to feel exhausted on behalf of all the angry people?

[givemushypeasachance]

I work in the public sector in a regulatory body, but in the "back office" as the chancellor likes to describe us when deciding how much blood to squeeze from our budgets. A lot of complaints come across my desk for us to investigate as regulator, and sometimes there are people out there doing naughty things, but that can't possibly explain all the anger and bitterness that boils within the letters and emails that I see.

I've seen complaints from the same person that have gone on for years and years, re-hashing the same issues that just seem so minor from where I'm sitting, or that we've investigated time and time again and they always turn out to be unfounded. I know that it can be the little niggly things that build up over time, but without getting into specifics it's things like "so-and-so swore at me on the street/on Facebook", or "people keep parking in our cul de sac because of them", or someone quite legitimately wanting to set up a business next door, fully complying with all planning regulations and every other law going, but Mrs/Mr X doesn't like the idea. Fine you might not like the business, and maybe visitors to your road do make parking more difficult, and yes if they did swear at you that's not very nice (though the other party always claims they didn't), but really do these people expect an independent regulator to come along and take sides without any actual evidence?

More often than not "serial complainants" drag in the local authority, planning departments, the police, social services and every other agency they can think of as well to try to stop their neighbour/ex-partner/ex-friend from getting on with their life and their work, and it just makes me wonder how much public funding gets wasted and how many people are stressed and essentially harassed by the public sector on the behalf of their "frenemies". Plus it must just be completely knackering being that angry and bitter towards another human being. I know it's certainly knackering just reading all the ten page long complaint letters, complete with bolding, underlining and grauitious thesaurus usage.

I work frontline for the public sector and by jove, I feel your pain!

But just look at MN how wound up and angry people get about the most trivial things.

PeterSpanswick - I feel sorry for you out on the front. Though despite our "back office-ness" my team still has to bloody talk, email and write to the angry people and they'll notice how quiet we go when they cut half of us!

To all the angry complaining people who don't have an actual justifiable issue that is really, genuinely important (for my organisation, let's go with unless a vulnerable group of society is at actual risk of harm): how much of your precious, fleeting life to you want to devote to this issue? And how much of several other people's [ie me, my colleagues] lives do you want to devote to it too? Please think about that when you decide whether to click send on your ten page long complaint email. Feel free to downgrade your concerns to "just thought you might like to know in case this influences any decisions you might make re Mrs X", rather than "I want her stopped, now, right now, stop her and punish her for the pain and suffering she has rained down on the heads of me and my forebears"...

We were accused of "colluding" with someone's illegal activities earlier today, and were "threatened" with the guy going to his MP. Someone else for him to suck time and energy from, yay... I honestly couldn't summon the enthusiasm to collude with any fun illegal activities, let alone the boring imagined slight this all stemmed from. I wish I could just sent people a compliments slip with "take a chill pill" scrawled on it.

I'm 'client-facing' but not frontline, iyswim. I yearn for one of those big old-fashioned rubber stamps you can get with FUCK OFF on it. It would do for about 85% of my correspondence.

I agree with you. In fact, this seems to be more and more prevalent in every area of life. One only has to have a cursory glance at fb or even mnet and it is clear that there are a lot of negative, and unhappy people about.

I avoid several of the parents at the school gate because they are unable to even exchange a cursory pleasant greeting. An attempt to say good morning to some of them results in a catalogue of complaints/minor woes. It's not good for the children to hear this low level whinging and whining constantly. One in particular is always ringing the school to complain about x y or z. She is about to start a petition as ther is a rumour Mrs x will be the next teacher and whingy mum doesn't like Mrs x.

It makes me want to ring the head and say pleasant things to try and balance out her negativity.