I'm the first point of contact to the public at an arts venue. There is only one of me dealing with numerous face to face, phone and email queries sometimes and today just so happened to be the day where I was dealing with lots of these queries. We also have a number of resident companies who rent our building.
Basically everything goes through me in terms of access to the building, buying tickets to the cinema and for anything related to events and being the middleman for communication.
The only thing is in terms of keys, we don't have access to these unless they have been droppes off for us previously.
Today a cleaner for one of the resident companies came in ask if I can give them access to the office. There are normally keys left for her here but I couldn't find them today. I tried to call the company but they wouldn't pick up.
So I contacted the duty manager to help give her access thinking that it would be straight forward. Now I have seen this lady before as she has come in to clean previously. The duty manager kept saying blanket no and telling me that they need to show an email confirmation as they weren't expecting them to come in. The cleaner was getting a bit fustrated because she was expected to come in to do a quick job. She even said “who is this she's being a pain…can I speak with the other managers.” and understanding her fustrations I kept trying to explain the situation to the duty manager and they wouldn't take my word for it. I personally didn't feel like the cleaner needed to prove herself as I've seen her before.
In the end I managed to get a hold of someone from the company and initally they weren't sure because they hadn't bern told anything and they were trying to get a hold of someone from the company who knew the cleaner. I confirmed that I've seen her before and it is the usual cleaner that comes in. So..they let her in but my my why do ppl have to like this…
The duty manager and I had a discussion about it afterwards and she kept saying that if I'm not expecting anyone then I can't let people in without prove, and due to the security issues previously in this building..
I didn't think it was cool for her to be so uptight about the rules, and I thought about how I don't wish to continie woeking there throughout the shift so I asked if could leave earlier as I'm not feeling well and overwhelmed. She did ask if there was anything that she could do and if I wanted to talk. I left it for today, but I'm thinking of addressing it when I feel more ready to.