in customer-facing jobs, where’s the line for tolerating abuse from the public?

A reader writes:

I work in healthcare and my colleagues and I are confused about what behavior crosses the line and can be classified as “abusive.” We are a small workplace and therefore don’t have high up HR/management to ask. The owner of the surgery also finds this a grey zone.

For example, I was supposed to be doing some treatment on a patient but our entire computer system was down for two days, so no access to notes, X-rays, etc. It was a disaster, but out of our hands.

We decided we would not be able to do treatments on anyone who needed anything more than a quick review. But we had no way of even knowing who was coming in to be able to cancel patients in advance. Most were really understanding of this frustrating situation.

The husband of one pleasant patient was not nice about it, pointing out work cancellation (which we felt awful about, but couldn’t do anything about). He was belligerent and kept repeating in an annoyed tone that he didn’t understand why we didn’t contact them or why we couldn’t treat his wife. Finally I gave him an appointment card to take to reception and apologized repeatedly. He tossed (flung?) the card at the receptionist and spoke to her in a really annoyed voice.

It was so hard to tell if this interaction crossed the line between “understandably frustrated” to “verbal abuse.” He didn’t raise his voice, he just sounded incredibly annoyed, but it affected all of us afterwards. I’ve noticed in general that patients and their families are becoming more abrupt and irritable with any inconvenience and becoming short-tempered with the staff, but it’s not shouting or physical abuse.

My reception team said that they were fine to “let this one go” and continue seeing the family in future. Whereas I’m starting to wonder that we are allowing too much low-level bad behavior directed at staff. We have signs in the waiting room but of course they’re ignored. I didn’t appreciate having someone behave that way towards my staff (who are mostly young women trying their hardest to accommodate people) but the worst thing I could say about his behavior is that he was “mean.”

This is tricky because there are some things that clearly cross a line — yelling, using abusive language, becoming physically aggressive — and others that are more of a grey area. It sounds like this situation came down to tone, and there’s a whole possible range of intensity for “incredibly annoyed” — and this is a situation where some annoyance is understandable (they took time off work and went through the hassle of getting to an appointment, only to find out they couldn’t be seen) — but only up to a point.

It’s reasonable to allow for some annoyance in fields where you are working with frustrated fellow humans in stressful situations, but when it’s unrelenting and things aren’t moving forward productively or if it crosses over into belligerence, then it’s reasonable to draw a line.

So an initial annoyed reaction? Understandable. Repeatedly ranting that he didn’t know why you didn’t contact him, after it had been explained? Less so. At that point, ideally someone would have asked to speak to him privately (so the reception team and any other patients in reception didn’t have to continue to listen to it) and then, in private, said something like, “I absolutely agree this is frustrating. Because our systems were down, we had no way to contact you. This is not the fault of our reception staff, so I can’t allow you to continue speaking to them that way. We have set a new appointment for (date) and will be happy to see your wife then.” If he continued ranting after that, ask if he’d like you to cancel the next appointment — and be willing to cancel it yourself if he didn’t regain some composure.

Sometimes just the escalation of “let’s speak privately” from someone who appears to be speaking with some authority will jar a person into being more reasonable, or the specter of cancelling the next appointment will. Other times it won’t.

I’d also say something like, “Let me walk out with you” so that he was escorted out and couldn’t lay into the receptionist again without you being right there to intervene.

Ultimately, the question of where to draw the line is up to management, and they should get (and take seriously) input from staff. Wherever you decide to draw it, it’s important to talk that through openly and empower your staff to set limits with people who aren’t being civil. They should know exactly what that could look like (down to having specific language they can use), and who is available to back them up, and that they will be backed up.

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