Last night I received an email from a mate who I haven’t seen for a few months. Just a general ‘catch-up’ and ‘how are things’ kind of email.
He runs a small dept in a local authority. His receptionist, when she’s having a good day can be very helpful to one and all. When she’s having a ‘bad day’ (which seems to last for up to a week), she can be the most stroppy and obnoxious character alive.
My mate has now received 8 informal complaints from both the public and from other colleagues in the space of a week because of this person’s unhelpful and sometimes downright rude attitude on the phone. He spoke to his HR Dept yesterday on how to tackle this, and he’s been told in no uncertain terms to drop the matter.
The only reason he can think why, is because she’s Black. Like he says, on good days she’s brilliant, but on bad days, the problem is nothing to do with her race and everything to do with her professional approach to people. This is putting him in an impossible position as it makes him appear to those who have complained, that he’s ignoring them or colluding with the culprit.
Have we now, as a nation, completely lost our backbone to the point where we cannot assert problems with a person’s behaviour for fear of them playing the race card? Or is this just typical of local government?
Anyone else come across instances in their work where something similar has happened?
He runs a small dept in a local authority. His receptionist, when she’s having a good day can be very helpful to one and all. When she’s having a ‘bad day’ (which seems to last for up to a week), she can be the most stroppy and obnoxious character alive.
My mate has now received 8 informal complaints from both the public and from other colleagues in the space of a week because of this person’s unhelpful and sometimes downright rude attitude on the phone. He spoke to his HR Dept yesterday on how to tackle this, and he’s been told in no uncertain terms to drop the matter.
The only reason he can think why, is because she’s Black. Like he says, on good days she’s brilliant, but on bad days, the problem is nothing to do with her race and everything to do with her professional approach to people. This is putting him in an impossible position as it makes him appear to those who have complained, that he’s ignoring them or colluding with the culprit.
Have we now, as a nation, completely lost our backbone to the point where we cannot assert problems with a person’s behaviour for fear of them playing the race card? Or is this just typical of local government?
Anyone else come across instances in their work where something similar has happened?
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