On Being Misunderstood

I got to experience a rather irritating incident of irony today, and I'm not at all amused by it. Last week, I had two clients coem to the Writing Center for assistance with papers "on being misunderstood". They were instructed to write about an experience in which they had been misunderstood in narrative form. Pretty straightforward. The first client was a fellow theatre major, a sweetheart who, amusingly enough, wrote about the assumption people have that she is a mean person. Her writings had some shortcomings, of course, but I was able to understand what she was trying to do and happy to work with her to help make her idea come across. I gave some feedback, I made some suggestions, she jotted down some notes and went on her merry way.
The second client was in the same class, had gotten the same assignment, and was attempting to follow the example of the same writer. Instead of one experience, he wrote about three separate experience that didn't seem to have anything to do with one another. They did all exemplify some form of being misunderstood, but I didn't understand why he chose to put those three together. A series of inquiring led me to understand that they seemed so fragmented because they had nothing to do with each other. He had made them up. He couldn't come up with a time that he had been misunderstood, so he decided to write three separate lies and pretend that they were a part of a common theme in his life. I explained to him that the assignment was not to write a fictional account and that he couldn't actually do what was asked of him if he just made it up. He maintained that he couldn't come up with anything. Because we still had time in the session, I tried discussing diction and tone and attention to detail, but everything went back to the fact that he hadn't done what was asked of him. I was not about to advise him to turn in three unrelated lies about a relatively common occurance, so I finally told him that he needed to find something real to write about. I refused to believe that he had not been misunderstood once in his life. I even started throwing out examples to get him started, like having a text misread, or having someone not hear him correctly. Granted, these aren't as dramatic as having a strange woman beg him not to rob her, but they were at least things that could probably happen. He didn't want to talk about those things. He said he couldn't come up with enough to write on those things. After we went back and forth a few times, I asked him a question that he said he couldn't answer on the spot. I said that that was fine, since we still had time, and went to get some water while he thought about it. When I came back, I asked him if he was still thinking, and he basically told me he would not be able to come up with anything at all ever in life. I was glad when we ran out of time, but wished that I could have just sent him away early for refusing to cooperate.
Fast forward to today. I come in this afternoon and the schedule says that my 3:30 appointment is with my boss...to discuss a client complaint. I was nervous, as I always am at the prospect of having done something wrong. I make mistakes quite often, and, although I do my best to be friendly and patient with my clients, I do understand that I can sometimes be less delightful than many of my colleagues. I quickly review in my head the past few weeks. I can't remember leaving a client waiting or using my phone in a session. I haven't been on facebook or twitter or anything, and I never complain about clients when I have clients nearby. What could I have done?
When my boss comes to talk to me, she explains that a roommate of a client was crestfallen after having had an appointment with me, prompting said roommate to call and complain. Apparently I "belittled him," talked down to him," and insulted his intelligence by walking away. I am appropriately concerned that my actions may have been offensive and try to think back to the appointment in question and see what I should reevaluate. I completely forgot about Client 2, and instead the session that comes to me is the one from that same week where the client's paper similarly had unrelated elements and didn't seem to make sense. I recall the session as having been productive and don't understand why he would have been offended by anything I said. I even remember him coming in the next day and mentioning an advance he made with the same essay. In myreassessment of my immediate history with clients, I realize that I'm thinking of the wrong person. I am perfectly clear on who the client in question is now, and I let out a little laugh.
I laugh partly out of relief that I wasn't so wrong about how a session with a client had gone, partly out of amusement that he, of all, people, had seen fit to complain about me, and partly because the session was much funnier in hindsight when I'm not trying to drill something substantive out of this boy. I start to explain to my superior what actually happened, and she stops me.
"Do you see what you just did there?" she asks. I, of course know that I just laughed, but I don't see anything wrong with that. Something was funny, something was built up, and I let it out. I didn't even begin the story yet and she's already identifying what I did in this session that must have been so offensive. Never mind that I didn't laugh when he was actually there, that I wasn't at all amused by his refusal to follow directions and reluctance to cooperate with me. What matters now is that I let out a chuckle five days later, clearly evidence that I did something wrong five days ago. My boss goes on to say that the client may have taken this a different way and that that's the type of thing that can make a person feel belittled. She also "reminds" me that we don't leave the clients during a session, apparently seeing the one minute that I tried to give the guy some breathing room as further evidence of my shortcomings as a tutor. She smilingly maintains that I "keep these things in mind" before going on her merry way. Now I'm pissed off.

I don't ask her if she cares what actually happened in the session. It's clear from her response to my laughter that she doesn't. In this place where we pride ourselves on customer service, it doesn't occur to her that it may be the client who is in the wrong, or even that I have something to say about the session that might shed some actual light on why this person felt offended, rather than casting shadows of doubt on my qualification to work with people based on an involuntary expression of merriment. God forbid I show happiness on the job. I also no longer feel chastened by this exchange, or even the notion that this client came to the center for help and didn't have a good experience. The fact is, I didn't have a good experience either, and considering I haven't been paid for my work here since the beginning of August I'm not too concerned with the whole "we're here to serve you" mantra that he was looking to feel. My concern when he was here was in giving him things that would help him write the paper that he was supposed to write, and he showed no interest in taking that. I refuse to apologize or feel guilty for making a person feel bad about not following directions when I spent at least forty-five minutes trying to direct him according to what he needed to do. He didn't like that I asked him why he said what he said because he didn't have any answer and he didn't feel good about the comments I made because it was obvious that he was wrong. If his professor wanted him to turn in three pages of lies, she would have assigned them to write a work of fiction. As far as I'm concerned, my only mistake was in trying to help him when he didn't want to be helped.

And all of this comes out because I laughed. I freely admit that I laugh in my sessions from time to time. Sometimes a student writes something funny, or I remember something amusing, or I'm just enjoying the exchange so much that I allow that to come out. I never thought of that as a bad thing. In fact, the times that I laugh tend to be when I'm most engaged with my clients and we're able to make a good deal of progress. If I'm to take my boss at her word, I was wrong in all of those great sessions where the clients walked away with a new sense of direction. While I "keep in mind" that things that I say and do may be found offensive, I find myself in a position where I have to call into question all of the tactics I use to make my sessions productive. Don't ask the clients to justify themselves. That might make them uncomfortable. Don't point out obvious errors in judgement. That might offend their sensibilities. It's like someone just tripped me and the proposed solution is to cut off my legs. After all, if I hadn't tried to get somewhere in the first place, we wouldn't be in this situation. It's all quite disconcerting.

In the end, all this experience has done is make me reluctant to honestly engage with any of my clients. If some little snot who doesn't bother directions, isn't concerned enough about my performance to fill out a survey and has more credibility in a he-told-her-she-said than I do, who's to say I'll ever get any affirmation regarding my performance? I hope this client never comes back. If he does, I'm sure he won't misunderstand my contempt.