I had to call an ambulance this morning for a work colleague. It was more of a precaution than anything else, and I should point out that he's going to be fine, but I'd never dialled 999 before. I naturally expected the operator to be helpful, because that is their job.
His first question was obvious. 'Can you give me the full address of where you are please?' Now, when you give someone an address over the phone in normal circumstances, you read it out one line at a time and wait for them to write it down or type it in. When they've done it, they give you an affirmative noise to indicate that you can continue. That's normal, right? I'm not just being stupid? So I told him the first line of the address and paused for his affirmation. It was a long pause. Bloody hell, I thought, they ought to employ faster typists for emergencies. Eventually he just repeated: 'Can you give me the full address of where you are please?' Ah. Perhaps he hadn't heard me. That would explain it. I gave him the first line again and paused once more. A couple of seconds later, he said: 'Can you give me the full address of where you are please?' At this point I just thought he was some kind of idiot so I said 'Would it help if I gave you the postcode?' Clearly not. His reply was: 'Can you give me the full address of where you are please?' So, as requested, I blurted it all out at once which seemed to work. But would it have killed him to engage in normal conversation? All he had to do was say 'yep' after I'd started telling him and I would have continued. Or he could have just told me there was no need to pause. Something to gently steer me into union with his needs. Am I not right about this? If it had been a more serious matter and I was stressed and agitated, I think I'd have found it very frustrating.
So, Mr Ambulance Man, I think you ought to realise that people only call you when they need help. It's not something they do everyday and they aren't necessarily familiar with your methods. It would therefore be quite useful if you could make it easy for them instead of reading through your list of questions like a fucking robot. Thanks.
3 comments:
Of course you're right Graham. But perhaps what you need to remember is that if he had the imagination and/or common sense to work outside protocol for a moment, he'd be in a different job to the one he's in.
I think that's a little unfair, JB - some people take jobs because there are no other jobs available, or because they genuinely want to help during life-threatening emergencies. But yes, he does sound like an automaton with little conception of how a caller must feel in this situation. Hope it wasn't too scary Gray.
I'm not going to bore everyone with the experiences that we had when my father was extremely ill, especially when trying to get an ambulance when he was actually dying, but suffice it to say that I know EXACTLY what you are talking about!
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