Have any of you jobs where you are regularly abused verbally?

[Cantstandpowerpoints]

My daughters are both teachers in their 20s. One newly qualified, one just started her 2nd year.

The newly qualified teacher was verbally abused on her second day (!) by a parent, it was nothing she’d done, the parent was angry about something school related. Swearing, screaming etc.

She said although she felt like crying she took herself off afterwards on her own and had a word with herself along the lines of toughening up if she wants to make it in teaching. School staff very supportive of her, she’s absolutely fine.

Second daughter verbally abused yesterday by an angry parent. Again nothing personal, my daughter was on duty at the start of school and parent swearing and screaming at her about parking issues. Again, angry at the school rather than my daughter. Again she was upset, but didn’t show it and is over it.

I was really sad for both of them as we’re not a ‘shouty’ family and life is usually calm so it’s upsetting to think your kids are being sworn and shouted at at work.

It got me thinking. Is your job one where this happens on a regular basis? I’m thinking obvious ones like traffic wardens, but maybe you’re abused regularly in a profession we would never expect? How do you cope? Do you get used to it, zone out, or has it got too much for you in the end?

It does seem that people are becoming more and more angry in general and are not thinking about the human being they’re abusing.

Working in community pharmacy was quite an eye opener for being verbally abused and having people lash out.

I work in a school in reception and yes we do get it.

I just kinda have to tell myself it's not personal.

We have a guy at work who used to work at the passport office but left because of the abuse. He said they are told they cannot hang up on someone who is threatening or swearing until they have warned them 4 times. He has had very well known household names swearing at him because they need to talk to them directly and not their PAs for security reasons. He had one dad taking his family to disney finding out his young kids passports were a year out of date at heathrow check in, swearing at him asking what he was going to do about it, putting the sobbing kids on the phone for him to explain why he was ruining their holiday then threatening his life after he said to the kids sorry your dad never checked the passports.

Yea, bar staff.
I've been punched, shoved, had things thrown at me and verbally abused countless times. Never mind the low level sexual comments (that have their own special stink eye response). The absolute worst though was when refusing to serve someone he called me a fucking Tory 😭

Daughter has said that if she continues with pharmacy she would prefer to be in a hospital setting rather than a community pharmacy.

I keep reminding her that it isn't personal and all the angry people are stressed and vulnerable. Interestingly, it is never the blue script patients (methodone users) who cause the most trouble.

@DivingForLove

I agree it is worse. My own child’s year 4 whatsapp group already abused the poor teacher before she even started for daring to have lip fillers. Why they think they’re entitled to do so just because she is their child’s class teacher is beyond me. The abuse is worse to teachers from all angles now 💯 percent.

Dentist and when NHS regular swearing , threats , lots of "I'll be waiting for you when you get out of work" and an incident when I was locked in a room with a patient trying to knock me out. That was because his dentist had been rushed to hospital so the patients routine check up had been cancelled.

The receptionists had it worse, people would be ok to me in the surgery but vile on the phone/desk to them . Routine to shout/swear to get what they wanted.

It all went down massively when we mostly converted to private.

I honestly think this is one way where we're going very wrong as a society.

This kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable and employers should be on the side of their employees when it happens.

If people stopped being able to get heard / get what they want after shouting, screaming and swearing they'd eventually learn, like dogs, that they have to be civil.

The whole 'the customer is always right' thing needs to stop in these situations.

DH is abused verbally and physically almost every shift. Works with young people in care..for a shit wage I might add. Lost count of the number of hospital visits.

Another teacher happens daily, also get spat at,bitten scratched, kicked etc fairly regularly, don't wear an jewellery as people have had ears ripped using ear rings etc.
I'm SEND though

My friend works at a primary school. She's not a teacher anymore, but more in a support role.

A parent called her a cunt recently.

My job can sometimes be a bit like this. I work in customer service for an IT company and our customers can be horrid.

The difference is my manager is brilliant and won't tolerate any kind of verbal abuse and will happily back me up when dealing with these people. it's mainly over the phone, so easy to warn someone and then end the call.

I don't think people are getting ruder, I've been doing this type of role for nearly 20yrs, we're just less inclined to put up with this shit now. I also think younger people aren't equipped with skills to be assertive back without being rude, or to be able to tell someone they are being rude and to pack it in.

I agree with this in terms of the kids and when you're working with people who are clearly in a vulnerable situation like mental health as they aren't in their right mind, people who've just been bereaved, addiction clinics, etc as they aren't in their right mind.

I don't agree that anyone should need to do this outside of those kind of settings.

We all have our own issues and problems - I have significant childhood trauma for example. But as adults we need to start recognising that we have responsibilities as part of a wider society and that includes not taking your own shit out on other people.

Yes, I’m a headteacher. I regularly receive nasty and abusive emails from parents too.

Interestingly I worked for a long time with homeless communities, substance misuse services, etc. - all areas where you'd expect to receive a lot of abuse.

And while those years were full of bonkers situations, I was hardly ever verbally abused. People were frustrated and struggling and powerless and angry a lot of the time, but they very rarely aimed any of it directly at me.

My short stint working as a receptionist in an upmarket hotel, however... 🤔

@wheresmymojo

Completely agree. I worked clinically in mental health before embarking on a health and social care PGCE. Trauma absolutely isn’t an excuse for abusive behaviour and it makes a mockery of “trauma informed care”. Being aware and curious of why people engage in abusive behaviours is a good thing but it’s not an excuse to conduct yourself in certain ways.

Too often in educational environments it is an excuse. It’s no fault of teachers, they lack education themselves on what being trauma informed truly means. It’s just a bit of a buzz word in ed.

I know plenty of people with really horrific backgrounds. They are kind and placid and often just worn down. They don’t treat people like shit.

@natura

This actually proves my point entirely. I’ve worked forensically too in mental Heath and I was STILL never abused as much as I am now in an inner city secondary. And some of those peoples traumatic backgrounds made me wince.

Yes.

I'm really genuinely happy to see a lot of the way we're moving as a society in terms of trauma informed care and such but...

We need to be clear that society is a balance between RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES

At the moment we're doing lots of good work on the former and absolutely nothing on the latter.

As a result we're ending up with a society that's becoming more and more entitled and full of people that think it's okay to lash out at everyone around them.

TBF you'd probably find as much horrific trauma in the background of the average group of people as you do in a MH setting.

You just don't know about their trauma.

It still isn't an excuse for shitty behaviour though.

I used to work in the city and shouting angrily by both other staff and clients was common. They do need to “toughen up” in that they need to find a way not to be upset by it. Once it happens a few times they will get used to it hopefully.

Actually a bit of exaggeration in my last post as there would be a higher proportion of trauma in criminals and MH patients.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that any group of people will likely have a significant proportion of people with trauma and some of those will have trauma that could be as awful as anything you've heard in a forensic setting.

My mum worked in a bank. She had abuse everyday from people who wanted to draw out money from accounts with no card, book or ID, from people who wanted to pay in large amounts of cash and not answer the money laundering questions, from people who only wanted to speak to a man etc...

I really don't know how she just didn't tell them to fuck off.

One of my DC works in a fast food outlet. She comes home from almost every shift telling me she's been verbally abused by a customer. Some people get furious that their food doesn't magically appear the second they order it and think it's perfectly OK to shout at the young kids who are doing their job, to a great standard, just because they need to wait 2 minutes for their Whopper meal. I can well imagine these people are hideous to deal with in all walks of life and are the ones who think it's perfectly ok to abuse nurses, teachers or anyone who doesn't give them exactly what they want, when they want it.

Yes, I work in a school, the way some parents and students speak to staff is appalling. I'm thick skinned thankfully, so most of it just goes over my head.

I’m a housing officer and have been for the last nearly 20 years. The way people are speaking to me and my colleagues has deteriorated rapidly in the last few years. It’s now a daily occurrence, and seems to be that respect for authority has almost gone completely.

Im usually pretty good at sorting it out, and working out why someone is angry but it really does have an emotional impact when it’s day in and day out. Several of my teammates have left in the last year, and all say that the way customers talk to us is a factor.