Mooday Monday

[mellowtigger]

I was "the bad guy" at work today. :( I followed the letter of our policy requirements and state law. Doing so, if the caller is to be believed, I made life more difficult for someone currently in military training, and I messed up (or at least complicated) their path to an educated new life.

I did try to find alternatives to my action first. I did send instructions for how to apply for an exception to the rule, which they won't be able to follow until after dealing with the consequences of my own action today. *sigh*

At least I didn't have to process any death notices today. They're very rare in my queue, but they happen sometimes. That's my low bar for determining how my day went, apparently.

Comments

[scrottie]

I understand the aversion to getting in trouble or being wrong, but sometimes breaking rules can be comforting in a kind of testing the waters sort of way. If you very infrequently get caught breaking rules and you wind up getting a pass for it when you do, with people looking the other way, then at least that gives you information on your own standing, which can be better than not knowing and just fearing.

Don't know the details in this case and maybe you were doing what you thought was objectively right, but it reminds me of working for Quest Wireless. There were very specific rules about many things including when we could give people unlock codes to take their phones to other providers. Calls were often recorded and people would fairly regularly get in trouble for doing or saying the wrong thing. But Quest was heavy handed and often punished people for their own errors and failed to create a path to resolve it. Sometimes people would call in requesting an unlock code and it really seemed like they should have it, especially after being through a ton of garbage with Quest. I'd tell them, "I'm sorry, I see the contract is not yet complete, I cannot provide that informatoin" while reaching over to my person cell and texting them the code and hitting "Send" as soon as I was off the call. I never got caught. So, do what you think is best, but a lot of people break rules and sometimes we're even a tiny bit smart about it.

[mellowtigger]

Oh, I've certainly interpreted situations my own way and not escalated to this response in cases where I could reasonably doubt my understanding of the situation. (When I don't know with certainty.) This time, though, the rules violation was too flagrant for me to not see it precisely as such. :( If that happens only once every 6 months, then I'll consider myself lucky, considering the volume of calls I get on similar issues. I'm all for helping people with their tech, and I strongly dislike being the roadblock to effective use of tech. Nobody came out of that phone call a winner. :(

[kathmandu]

Well, if that person is in military training, they'll have to get used to rigid policies and requirements messing up their day. It kind of goes with the territory.

It sounds like you did everything right. Sometimes in customer service we have to enforce the policy and we have an unhappy customer, but that doesn't mean we're at fault.

[mellowtigger]

Yes, I'm certain I was "in the right" in this case. But I don't like being the one to make tech less useful for anyone, when I make it more of a roadblock to the thing they want to accomplish. :( This rule had an exception clause, and I hope they win that exception later. I'm of two minds on "unofficial exceptions", though. Yes, it can help to smooth the operation of any complex system to accomplish good goals. Unfortunately, it's also how bureaucracies turn corrupt, where accomplishing things means paying someone to look the other way. I'd much rather follow the rules, and change the rules when they no longer provide good outcomes.