Comments on: Gardai terrorising a man that seems mentally ill

By: Niall O'K

Niall O'K — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 08:43:08 +0000

Oh… and your link to the Blogorrah article is broken, – it’s here: http://blogorrah.com/rainmangate-the-morning-after.html

By: Niall O'K

Niall O'K — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 08:40:10 +0000

All I can say about that garda is that he should have ended that call MUCH earlier and not wasted so much time making fun of the (either stupid/backwards or mentally ‘challenged’) caller, terminating the call with something like “Look, sir, the seargant is not available. If you give me your phone number, I can get him to contact you when he’s back. If you don’t want to give me your phone number I can only suggest you call back later. Good day.”

As Adam said: “Anyone who has worked with the public knows how bizarre/stupid/annoying some members of it can be but most of us just grin and bear, do what we can to appease them and when that fails say â€œthatâ€™s all I can do for you, bye nowâ€?, and leave it at that.” – WELL SAID. I deal with the public on a daily basis (in a digital photo lab right now – although that’s all about to change) and the amount of bizarre/annoying/plain idiotic people out there is baffling sometimes but you just carry on and do your job professionally.

I don’t think that garda should be sacked, but he should be very severely reprimanded over his actions.

By: Walter Higgins

Walter Higgins — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 05:22:57 +0000

With that kind of obsessive compulsive behaviour, the caller is probably autistic or (at the very least) has severe aspergers syndrome or some other mental illness.

As for that Garda – he should be sacked. As Adam already said, he’s not fit to work on the tills at Centra.
What a fucking tosser.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:47:42 +0000

First off, this comment is working under the assumption that this is a real Garda dealing with a real complaint – it might not be, but if it is:

Watching the video I did get the impression that the caller was a bit slow, or a bit of a paranoid loon, or a general muppet who regularly hassles the local station because he has nothing better to do.

Then I realised that he might be all of these things and more but it doesn’t really matter one bit.

The fact is that the guy on camera (if he is a Garda) isn’t doing a flimsey Summer nixer to pay for his Oxegen tickets, he’s in a “job for life”/career and is meant to be professional.

It adds fuel to the fire to know that he’s a civil servant, representing the state and being paid by the public, but you wouldn’t expect anyone to act like that as part of their career no matter what they were doing, public or private.

Anyone who has worked with the public knows how bizarre/stupid/annoying some members of it can be but most of us just grin and bear, do what we can to appease them and when that fails say “that’s all I can do for you, bye now”, and leave it at that.

I mean if he’s not able to deal with an awkward/annoying/stupid/deranged/muppety/etc. caller in a straight-forward way then he probably isn’t fit for a till-job in Centra, let alone anything with a whiff of responsibility.