"But they said we get this from you" Rant about work
By rapunzelcat
@rapunzelcat (271)
United States
January 18, 2011 11:16am CST
Twice in the last week I've taken calls at work from other departments requesting a form we don't have or a service we don't carry out. Both times upon telling the caller this they reply with "But (department) said to call you (my department)!" Well, the first situation was just dumb, we don't carry a supply of forms used by other departments to give them refills when they run out! There is a printshop, some can be printed from the computer, or you can borrow one from another department that uses the same form. The next time, it was something that IT would do, there might be a person much higher up in my department who could get it done, but the person answering the phone over the weekend isn't the person who could make it happen, and not only that, what they wanted done wasn't an instant process, forms have to be submitted, etc, and they needed it right then. I guess my main peeve about this is that both callers had been told by the same department to call my department. I guess that other department must be the default department to call when you need something, and if they don't do it, they must think we're next in line! Love being the dumping ground instead of just being honest and saying "We don't do that, and I don't know who does." The culture where I work is that if you're asked for help, and you don't know, you find out. So we have people pretending to know in order to get someone off their back, which just causes more frustration. Another peeve about this situation is that if X department calls Y department and Y says that Z department is who you call, X acts like Y knows what they're talking about and Z is being either stupid or lazy for not helping them. (Just for the record, I was not called stupid or lazy either time, I just picked up that vibe while trying to explain that I couldn't help, either.)
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