Twenty blah-blah years ago, a friend of mine phoned the Hotel I was working at. It was totally random, he had never called me before, in fact he called the Hotel because he didn’t have a number for me nor my then husband.
When he called, Reception answered the call and went through the Brand Standard greeting, my friend asked for me but was grappling to remember my married name and kept asking for me as Baker (I went back to Baker a few years after my divorce). On top of which he was slurring his words. The receptionist assumed he was drunk and put the phone down on him.
My friend in question had Multiple Sclerosis (MS) which impacted his speech. The receptionist had no knowledge that this was the case but this is a great example of why you should not assume intoxication.
I was reminded of this recently whilst doing a customer service eLearning course for customer service call agents and in the section about handling difficult conversations over the phone, I was thinking how else conversations could be difficult, other than an angry customer, which led me to the above scenario.
And suddenly, somehow, I developed a small section on communicating with people with disabilities (think Learning disabilities, dementia, MS, deaf, visually impaired as examples).
How many of us have fallen over and people have laughed and said, “Whoops drunk again.”
Or when you relayed the story, they ask, “Were you drunk?”
This morning, I got up and my vertigo decided to make me stumble to the right, on top of the stairs. I managed to catch myself with the wall before tumbling down the said stairs. It was 6am, I was not drunk (obviously).
