When an erratic gatekeeper slams a door in your face (after an unprovoked screaming match), you just might take a hint (or 5).
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To be clear, she wasn’t my employee — but she sure was my adversary in the moments leading up to the dial tone she left when she screamed that she “wasn’t going to fight with me” and curtly hung up. After a 20-minute hold, it only took one gatekeeper with a sour attitude to determine my fate. But let me rewind a bit for some added context:
A clerical error by a third party had inadvertently put me and my company in the line of fire for a large (and litigious) financial collector, and they were knocking at our door, eager to claim the thousands they believed we owed. The facts were simple:
Fact 1: We owed nothing and had both the professional counsel and documented transcripts to prove it.Fact 2: However, one unfortunate accompanying truth remained: The litigious collector had put us on the clock, with an imminent deadline and penalties accruing rapidly. If we didn’t prove our innocence (or at least get an appeal) today, damaging (and expensive) legal shots would be fired.Fact 3: One gatekeeper stood between our truth (and proof) and the (mistaken) litigious recipient…and today, she decided to flex those powers — and not in our favor.
I stared down at my phone in pure disbelief. I was mid-sentence, requesting to speak to someone — anyone — else, and she just…hung up.
Here’s the wild part: When I called my professional counsel and relayed the unsuccessful exchange, she wasn’t even that surprised! It wasn’t until we tag-teamed a subsequent plea to another gatekeeper (with a vastly different outcome) that I learned exactly what that rogue employee exposed.
I’ll be honest: I’ve always been a pretty black-and-white person, and thus, I tend to concern myself more with facts than emotions. In this case, I figured since I had the facts right (proof of the clerical error absolving my company of guilt and…