Arg...Conflict!!

I think that my job at the homeless access center is a crash course in how to deal with conflict--most of it unfortunately conflict with people that I have no previously established relationship/trust with. At the end of last week I had a homeless woman just go off on me about how she felt like we were wasting her time and treating her disrespectfully and nobody cared and that I was giving her attitude. Well, I hadn't been giving her attitude, but when she spoke to me like that I confess that I did respond with some then! In thinking over the situation for the next couple days, I concluded that I want to learn how to respond to people's frustration and anger in a way that lets their emotions roll over me so that I can stay calm and not-angry myself, and to figure out how to respond constructively to the situation. I've decided to work on a new approach. As one of my mentors helped me realize, it seems like one of the very frustrating things about being homeless is that everyone else is always telling you what to do and your own voice and will get lost in the shuffle. So when people express frustration to me this week, I've been trying to start off with simply letting them know that I hear them, and that yes, I see how that must be frustrating, instead of starting off with a "but" argument. We'll see if this helps, or at least if it helps me to stay compassionate and collected instead of angry!

Then today I had a whole different kind of conflict to deal with! Usually I sit at a desk behind a very high counter (about chest high), which is between the lobby and me. This is for safety purposes. A new individual had come in to apply for our services and I'd been working with him on getting the paperwork filled out. Then my supervisor, who happens to be African American, walked by on the way to her office. At this point, the client made some racist comments basically to the effect that he could not be in the same place with African Americans. My coworker informed him that in that case, our shelter was probably not a good fit for him, since a lot of the folks we serve are black (we serve more white homeless folks than any other ethnic group, but African Americans are second). It was definitely an awkward and offensive exchange (we had other clients waiting right there in the lobby who are black!!) and he left.

About fifteen minutes later I happened to be out in the lobby helping a client when he walked back in again to get a phone number for another shelter from us. A tiny white 92 year old homeless woman took one look at him and said, "You again!" Well, he responded with, "You have a problem with that?" and then she walked right up to him and got in his face. I had horrible visions flashing through my mind of what if he pushed her or something and the frail thing fell over and broke something--I just didn't know what was going to happen! I didn't even think about it--I just knew I had to get between them--so I slipped right between the two of them, at the same time asking her to please be quiet and not say anything to him. For a second, standing there right in front of him, I really wished that I was behind that counter! But I was able to deflect his attention off of her and on to me, and to get him to focus on what he was looking for from our agency instead of on his conflict with her. I wanted to get him out of the door as quickly as I could and I was not willing to go out of my way to personally get him into a non-walk-in shelter (since it's bad for us and for the chances of future clients if we give bad referrals) so I did not give him any new phone numbers, just told him to try the walk-in shelter that I'd previously told him about. Solely by the grace of God he chose to leave without doing anything or creating more of a scene. I was the tiniest bit shaken up by it all, but mostly glad that it had turned out ok and that physical conflict had been avoided all around. Sigh. I am NOT a conflict loving person, so this job is definitely stretching me!