Jessica, Jemma and the Delicate Situation

There were panic stations at the Dark Satanic Mill today. Well, not throughout the Dark Satanic Mill; just in our part, the complaints department. My colleague, friend, evil sidekick and "adopted" daughter, Gemma, was logging complaints that had been received by phone in our call centre at about 4pm this afternoon. She was looking at one when she came over to me with a puzzled look on her face.

"I'm not sure what to do with this one, Jester," she said. "One of our engineers has been taken hostage by a customer." I asked her for the job number and brought the details up on my computer and there it was. The notes said that the customer had said that the engineer had turned up with the wrong part and she wasn't going to let him leave the house until he had fitted the right part. The girl who had put the note on the job then spoke to the engineer and he had apparently confirmed that he was being held hostage.

This struck me as bizarre for a number of reasons:

1) How could the engineer get the right part without leaving the house?
2) Why had the girl not tried to get help to the engineer? She could have called the police for instance or the engineer's field manager.
3) Why had she "diaried" the job to our department so we could pick it up a couple of hours too late? (And that is quick for us too!)

After her notes were some notes from a team manager, who had seemed more concerned about getting the correct parts for the boiler than managing to negotiate the release of the "hostage". Now, I know hostage negotiation is a difficult job and is best carried out by trained professionals but I did think that telling the customer we were going to call the police might have done the trick. Instead, he had tried to find out if the right part was locally available.

Then nothing. No more notes. For all we knew, the engineer could have died a nasty, protracted death at the hands of an irate customer.

I'm very worried about looking a fool so I didn't ring the police. Instead, I first tried to contact the girl who had put the original notes on and then the team manager, with no success. I then rang the field manager and asked him if he was aware that one of his engineers was being held hostage (we hadn't had a call from a relieved engineer telling us that the situation had been defused and he was once again a free man). The FM (field manager) asked which engineer I was referring to. I gave the name of the poor unfortunate. He said, no, he was not aware but he had had a call from head office saying that this very engineer had been stuck on a job for 3 hours and they had had to reschedule some of his appointments. Not bloody surprising was my thought. He'd probably been locked in a cupboard or cellar for the 3 hours.

I asked him to ring the engineer and check he was okay. I said the poor man probably needed a welfare call. After a couple more unsuccessful attempts to call the team manager, I rang the FM back. He put me straight:

No the engineer had not been taken hostage. He had turned up with the wrong part and the customer had been a little bit annoyed. Not with him, though, she had been annoyed with the previous engineers who had attended. She had then asked if the engineer could stay in the house while she tried to find the right part. She had been speaking to the girl at the Dark Satanic Mill who had put a note on the job stating that the engineer had been taken hostage. The girl had then spoken to the engineer who said "It's like being held hostage". He had been joking. We had tried to find the part but it was not locally available and he had left the house, safe and well, and gone onto his next job.

Panic over. I then, finally, managed to get through to the team manager, who knew that the engineer had not been taken hostage. I pointed out to him that it might have made our jobs a little easier had the following rules been followed:

1) Don't say an engineer has been taken hostage when he hasn't.
2) Don't diary to the complaints department when there is no complaint and an engineer hasn't been taken hostage.
3) If there are notes on a job saying an engineer has been taken hostage and you know he hasn't. Put notes on saying he hasn't been taken hostage.
4) If an engineer has been taken hostage, don't diary it to complaints. He'll be dead before we pick it up.
5) If an engineer has been taken hostage, try ringing the police. I mean, it's not as if they have anything to do, is it? (Sorry, that was just plain bad of me.)

Now, I really wanted to finish this blog with a video of Jack Point (the jester from Yeomen of the Guard) singing "I have a song to sing-o" but could I find it??? Could I heck as like! So here is Tundra Rap from the Mighty Boosh instead.