Professional Development Reflection -- How To Deal With Difficult Users

NB: As this is my current workplace, I am choosing to anonymize this information. Given my learning journals, it should be easy to tell the place I am referring to.

My workplace sent me to a half-day presentation run by the Human Resources department on how to deal with difficult clients. I believe this was more of a rite of passage in the workplace, as we rarely have any users come to desk with queries that would be termed a ‘difficult client’. As usual for these special events, I was at least five minutes late with wrangling the proper public transport routes to get there.

The talk itself was illuminating on different strategies for dealing with problematic users. They used an acronym, PROUD, each letter standing for a different element of how you should approach the user. Identifying the Problem, Respect the person, Understanding, Distancing yourself emotionally from the situation if you feel the client’s frustrations are hurting you on an emotional level. As well, we worked in groups that were given specific situations, and told to brainstorm possible ways of dealing with the client. I met many people from different departments that day, and they all had stories to tell of times with difficult clients.

As an information professional, so close to the public, we always have the fear that someone may become angry or unruly, and my workplace isn’t really designed for those situations. A few weeks prior (and really what brought on us being enrolled) was a member of the public coming into the library in a visibly annoyed state, and asking my colleague for the phone. Hesitantly, my colleague gave the phone over, as while not something explicit, it is a service we offer to users if they don’t have a mobile phone. It’s common courtesy. The member of the public called his mother on the phone, and proceeded to have an angry, yelling conversation, leaving my colleague surprised. The climactic moment of this exchange had the user pelting the phone past my colleague’s ear, where it smashed upon the glass behind front desk. Situations like these are why we must be trained in dealing with difficult users.

I’ve taken to jokingly calling that moment the “Russell Crowe Incident” (he found this nickname amusing), but it was at the time quite distressing for my colleague. We have added measures for dealing with possible stresses related to these events, as a colleague will take over desk if one feels they are unable to continue after the stress of such an encounter.

Another thing that struck me was even with our security department being only around the corner, women in our workplace felt unsafe working the single shift days on the weekend. Given the prevalence of misogynistic attacks, whether they be verbal or physical, endemic to society today, this is completely understandable, but to have the fear even in a workplace as nice and accommodating as mine, where 99.9% of users are laid back and kind to staff, was something I didn’t see coming. I guess that speaks to the prevalence of the problem.