Unpleasant Customers Can Find You At Home, Too

(It has gone 9:30 pm. My mum is in hospital and I am at home. I get a call from her asking me to speak to the lady in the next bed who I’ve never spoken to or seen at any point in the past. I work advising people of what social security benefits they can receive. She wants to know what she can get as she is now ill.)

Me: “Do you have a partner?”

Lady: “What’s that got to do with it? I am the one that needs money.”

Me: “What you can get changes depending on whether you have a partner, kids, etc., so I need to know.”

Lady: “Well, what can I get if I have a partner?”

Me: *explains*

Lady: “And if I don’t?”

Me: *explains*

Lady: “What if I have kids?”

Me: “How old are they?”

Lady: “That’s none of your business.”

Me: “Again, what you can get changes on how many and how old they are.”

(She makes me explain what she can get if she doesn’t have kids, has older kids in their teens, has young babies, etc., despite refusing to indicate what info she needs and whether it’s helpful.)

Lady: “What should work give me?”

Me: “Are they paying you statutory sick pay?”

Lady: “If they were?”

(I explained what happens if they are but she made me go on to explain what would happen if they weren’t or were going to or have no intention of paying her. Twenty minutes of being nothing but polite and helpful later, despite her talking to me like something on the bottom of her shoe and being fantastically unhelpful, pedantic, and rude, she slammed down the phone without a word of thanks or acknowledging the inconvenience she had put me through, calling me at home late at night. I went to visit my mum the following day and the woman just glared at me when my mum introduced us! The sad thing is that she wasn’t the most unpleasant person I’d spoken to that day.)