San Angelo

City Adopts Nag Gag on Citizens

By Joe Hyde, May 22, 2019
 

SAN ANGELO, TX — The City of San Angelo City Council enacted a curious policy Tuesday aimed at gagging complaining citizens. What is called an “Abusive Conduct Policy,” the policy encourages City employees to terminate communication and/or leave a situation where a citizen is determined by the City employee to be engaged in abusive behavior towards him or her.

The definition of abusive behavior is broad. It includes:

  • Staring, glaring or other nonverbal demonstrations of hostility;
  • Consistent ignoring or interrupting of an employee when they are answering a question or explaining a rule;
  • Personal attacks (angry outbursts, excessive profanity, or name-calling);
  • Derogatory or hostile remarks about an employee's skills, training, or intelligence;
  • Threats of stalking;
  • Unreasonable interference with an employee’s ability to do his or her work (i.e., overloading of emails, repeated phone calls, refusing to answer relevant questions);
  • Repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults and epithets.

City Attorney Theresa James spearheaded the adoption of the policy. She admitted that the policy could have been enacted as an internal policy by City Manager Daniel Valenzuela, but she thought the level of abuse of City employees by citizens she witnesses— an increasing “coarseness” of dialog, she described—merited City Council action.

James admitted that many of the City phone lines now record conversations and can be reviewed by City leadership to determine if the interaction on the phone call crossed the abuse threshold. Likewise, City conference rooms have audio and video surveillance, she said.

The Nag Gag is intended to give City employees the ability to combat citizen conduct that “harms, intimidates, offends, degrades, ridicules or humiliates an employee, whether that conduct is verbal, physical or otherwise,” James outlined.

The remedies the policy affords City employees are: the authorization to hang up on a call or leave the room, secretly record so-called abusive conversations without the knowledge of the other party, and it details specific reporting procedures after an incident.

When Mayor Brenda Gunter asked if other city governments had enacted similar policies, James did not name any.

Councilman Tommy Hiebert suggested that voluminous open records requests could be considered abusive.

Councilwoman Gonzalez asked what the consequences were.

Employees will be disciplined for being abusive too other employees, City contractors can have their contracts suspended or not renewed, and abusive citizens will be handed off to City management to be told their conduct is inappropriate, James said. In extreme cases, James warned that there are Texas Statutes to protect City employees with police involvement. The improved documentation procedures the policy requires, to include the use of recordings, can be used to build a police case, James explained.

Gunter expressed skepticism. There aren’t specific penalties, she said.

James countered that the immediate consequence is that the citizen’s concern will not be immediately addressed. “They won’t get their answer immediately,” she said. “If you’re calling abut your water bill and you get abusive with the employee, you’re not going to get the answer you need because the employee is going to leave the conversation.”

City Manager Daniel Valenzuela said the purpose of the policy is to let each City employee understand there are no repercussions for their decision to leave an abusive situation.

Councilman Harry Thomas said he supported the policy proposal saying large corporations have similar policies in place.

Gunter kept advocating for more specifics and training to be dictated by the policy before she would support it. There’s more definition of repercussions needed in it, Gunter said.

Councilwoman Billie DeWitt said that there is already a certain level of decorum people should use in determining whether or not a City employee could suspend a conversation. The policy as presented is adequate, she said. “I thought it covered all the bases.”

Human Resources Director Bryan Kendrick promised to implement training and to apply the policy City wide.

The vote was taken and passed 6-1. Mayor Gunter voted no. Later, she explained she was not against the policy itself, but she wanted the behavior and consequences in the policy to be more specifically or narrowly defined.

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Everyone is entitled to respect whether it is the customer or the employee. My suggestion is to say " I am hanging up now. Please call back when you are able to discuss this calmly." & hang up.

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This have got to be one of the stupidest things they have ever come up with. They must as unused funds to conjour this up. The cannot fix the city roads or restripe them cannot fix all of the old water pipes or fix 5he city streets to drain better. They need to check out Regent Blvd in PaulAnn. Bet its still standing invwayer.

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Pevine, Wed, 05/22/2019 - 16:10

Now the city employees need a safe space where they can go when they are triggered? As if we needed any more reason to know the world is ending...

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Common courtesy is uncommon. This is one item that should never need an official vote of our city council. We all know rude behavior when we see it. Try to be a better listener and try to reason with each other before hanging up or leaving the room or get another job.

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wDougL, Wed, 05/22/2019 - 23:29

Hey Rita R. ... I totally agree with you and your YouTube clip you added is spot on in my opinion, LOL I can actually visualize that situation happening, especially in this town... LOL...absolutely hilarious!

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Some of you would be pretty shocked how people talk to public servants doing their jobs following the policies the City Council has adopted. They are not permitted to change the rules but some people out their really don't like that. I can sympathize here. Must be pretty bad there for this to actually be a need. All you private sector people remember public servants can't discontinue business with a citizen they don't like. Now before you say we'll I can't be excluded from the city. Yes you can and you can also vote in people that will adopt policies you like. They are simply doing a job. Also remember there are two sides to a story and you will never hear a rebuttal on social media or wherever from the public servant. You'll only ever hear one side.

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Oh, believe me, anyone acquainted with private sector customer service knows how rude people can be—and you don't get the option of denying service (even if that is only a possible and de facto result of a policy like this) because you perceived the customer as being rude. You'd be surprised how often an individual will let out the fact that they are a lawyer and then sit there with customer service attempting to challenge the legality of their bill while simultaneously trying to entrap the lowly CSR into giving them incorrect information that the company can be held accountable for. For those who have worked in student loan collections locally, they know that such individuals aren't just "LARPing" as lawyers, either. Then there are the social engineers looking for freebies... It ain't easy listening to the complaints of the world.

Some of the points of this policy outlined in SAL's article seem a little wonky, though. At least, as it's been presented here. The parts about body language can be very subjective. It could all save city employees a lot of trouble with some very troublesome individuals... but it could also create a situation where residents aren't able to use public services because they "looked at somebody crossways." If someone didn't know better, (and some of us ignoramuses don't,) we might think that rules like this are set in place to prevent an individual from "making their case" to a public servant regarding that individual's implementation of a particular rule rather than anyone just trying to "change the rules" at whim. But you're absolutely right about the rules being made by the city counsel and not by the city workers. People should understand exactly where to direct their complaints!

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Some of you would be pretty shocked how people talk to public servants doing their jobs following the policies the City Council has adopted. They are not permitted to change the rules but some people out their really don't like that. I can sympathize here. Must be pretty bad there for this to actually be a need. All you private sector people remember public servants can't discontinue business with a citizen they don't like. Now before you say we'll I can't be excluded from the city. Yes you can and you can also vote in people that will adopt policies you like. They are simply doing a job. Also remember there are two sides to a story and you will never hear a rebuttal on social media or wherever from the public servant. You'll only ever hear one side.

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Some of you would be pretty shocked how people talk to public servants doing their jobs following the policies the City Council has adopted. They are not permitted to change the rules but some people out their really don't like that. I can sympathize here. Must be pretty bad there for this to actually be a need. All you private sector people remember public servants can't discontinue business with a citizen they don't like. Now before you say we'll I can't be excluded from the city. Yes you can and you can also vote in people that will adopt policies you like. They are simply doing a job. Also remember there are two sides to a story and you will never hear a rebuttal on social media or wherever from the public servant. You'll only ever hear one side.

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What if this is geared more towards saving some irate citizen a good thrashing should they ever get upset enough to physically attack one of those lowly city workers? I mean God forbid that ever happens as I know some of them and just because they walk around playing nice does not mean that they are.

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I haven't had any issues with our city employees, however, in regards to customer service, in general, there are a few things I keep in mind:

Arguing with disgruntled underlings gets you nowhere. Do the little power tripping asshole the worst disservice possible -- make THEM, THEIR bosses' problem.

In a rigid, yet tactful manner, inform their boss/es of the level of dissatisfaction with the service you received, along with some feigned naivety about the rose-colored, exceptional standards you believed the company in question ALWAYS held their employees to.

Don't be "offended", be "disheartened". Don't express feelings of entitlement to better service, rather harbor a sense of deep disappointment in this unfortunate incident, which (of course) is very much out of the norm from the exceptional customer service, you're used to receiving.

A corporate manager or store owner wants to keep a loyal customer, and keep them happy, as opposed to someone hot head who's going to blow off some steam and probably never return.

Being nice, feels nice -- as do free gift cards, coupons and vouchers.

Take it from a customer who's always right.

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