The Continuing Adventures Of Your Own Personal Jesus

How to deal with difficult/challenging customers/clients ( Just thought I'd share with you an essay that I've been working on for the past week or so. I started doing it after a few people asked me about the difficult customers we face and how we deal with them. It's also in response to the utterly useless training that we've gotten in the past and I fully expect that said training is across the board. This is what we face, and hopefully you'll find solutions within this on how to deal with some of the more challenging people you'll face on a daily basis. I'll be sure to do follow-ups, so feel free to ask questions or seek clarification. It rambles a bit, but hey, let's face it, it'd sound better in a training enviroment with hand-outs and role plays .) There’s no easy way to say this, so let’s be upfront from the beginning: this will take time. Dealing with difficult and challenging customers/clients is a day to day proposition and one of the mo...

Just a quick one for now. This guy reminded me of a cross between Bobcat Goldthwait and the character in South Park who drinks all the coffee. He came into the office all twitches and nervous tics and stood there waiting. Well, as much as a person can stand in one place bouncing up and down on each foot. When he finally got to me he asked about bond assistance. No problems there. I started to explain. No good. "Slow down!! Slow down!!" You're going too fast." I slowed down and spoke each and every word clearly. Nope, not good enough. He cocked his head and then spoke again. "Arrgghhhh!! I'm not a f*cking idiot man!! Go faster! I got places to go!!" I went faster. "Slow down!! You're going too fast again!!" I couldn't win. I just gave up and spoke at my normal pace. I might have practiced my Russian for what it was worth. He needed a place to stay. After everything I explained, "You have to find a place by your...

I knew she'd be back in, eventually. I'd come across here previously in another office. We'd housed her for the briefest of times, months really. At no stage had she been a model tenant, quite the opposite really. In those few short months she'd not paid rent once and, even better, when she moved she amassed a huge debt because she'd trashed the place. I've seen the photos and they're amazing really. Back doors where you don't expect to find back doors, an inside door smeared with so much excreta that you'd be forgiven for thinking that it'd been repainted, standard car bodies in the yards, holes in the walls, bathroom trashed and wildlife living in the stove. She'd only left that day you can only imagine what kind of a parent allows a young child to live in such filth, filth to the point where there was a neat little pile of excreta in the corner of the child's room. "Don't use the toilet," she must have said, ...

Two ministers, same day, same radio station - you probably heard it at the time, or not. Make of this what you will. Question : Mal Brough joins us now. Minister, the question of housing, you want to know where all the money has gone, how much money does the Federal Government put into public housing and why have you got concerns about it? Answer : Well, I do. There’s been another report out this week which is called The National Shelter and it’s pointing to the fact that we do need more public housing and low cost housing options and there’s no disagreement from me about that. But having been in this portfolio for over 12 months, been to a couple of Housing Ministers’ meetings, I started to scratch the surface and discovered that over the last 10 years the Commonwealth has provided to the state governments just under $10,000,000,000 and the total public housing stock in that time around Australia has in fact reduced by 13 in total but in South Australia the situation is much more parl...

There is truth in this posting, you just have to find it. You see wading through this to discover the truth should give you an indication of what I have to do, daily, in order to find out information to pass onto people. Not easy is it? Oh, how can you answer that without having read it yet? If you did answer without reading then you're ready for membership in the Hordes Of Local Idiots...do you believe, don't you trust me? " OH LORD!! QUICK!! HIDE THE CAT MARTHA, THE WORLD IS ENDING!!! " That's the catch cry of a few manic idiots running about the place spreading misinformation and actively inviting people to wander into our offices and demand, not ask, or speak to, but DEMAND to know the truth. The world, you see, is ending. "I see a red door and I want it painted black, no colours anymore, I want them to turn black...I see a line of cars and they're all painted black..." they scream, "THE WORLD!!! IT'S ENDING!!! THEY'RE SELLING OU...

Is the catch cry around the offices of late. This is a great scheme, designed to get more and more people into housing who might otherwise never get the chance. Nothing wrong with that. Here's how it works. Every tenant gets a letter explaining that the Government want to offer them what's called Affordable Housing, in particular, their own public houses. All the relevant companies are on board, from mobs that do Government start up loans through to some very reputable real estate agents. If you're an investor then here's your chance. If you want to buy your first home and thought you'd never be able to afford it then you're wrong. No homes currently tenanted are being offered though, the letter explains that, but that doesn't stop people from coming into the offices screaming at us about how we're bastards for selling their houses, or looking worried that they're about to be kicked out after decades of solid tenancy. It ain't going to ha...

The past few weeks have been damn hard and it's becoming a serious effort to deal with the new rules and the resulting shift in the goalposts. It's very, very complicated, but here's one of the issues that now face us - as if we needed anymore grief. I swear at times that people who sit making these new policies have no regard at all for the front line people. The policy makers haven't done our job for years (if at all) and as such they've forgotten how difficult it can be. They remember another, easier and simpler time than it is now, a time without screaming, knives, death threats, general hate and confusion as what you were told two weeks ago might not apply this week. Yesterday I was told that more people hate us now than the dole office. That's low because they're right bastards. So the goalposts. Answer me this - how do you define a homeless person? A person without a fixed abode perhaps? A squatter? Someone who sleeps in their car? On the st...

At times I do wonder about budget cuts and what they spell for society as a whole, especially in the field of mental health. It seems that each and every major hospital and facility for mental health care has been either closed outright or funding has been cut to the point where services just can't be offered. We see the results each and every day as people come into the offices wanting housing. Frankly they often can't find anything suitable because they're unable to look after themselves in the general community. Often they're nice people who just need someone around to prompt them to take their medication - when those people aren't there the results can, at times, be fatal. Makes me weep. Seriously. As we're the front line and an essential service we see and deal with them daily. Those dealings are not always the nicest and there are triggers that you begin to see more clearly. There's people that'll say they used to be housed in a certain ward...

I love watching the behavious of people in the lines that we get as they vary so much depending on the day and what the person actually wants. I've got it down to such a fine art that I can tell you exactly how the person is going to act before they even get near the counter.