September 25, 2007

Requests

A lady was looking for a maths tutor for her son who just entered sec school. She asked me for recommendations. This was not the first time I had such request. So I know which friends and colleagues are qualified but I also know that they are either too busy or not interested in giving tuition. Cannot anyhow recommend, right? At least must have good maths foundation and familiar with the syllabus. So I told her I couldn’t help her.

She was not happy. Understandable! She thought I was not helpful - it seemed to her I replied without even trying first. I should have waited a few days before giving her the answer.


I was thinking of these meet-the-people sessions by MPs. I guess they encounter cases like this. If someone makes a request which an MP knows cannot be done, I think he still has to write in, waits for the reply and shows it to the person. If he says cannot straightaway, people will say he is not caring.

1 comment:

Victor said...

It is not easy when you are dealing with people. That's why it is important that people like MPs must have people skills. Kena hammered also cannot fight back.

Sometimes people's expectations are just too much.