What’s my employers’ duty of care? Should I expect more?

think you need to learn your rights

You don’t know your rights then

It is not ok to be berated at work or spoken to in an aggressive manner. What happens next depends on internal policies and practice.

You could get down in writing what happened from your point of view and ask your manager to review the recording. From my understanding of the conversation , there may be different elements that need handled separately. If there is a complaint from the client on the service - untangle that from the mode of delivery and agree with your colleagues/manager how to address that. Part of that will be you deciding what you are comfortable addressing yourself with the client and what you want handled by others.

For the way in which he spoke to you - that needs a conversation from someone senior on your side to set expectations for how staff are spoken to. He needs pulled up on it.

All that said, try to be "culturally literate" with what happened. As @Biffatcrafts said - swearing in general in Spanish just doesn't hold the same level of severity as in English and in my experience there aren't the same rules in terms of professional/unprofessional language. For example, coño is in no way similar to cunt or even fuck. So you may need to let some of the shock at his vocabulary go and focus on the way he spoke to you rather than the exact words he used.

Take care. It is awful being spoken to in an aggressive manner.

I think your manager needs to make it clear to you when it is acceptable for you to end the call. If they told you that you just have to take it, you would have a point but it doesn't sound like that's what's happened.

If somebody was saying to me that I'm a failure and making personal comments about me - I'd tell them that the convo isn't productive and that they could call back another time.

I wouldn't expect my manager to do anything except reassure me that I acted appropriately. I certainly wouldn't expect them to have a talk to the customer about their behaviour. You need to assert your boundaries and figure out a way of ending calls if someone is abusive.

I work in payroll - 'stay away from dark alleys' and 'I'll cut your f**ing throat' where my personal favourites

Absolutely. However the employer's duty of care obligations might depend on whether the employee had been directly abused by being personally name called and it seems that the OP wasn't.

You should be allowed to terminate a call if you are not being spoken to respectfully

I'd expect your manager to talk to you about what you'd like to happen next. I.e. Do you feel safe enough to continue to work with that person.

In my line of work we regularly experience people being quite threatening towards us and I have been scared at times at home visits. Usually I can just debrief afterwards, brush it off, and plan the next visit and approach and maybe take someone with me. But when I was pregnant I visited a home and was threatened with a knife and the threats were around taking my baby. I freaked out and when my manager spoke to me about it she just didn't contain me at all and whilse she sympathised her attitude was a bit like things like this happen and said next time maybe I could ask someone to go with me.

I went on sick leave and then went on maternity leave at 29 weeks because I didn't feel safe physically or emotionally.

My point is you need to decide your boundaries and expectations of managers and next steps. But if you are unwilling to risk exposing yourself to any experience of verbal abuse from members of the public, a public facing role is not for you!

Me too. I was threatened with a gun when on my own at work one Saturday afternoon. I wanted my boss to call the police and he flatly refused.

I used to get sworn at on the regular but we had permission to swear right back so it was an even playing field!

Years ago I've been that colleague who was "assigned that work" and it's an absolutely appalling situation to be in, knowing you've been shoved into the firing line.

I worked in the public sector dealing with high profile public figures. There was three of us in the office and one day one of the figures completely lost it at my colleague; shouting so loudly you could see the spit flying, language, some racist remarks. It was terrifying.

The response from senior management was he should apologise, and they told him he wouldn't have to deal with my colleague again, and I was given the pleasure. I was 23. Looking back now I should have have toldSenior managers if they wanted someone else to deal with him they should do it themselves. It's not acceptable to just pass the problem onto another colleague.

This happened to me OP and my company formally informed the customer that further behavior would result in termination of the contract and we didn't care how much he spent with us, staff are not there to be abused. We did have a policy on it though. I'm surprised that your company doesn't have one. Most companies that deal with external customers do.

This. There are a lot of doormat/get used to it/it's normal comments on the thread but this is how it should be handled. The employer does have a duty of care.

I have had similar conversations with customers in my job. When I told my manager he rang them up and told them in no uncertain terms that it was not acceptable to speak to any member of his team in that way.

Like your client, my customers often have good reason to be annoyed, frustrated or upset with our organisation but 99% of them are good enough to appreciate that it isn’t my fault and are polite. But there is the odd one who takes it out on us, or in once case I had this year when the booking team contacted one of my customers about a change in the appointment and he absolutely let rip with her so her boss contacted me and asked me to have a word with the customer, which I did. They were very apologetic and promised not to take it out on her again and we haven’t had any problems since.

Op, I think a lot of the responses on this thread are from people working in call centres/ supermarkets etc where they deal with abuse from the general public

It sounds like you’re in a professional, white collar role - and I’d agree with you that it is not acceptable at all. I’ve worked in a ‘fiery’ industry for 20yrs and never had this happen to me personally.

If it did happen generally, either the client would be talked to - politely of course - or a very ‘robust’ person who didn’t care about being shouted at would be put on the account (they do exist!). You shouldn’t have to put up with this if it affects you

Hi OP, I'm so sorry that you've had to deal with such an awful person, and it does sounds as if something needs to be done about the manner and tone he used with you. I'm not at all expert in HR and policy, so will leave other well informed posters to advise you on that.

However, I am a fluent spanish speaker and have lived in Spain for over 20 years in total, so I can offer some insight into his use of the word "coño" (I am assuming this is the c-word he used).

Culturally in Spain the use of this word is very common in street talk. I remember the first time I ever heard it used (actually used by a very nice old lady who lived near me) and I was shocked to hear her use it because I was hearing the literal meaning, which is, as you've said, referring to female genitalia. However I then learned to appreciate that it is used to express a variety of things ranging from disgust to suprise, and even in some cases, appreciation or pleasure.

Spanish use that word in the same way we might say damn, eg damn that's bad but we can also say damn that's good. It can also be used as we would use the words shit or hell. So I doubt he was actually calling you personally a 'c**t', but was using it to say something (a process or an overall procedure) was shit, or was fucked up. However I caveat that by acknowledging that only you heard the words he said and only you will know for sure if he was using it as a direct personal insult, or in the way I just outlined.

But I would say while it is often used, it is considered vulgar and is generally not acceptable to be used in a business or professional setting. So whichever way it was used, I do think attention needs to be drawn to his manner and conduct as it sounds deeply unprofessional.

So sorry you had to experience it.

Edited for typos and spelling

Does she fuck sound very precious! She expects clients to have some minimal professional standards and not call her a cunt on a teams call.

There are much more professional ways for this client to have made his displeasure known. Your standards of professionalism must be very low.

I would see that as a personal attack then really, your employer could do more by speaking to this client and in my view they should have a duty of care and act on it. Do you have a process in your workplace where you can terminate the call if the abuse continues? Maybe speak to acas informally to find out what your rights are and what the next steps (if any) you can take

@Sillyquestion123 At this point, I would have expected your line manager or whoever you report to in your C-Suite to have picked up the phone to this person and told them that this language and attitude is inappropriate and that they expect at the very least an apology to be sent to you. I would also expect them to offer a different point of contact.

I have worked at Director level for the last 30 years, and whilst on occasion the people I have worked with have got sweary through frustration, I have never been on the receiving end from another entity. I have, however, seen my Director bang the table when he discovered members of his team had been harangued at a mtg and say, "No one treats my staff like this," and then take action.

He called you a cxxx ?

Complain, have it all in writing. Talk to acas, a union if you are in one. People have been fired for less than that!

I’m a nhs lone worker. Recently got injured by a patient. I was with a colleague at the time of the incident. Police aand managers involved. I was traumatised, colleague wasn’t. Everyone is different. So you need to put accross to your manager what you need. That way you will get support and help. So for me, I took some time off as sick leave, had counselling, did some training courses through work, had a full debrief, and made sure I do my own full risk assessments. Other colleague needed none of this. Speak to your manager! They are not mind readers and usually will want the best outcome for you

I guess hopefully you can just mainly only speak to his team rather than him. But he needs to apologise for his outburst. That's never acceptable. Your boss needs to speak to him to instigate this if it hasn't already happened.

Unfortunately in my job we do get quite a few abusive and/or aggressive calls, up to and including threats of violence e.g. "I'm going to wait outside your office & gut you with a knife, and do the same to everyone who works there" and "you won't ever know I'm the passenger in that car next to you until it's too late". We've had people visiting the offices and assaulting the security staff to steal their building pass & had to put the entire building on lockdown at least twice with nobody allowed to leave on their own.

Those cases were reported to the police, but other than that there isn't much we can do except suck it up & take a break after bad calls. We can't refuse to talk to these people as it's part of the government mandated duties (local authority) and they all change their numbers so frequently we couldn't block theirs to avoid them.

That said, I have put the phone down (after a warning) a few times when the language got too bad; had a complaint about me once when I did that!

I'm a bit of a tough old bird & could probably out swear most of them if I wanted (I wouldn't of course) so I can cope no problem, but I can completely understand when it's a high level client and not the kind of thing you're used to. I went into shock myself when I notoriously "blunt" senior manager in my organisation called me up at the end of one day & berated me very aggressively for something (that I didn't know was wrong) and despite my general toughness that did leave me in tears.

To those posters saying suck it up or similar you never know how you will react to something you really don't expect, especially when it's very aggressive, until you've been there.