I made her cry.

Can't really remember the specifics of the user stories. Usually a case of overstretched and stressed out clinical staff just breaking when I'm explaining something they don't want to hear for some reason. I would imagine a "straw that broke the camels back" scenario. Considering that our government have been purposefully defunding and overstretching the NHS for the last 5 years it's not surprising. The clinical staff have my greatest sympathy.

Two colleagues come to mind. First was a young girl that I was training at the time, I called her a name in jest and she just left the room crying which was very out of character for her as she's usually good for a joke. Turns out she was just going through shit and I was the one to crack through her front that day. I apologised to her and she was fine. Friends with still and she's an all round cool person, doing successfully in her chosen career away from the hell that is first line support. Oh, I also almost broke her dad's hand on a door as well, but I don't think he cried (he worked there too and he's also still a friend :D ).

Second was an older lady prob about 45 - 50 that kind of got pushed around roles into the first line support desk where she wasn't suited to the role at all. The quantity and quality of her work was very poor to the point where I had to give her a face to face assessment of her performance (I was a Senior and the responsibility was delegated to me). Despite me trying to remain as inoffensively objective as possible, the nature of the very bad feedback just broke her down and she blubbed on me. Shame really as she was a very nice lady, just shouldn't have been working there.

I REALLY don't like sharing details of work online despite the fact that I don't work there any more and there's no personal info so I will be deleting this comment in 24 hours.

/r/talesfromtechsupport Thread Parent