Unfiltered Story #362817
(Part of my job requires setting appointments for the lawyer, or changing them if needed. We have one client who set a morning appointment to see the lawyer, and called back the next day to say she needs an afternoon appointment.)
Me: “Okay, Ms. [Client], I have changed your appointment from 11:00 on [date] to 3:00, same day. We already sent out a reminder for your appointment via letter, and we’ll send another with the updated time. So, please ignore the first one you get, the second one will be correct.”
Client: “What if I don’t get that letter?”
Me: “I’ll give you a reminder call the day before, so there’s no worries about it.”
(The day before, I’m out for a doctor appointment, so assistant to the lawyer actually makes the call and leaves a voice message for the client. Unbeknownst to me, she has changed the appointment to the original time and deleted the modified appointment, placing someone else in that time slot. The client calls back in tears the next morning.)
Client: “I thought you were going to change my appointment to 3:00. I can’t make it at 11:00, I’m coming back from [city two hours away].”
Me: “I did change it to 3:00. Wait, somehow your appointment was changed back. One moment, let me see if I can rectify this mistake.” (I put her on hold to buzz the lawyer’s assistant, and explain the situation.)
Asst: “If she needed it changed, she should have called us before and changed it when she knew!”
Me: “She DID call. I changed it for her! I updated the calendar and made sure to update the notes, saying she wouldn’t be in town. I don’t know what happened, but it changed back.”
Asst: “Oh, that was me.”
Me: “Um. Why?”
Asst: “I thought it was a mistake, so I went back and fixed it. No one told me anything about the change in the calendar, anyway.”
Me: “It was in the calendar’s notes. Why didn’t you look there and read?”
Asst: “You should have just told me about the change.”
Me: “The whole point of the notes is so I don’t have to let you know about every change made. The notes lets everyone know if they go back and read the connotation as to why the appointment was changed. I need to move the 3:00 to another day now.”
Asst: “No, [client] can just come another day.”
Me: “Really? Even though you moved her pointlessly to the wrong time? You’re going to make her suffer for her mistake?”
Asst: “It’s not my fault you didn’t tell me about the appointment change.”
(I told the client I would contact her later, but not to worry about her 11:00 appointment. I think called the lawyer to explain the situation. He agreed to see her at 3:00, and told me to call and ask the other client if they’d come in at 11:00. Luckily, they were fine with the change.)
