Regular, eh?

[scatteredsleep]

On the hotline, we're supposed to get some demographic information about every call. We're supposed to find out the city the caller's in, their age, their sex, and their race. One caller, after stating his age and that he was male, said that he was a "regular white guy" when I asked his race

Comments

[kailen]

Is this at the clinic? If so, that's really odd that they're super GLBT friendly and yet only have "other" as an option for multiracial. They should at least have tickyboxes...

[scatteredsleep]

I know! Yeah, it's at the clinic. It's a drop-down menu, so we can only choose one thing (another source of irritation), but at the very least I figure we should have something more description than "other" =P

I guess I haven't tried using "Ctrl+click" yet? I have a feeling that's gonna be too much for it =/ all the software we use is really fickle, lol.

[pacino]

You could say something like, "Well 'white' isn't always 'regular,'" and smoothly transition into the next thing.

I used to get people all the time at the Aurora Center who'd say incredibly ignorant shit, but in my position it was kind of necessary to straighten them out so they'd quit blaming the wrong people for whatever horrible shit happened. Probably not so much the right time when somebody's just trying to schedule an appointment to get their junk checked out.

Can't catch them all.

[scatteredsleep]

Yeah, I would do that if we got the information up front but I always ask for the demographic stuff at the very end of the call, after I've answered all their questions =P

I get some people who say stuff like "obviously" after they say their sex cuz we've been like talking about body parts or they feel like their voice gives them away or something, and I have a spiel prepared for that about trans callers, lol. I guess it's all in tone of voice and how you say stuff, really.