A Queue-rious Claim

I work for a government office. The location I work at is small, and generally we get up to about an hour wait at our busiest times. It’s annoying, but better than other offices where you can wait three hours to be seen.

This girl and her boyfriend call up asking for an appointment for a walk-in service. When I told her we don’t do that (because then we might as well be appointment-only since everyone wants an appointment for a walk-in service), she tried to tell me how she was waiting for seven hours in our office and that she was told by other people she wouldn’t get seen without an appointment.

I asked her what office she was at, and she confirmed the address to my location.

I know she’s lying because our wait today hasn’t gone above forty minutes. I’m able to see our wait time and how many people are there in real time, so I can promise that she wasn’t in our office waiting. You have to sign in and take a number to be seen, so there’s no way she was being ignored without management being able to see it immediately.

Anyway, I told her that we only had four people waiting and it was currently only a twenty-minute wait. You could hear her “deer in headlights” stare as she stammered and asked how I could know that. I told her I work at the location she claims she was at, and she was not waiting that long.

She just quickly said “okay” and hung up.

People seriously think that they can just lie and get whatever they want. Girl, I can tell when you are telling the truth. Technology lets us see it. You think you’re going to call and force us to give you special treatment because you don’t want to wait in line like everyone else? Nah. Go do your walk-in issue online or wait in line as the rest of the world does.