Unfiltered Story #216044

(I work for my municipality in the Addressing group. We manage and authorize addresses that feed into a variety of databases including everything from utilities and EMS, to building and parking permits. Sometimes if an address isn’t properly entered by a ‘downstream’ group, people can run into issues.
In this story I receive a call from our general operator with a citizen who’s been through the ringer trying to get her parking permit. Not an entirely uncommon occurrence but she’s followed all the right processes and is still having issues.
I take down her contact information and reach out to an old colleague in the roads department to help push the issue along. It even goes so far as having to prove to another group that the address in question is legitimate and that yes, surprise, the Address Department is in fact in charge of address standards. I call the citizen and leave a voice mail to let her know that this all should be being pushed along now and if she needs any more help to call me.
Flash forward a couple weeks and I receive the nicest of phone calls: )

Citizen: “Hello? Yes, <my name>? This is <Citizen>, you were helping me with <address> a couple weeks ago and I just wanted to follow up and let you know that it’s thanks to you that I’ve got my parking permit. I can’t tell you how nice it was to hear a cheerful voice on the other end of the line after hours of dealing with being on hold and getting shuffled around. Getting through to you really pushed this forward and I can’t thank you enough for making it happen.”

(Cue a giant grin from me. Moments like this really make civil service all worthwhile.)