Diff'rent strokes

I had my life threatened today. Not personally, a client phoned the call centre to say he was going to kill me. When I spoke to him he was calm and rational and we sorted out the problem. When he spoke to Michelle at the call centre he was calm and rational too. That was what scared her the most. That was what made her decide not to tell him that staff were not employed to listen to death threats and hang up. That was why she put the call through to me, after making me thoroughly aware of how calmly and rationally he had threatened to kill me. She believed that if she did hang up, if she didn't put the call through, he would go to the office and kill me.

When I spoke to him he explained he had been underpaid and could not afford to live on the payment he received. I checked his claim and we discovered that he had been advised to put down his total annual income ($14000) instead of his current fortnightly income (nil). I reassessed his claim using the correct income and issued the missing payment. He asked if he could get an urgent payment over the counter instead of waiting two days for it to arrive in his account. I explained that although he had been misinformed, the claim had been processed correctly so he would not meet the criteria for an urgent payment. And that was that. No debate about whose fault it was, no complaint about being misinformed, and no death threat.

It has stopped raining.  ¶ 21:35