guaranteeing no help whatsoever... And for what? An issue that, had they simply said something in the first place, would probably never have had time to fester.

On the other hand, apparently some people *like* being pissy just for the sake of being pissy.

~M

*Names have been changed - I like it better that way.