From time to time, professionals are expected to take time off and regroup / retain and reinvent the strategy to engage their customer in a better / friendlier way. It is part of growth for a professional in a sales job or a customer care job or several such professions where there is daily interaction with humans. One evening, my girlfriend who is a doctor at the reputed local hospital was asked to attend a seminar for a week on how to be friendly towards her patients. I could sense she was cribbing about the waste of time this seminar was going to be. A week later, she had this new found appreciation for what psychologists do and how helpful they are to professionals caught in the grind of daily routine. Turns out the week long seminar helped my girl cope with her job in a better way and with a positive outlook. It also helped me as she would be in a good mood on her return and our regular arguments had become rare.
If you think about it, having a human interaction as part of your job can be both invigorating as well as frustrating. Invigorating becasue you get an active feedback of a job well done and it motivates you to do better and work harder plus there is a satisfaction of making a difference to society. Frustrating because human beings do not always think logically and often act emotionally and when it comes to their health they are a victim of their habits. Doctors often find it frustrating that the solution of problem is right there and yet the patients choose to do the opposite. This will be true of other professions too, let us assume a tech support guy is trying to help an middle aged man fix his computer and the guy is being unnecessarily hassled by the owner of the computer asking him unnecessary questions and often implying the tech support is is a waste of time even though he needs their help. People working in tech support / customer care are often an unappreciated lot and hence always need to be trained to not allow such interactions to escalate into war of words because customers can be mean often times.
The police department takes the cherry and the cake when it comes to underappreciated jobs. Plenty times they do a good and stop impending crimes but they cannot brag about it as it is “their job”, but should anything go wrong, the police department bears the brunt of it and rightly so. In essence it’s the thankless job of a sentry. Nobody remembers 1000 good judgment calls but everyone remembers the one bad call. Police department also has an additional burden of being kicked around by the politicians for not being there at their beck and call. There is nobody who has it worse than a police officer. One can only imagine the daily stress these men in uniform go through. The army clearly has its target defined as enemy but often, police have to act against one citizen to protect the rights of another citizen and there are obvious mistakes made and personal equations and prejudices that come in play. I am not justifying the incident at Ferguson or many such incidents that happen far too often, I am merely trying to suggest solutions.
I am sure police are trained fairly well at using arms and dealing with hostile situations. However, am not sure enough is being done to have regular sanitization trainings for the police to deal with women / minorities (religious / racial) and to actively fight the unconscious bias in their minds. The problem is that police officers are so exposed to crime and criminals that they forget that a large portion of their job is dealing with citizen and helping the regular Joe feel safe and secure. It’s always in the last category that the police are found wanting. They are loud / brash and often ill-mannered while interacting with citizen and an extreme manifestation of this are the tragic incidents where young boys / girls are killed in police encounters simply because the police officer in question was not adept at handling citizen and only trained to handle criminals. This mindset needs to change and police department should be open to seek help rather than defend an indefensible behavior on their part. When Officer Wilson says on TV “I did my job and I would do it exactly the same way should it happen again...” I feel sorry for him and sorry for the citizens who have to interface with officers like him who have for so long been so insensitive that they have lost touch with the large portion of their job which requires empathy.
Lastly, my heart goes out to Michael Brown and other such stupid kids who faced a bullet where a severe reprimand was due. Rest in peace! May their family and friends have the strength to bear the loss. Amen!
So long…
If you think about it, having a human interaction as part of your job can be both invigorating as well as frustrating. Invigorating becasue you get an active feedback of a job well done and it motivates you to do better and work harder plus there is a satisfaction of making a difference to society. Frustrating because human beings do not always think logically and often act emotionally and when it comes to their health they are a victim of their habits. Doctors often find it frustrating that the solution of problem is right there and yet the patients choose to do the opposite. This will be true of other professions too, let us assume a tech support guy is trying to help an middle aged man fix his computer and the guy is being unnecessarily hassled by the owner of the computer asking him unnecessary questions and often implying the tech support is is a waste of time even though he needs their help. People working in tech support / customer care are often an unappreciated lot and hence always need to be trained to not allow such interactions to escalate into war of words because customers can be mean often times.
The police department takes the cherry and the cake when it comes to underappreciated jobs. Plenty times they do a good and stop impending crimes but they cannot brag about it as it is “their job”, but should anything go wrong, the police department bears the brunt of it and rightly so. In essence it’s the thankless job of a sentry. Nobody remembers 1000 good judgment calls but everyone remembers the one bad call. Police department also has an additional burden of being kicked around by the politicians for not being there at their beck and call. There is nobody who has it worse than a police officer. One can only imagine the daily stress these men in uniform go through. The army clearly has its target defined as enemy but often, police have to act against one citizen to protect the rights of another citizen and there are obvious mistakes made and personal equations and prejudices that come in play. I am not justifying the incident at Ferguson or many such incidents that happen far too often, I am merely trying to suggest solutions.
I am sure police are trained fairly well at using arms and dealing with hostile situations. However, am not sure enough is being done to have regular sanitization trainings for the police to deal with women / minorities (religious / racial) and to actively fight the unconscious bias in their minds. The problem is that police officers are so exposed to crime and criminals that they forget that a large portion of their job is dealing with citizen and helping the regular Joe feel safe and secure. It’s always in the last category that the police are found wanting. They are loud / brash and often ill-mannered while interacting with citizen and an extreme manifestation of this are the tragic incidents where young boys / girls are killed in police encounters simply because the police officer in question was not adept at handling citizen and only trained to handle criminals. This mindset needs to change and police department should be open to seek help rather than defend an indefensible behavior on their part. When Officer Wilson says on TV “I did my job and I would do it exactly the same way should it happen again...” I feel sorry for him and sorry for the citizens who have to interface with officers like him who have for so long been so insensitive that they have lost touch with the large portion of their job which requires empathy.
Lastly, my heart goes out to Michael Brown and other such stupid kids who faced a bullet where a severe reprimand was due. Rest in peace! May their family and friends have the strength to bear the loss. Amen!
So long…
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