Lucy Mangan, so #relatable
Lucy Mangan speaks for me, and I am sure she (and her family) and I are not outliers in this:
I don’t know why, at the age of 46, ringing any kind of authority to make any kind of request or complaint fills me with apprehension, stress and tearful anxiety, but it does. I have tried to unpack my own root issue here in the hope of addressing it, but whatever psychological blockage there is remains unyielding. All I can say is that I know I am not alone. My mother, sister and several friends suffer the same handicap. There’s a fear of being told off mixed in there somewhere, a feeling that we’re transgressing some unspoken law that we don’t deserve help and should be able to manage without it. I haven’t been able to plumb it further than that.
I find this does not apply to filling in a webform embodying my complaint or bopping off an email, so maybe it has to do with a wider phone-phobia? I am always irked by entities that insist on dealing with me by phone.
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On an entirely different subject, are any dr rdrz acquainted with the cultural mores of South Africa? Students at Soas University of London have called for its director to resign after a meeting where he used the N-word. His defence, coming as he does from South Africa, is 'I come from a part of the world where we actually do use the word'. I wonder whether it is acceptable polite usage there; I consider that there are other parts of the world where it is used but is still not considered appropriate usage for directors of major academic institutions; directors of major academic institutions are surely expected to have some cultural sensitivity?
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