This has been an extremely trying day. I had back to back screamers, who were superbly rude. I will give the parent more slack but the professional had no business whatsoever yelling at me. I'm not yelling at anyone, no matter how much I want to. My supervisors were chuckling, because they heard my voice go up and shift tone just a little bit. They did compliment me and say that I remained quite professional in how I handled it though. I felt bad with the first one because I did feel my voice go sharp. But I was superbly calm and cool on the second one.
My last call this evening lasted for an hour and six minutes, which was about fourty six minutes too long. The caller felt the need to start the story in high school, and we were dealing with an elderly woman. she would not be redirected, would not answer questions for detail, and would not let me interrupt her. Because it was an elderly woman, I didn't want to raise my voice with her or be as gently rude as I might have been with another caller. Granted, she did have concerns. But she could not tell a story without pointless digressions and repetitions to save her life. It was intensely frustrating. At least it is over. It was doubly hard because she kept going on about the "gay" and the "Saudis" in such a way that I wanted to snap that her moral and patriotic judgements were not going to influence how I handled the case. Argh.
Truly, I would much rather deal with the gut wrenching sadness and the counseling that goes into other calls. I can handle crying much better than yelling. I'd rather spend thirty minutes trying to calm someone down from tears than from swearing at me.
One call today was horrifying. It involved a young boy with facial injuries and significant bruising. His father beat him with a belt, and used the buckle on the kid's face. The truly awful part is that the father tells the child that he (the father) is the Devil and that's why he hits the boy. The kid seems to believe it, and judging from accounts of the father's behavior I'm inclined to agree. This guy is a serious danger. I hope they take this kid far, far away.
I feel like Jamie Foxx's character in Jarhead, Sgt. Sykes. There are a lot of other things I could be doing, things that would involve less physical and emotional pain, things that would be easier. But in the end of it, I love this job. Hurrah.
