How to piss off your social worker in 2 easy steps

March 27, 2007

How to piss off your social worker in 2 easy steps

1.  Be sure that you get called, with only a few hours of notice, to be at court an hour after you’re supposed to be having your home visit

2.  Call Ms. By-the-Book immediately and leave a message with her answering service an hour and a half before the home visit

Ummm, why would that piss someone off?  I’m not sure.  Let’s recap:

We were supposed to have our third and final homestudy meeting yesterday, the home visit.  J was to meet with her first and then I would come home after my class and we would look at the house together.  Ms. BtB only does home visits on Mondays, making things very complicated for me–I’m in class or office hours from 9-noon and 1-4:45 on Mondays, and skipping office hours the day before giving a test for 80 students is frowned upon.  But I decided that I’d have to do it, because we’re trying to get done as quickly as possible.

All was planned and well until J called me in a panic at around 10 a.m.  His client’s trial wasn’t supposed to start until Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday, but several cases ahead of his settled unexpectedly and he was expected there at 1 p.m.  A court that is almost 45 minutes away.  (And really he had to be there early to prep his client last-minute.)  Our home visit was supposed to start at noon.  I didn’t have Ms. BtB’s number with me, so J ran home (25 minutes) and got it so he could call her, explain, and cancel, which he did at around 10:30.  I know it was around then because I left for class at 10:40 and didn’t get back to my office until noon. 

When I returned, there was a message saying that she had been 5 minutes from our house when she called in and got the message that J was canceling–she didn’t know why, but we needed to call her ASAP.  When I called her back, she was very pissed-off.  She’d "called her answering service at 11 and there was no message then", there was "no explanation", and "none of J’s numbers were working."  I was apologizing up and down, telling her what happened.  There was just absolute fury.  She said that J was going to have to come to her office for the individual visit and then after that, we can schedule a new home visit.

It wasn’t until after I hung up that I realized why the conversation hadn’t seemed right to me.  First, J did call, as soon as he could.  She had almost as much notice as he did–and he was on a 2-hour call, so they could have required him to be there even earlier (he was lucky to get 3 hours of notice).  I know it was before 11 that he called because I was in class giving a test at 11 and got there 15 minutes early in case there were last-minute questions.  So if she’d called her answering service at 11, there would have been a message from him.  He did explain what happened in the message.  And he did ask her to call his office rather than his cell phone, and left the number.

So, one of two things happened: either her answering service really screwed up and didn’t give her the message or she lied about checking her messages at 11.  J pointed out that answering services make their money by being good and accurate, so that’s unlikely to have been the case.  But why in the world would she lie about something about that?  I mean, if she hadn’t gotten the message until almost noon because that was the first time she’d checked her messages, isn’t that just as valid as saying that the message didn’t come in any earlier?

Regardless, she’s pissed.  J called her yesterday after court (which he lost, and so was doubly unhappy about having this as the result AND not getting paid since it was a contingency case–as he pointed out, he could have not shown up and had the same court result but with more homestudy!) and she hasn’t called back.  Since every other time, she’s called us within an hour or two, he called again this morning to try again.  She hasn’t called back.

I’m scared and worried now.  She holds an awful lot of power in this process.  She could easily say she doesn’t have time to make another home visit for a month or more, then not write up the homestudy for another month after that.  She could write that we’re inconsiderate and thoughtless people.  After the sound of her voice yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she’s really vindictive.

I’m not sure whether I should call our homestudy agency (she contracts through them, she’s not an employee) and explain what happened and ask for their advice.  Maybe we should ask to be reassigned to a new social worker?  They said they could do that if we didn’t click with ours, but I’m not sure if we can do it at this point.

I can understand being upset for driving out to our house and having us not able to keep the appointment, but it’s not like we just didn’t show up.  And we did try to give her as much notice as possible–I don’t know what happened with the answering service, but we did try to keep her from making the drive.  It just seemed like her reaction was a little extreme for the situation.

I guess I’ll wait and see if she calls J back and reschedules his visit before doing anything else.  If we haven’t heard from her by tomorrow, though, I’ll probably call the agency and see what to do.

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