Busy at work

This is our busiest time of the year at the call centre. Those who have moved in the past year and who are getting their pensions by direct deposit have often forgotten to change their addresses so they all call because their tax slips haven’t arrived. Of course it is always “our fault” as we “should have known” somehow, or they insist they did call to change their address but we didn’t do the promised change. Yadda yadda. I resist the urge to suggest they visit their doctor to get tested for possible dementia.

Then there are those who say they only got one slip. 9 out of 10 times the second slip is behind the first slip but they didn’t look closely. These are my favourite calls because I can feel them blush when they check their envelopes.

Knowing legislation, policies and procedures for pension processing is about 20% of my job. Most of the rest of the skill required is being able to explain it in many different levels of comprehension ability from university mathematicians to the mentally retarded and terminally bewildered, and putting up with the occasional ranting and self-righteousness without letting it get to me. I’m pretty good at what I do. It can be draining at this time of year trying to stay cheery so I usually crash or do something mindless when I am home in the evenings.

Expressing myself in writing is easy, but many of my clients have difficulty getting ideas out of their mouths coherently. Some can barely read. A couple calls per day start with “Yous guys sent me a paper. What am I supposed to do?” or even something less informative. From there it takes 20 questions to figure out if it’s a letter, an application, a receipt or even something from another department or level of government.

For others, vocabulary is a virus from outer space. A wife might say she’s her deceased husband’s executor, placing the emphasis on the first syllable instead of the second (erroneously implying that she murdered him), and several callers refer to Alzheimer’s as “All Timers”, like a four year old might.

Government jargon is another matter. When a client receives a large lump sum of back pay for a delayed benefit covering more than one year, the tax department can spread it back to previous years using a “notional” tax treatment. Last Friday a caller told me he was told he was illegible for an emotional tax treatment”. There is also a “child rearing provision” used in calculating a pension so that years spent raising young children will not adversely affect a client’s life average. One client referred to it as the “child rear-end position”. Calls like that keep the smile on my face.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?. - Oscar Wilde