Pro-tip

[lydy]

If you are calling a large bureaucracy (say, a hospital) and having a lot of trouble reaching the person who can help you, and the person you are currently talking to asks you "What number did you call?" they are very likely trying to diagnose the problem. It is possible that they simply want to diss you for calling the wrong number, but not all that likely. Refusing to answer the question and being obstreperous about getting the runaround from everyone you talk to is likely to get you more runaround. In general, if people are trying to get rid of you, they won't bother asking you questions; they'll lecture you and hang up, or transfer you. If they actually try to engage with you, and ask you a series of questions about your previous experiences getting shunted from one unhelpful person to the other, they aren't making fun of you. They're trying to retrace your path so that they can figure out what you actually need. Being unable to distinguish between a sleep consultation and a sleep study, or a sleep clinic and a sleep lab will cause some confusion, and the person trying to help you will likely try to clarify the difference. This is not an attempt to tell you you're wrong, it's an attempt to figure out what the heck is going on.

tl;dr: Just work with me, ok? You were the one who called me.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

Ha.

I spent 45 minutes today on the other end of this sort of hassle. In my case, I was supposed to schedule a follow-up with a hand surgeon because my kid broke a finger, which was set yesterday in the ER. There was a specific recommended window for that followup, and of course the hand surgeon specialists are all scheduling a month out. (That's well outside the window.) I think there were two fundamental problems in my case:

1. Regions Hospital gave me the standard number for my network's appointment center, rather than the number for the specialty center appointments desk.
2. When I called that number, I got an appointment center novice.

After lots of people treating me impatiently for saying that if one week was the recommended time window for the followup, two full weeks was not okay with me, I finally got passed to someone who was like, "June 15th? okay, how does 1:30 p.m. work for you?" and DONE.

There were several points where I was absolutely certain that the main problem was that I had been passed to the wrong person, and yet I had absolutely no idea what magic phrase would get me passed to the correct person. It was maddening. If anyone had asked me what number I'd called, I would have read off the number, no problem. Instead, they kept asking me whether my daughter had ever seen a plastic surgeon in this network before because for reasons that utterly mystify me, hand surgeons of the sort she would be seeing for this followup are classified as plastic surgeons. (I did answer the question, while also wondering if the reason I was getting this runaround is that we had gotten mis-classified somewhere en route.)

So frustrating. I promise I didn't take it out on any random phone-answering people, though.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Many and many a year ago, when I worked at the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota, I was trying to schedule a procedure for myself. I no longer remember what it was. It was neither time-critical nor esoteric. It took me forty-five minutes and I don't remember how many people. More than three, less than ten conversations. And it was even more annoying because I _knew_ the system, and could tell whether the person on the other end of the line was being incompetent or struggling in vain against the vast forces of the horrible system within which they had to work. It was excruciating.

At the same time, refusing to answer questions is rarely a winning strategy. And having absolutely no clue what has happened to you, an inability to describe your actions previous to this call, and a flat refusal to believe that the person on the other end of the line is attempting to help you is rarely a winning strategy. A snarky, "Yes, of course you want to transfer me to X, but I've already talked to X and they sent me to you," is, in my book both completely within bounds and actually helpful. If you're caught in a loop, I would very much like to know. (I am actually really good at busting people out of those loops. But I need to know what happened.)

All of which is to say, I've seen this from several different sides, and I really do understand why my caller was sullen and defensive, but lords it added another whole level of problem to the problem.

[naomikritzer]

Clearly!

The thing I will also note is that if someone is asking me new and different questions, like "what number did you call," that's generally a good sign that I've found someone helpful and competent who will send me to the correct person on the next jump, or at least get me closer to my goal.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

And I'm so self-involved that I completely failed to ask after your kid. Is she ok? Which finger? And also, from personal experience, ouch!

[naomikritzer]

No worries, she's doing fine. Right little finger. Dodgeball accident.

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

My dad has been known to call google, yes google and demand to know his password or to be allowed to read his email. Some people are really, really incompetent.
Thank you for being willing and helpful. Someone loves that jerk.