The Weirdest ‘Client’ I Ever Had

Posted Oct 05 in Opinion tagged ,

Just about everyone in the workforce has ‘clients’ of some description. I used to work for the NSW Department of Corrective Services – where my ‘clients’ were prison inmates. We used to call them ‘clients’ as we were providing a service to them, and calling them patients was apparently pathologising them (incidentally during an even more politically correct year or two I think inmates were actually referred to as ‘consumers’ as they were consuming services!)

Whilst at Corrective Services I remember one particular client very well. He was a young guy with a particularly weird sexual paraphilia – and he used to hang around cemeteries a lot more than he should. He was also very unstable, neurotic, and had an extremely explosive temper.

One time I was interviewing him, and he was becoming increasingly agitated. Half way through the interview he stood up abruptly, walked around my desk, approached me, and then punched a huge hole in the wall right next to my head. Shaken, I told him that he was scaring me. The poor chap then unexpectedly put his head in his hands lurched backwards and burst into tears. He fell into his chair and repeatedly cried how sorry he was, and that he ‘always scares people’.
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I believe he really hated the fact that he scared (and probably hurt) people – myself included. However, he hadn’t learned the ability to control his own behaviour.
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I’m not sure of the purpose of the anecdote but it’s something along the lines of this…. people act to the best of their ability, and sometimes – they don’t have the skills to act in ways they wish they could.

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  1. Carolin Dahlman The Love Group

    Oct 14th, 2009

    It´s very insightful to see that people are not acting in their best interest and even if we want to control our impulses, exersise more, find love or eat better, we are driven by emotional forces rather than rational ones. I know I don´t need those shoes, but I buy them anyway. I know I shouldn´t call him (but play hard to get) but I do it anyway. We screw up our lives because our thinking brain is not strong enough to keep our emotions in check. Those who never learned or trained their thinking brain as children have a hard time as adults, and some end up in prison. I worked in prisons for the red cross back in Sweden and I´ve met the wounded as well… I have the impulses too, but to a lower degree. Don´t we all? For marketers the learning from your story is that people may say they want something, but is that what they will act on? Market research may tell us people want apples, but still they buy chocolate. We like the utilities of an item but get upset by the call centre so we never get back. People are mysterious. Beautiful complex mysteries. Thats all we know.

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