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Elon Musk fork in the road email to veteran crisis line employees · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company, and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
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  I'm but it should be more common.
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  I want to follow up on that on the on the question Miss Blaine
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  about productivity, Where, where the where the where the people
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  in the call centers under pressure to do so many calls a
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  day or not have calls be longer than a certain number of minutes
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  or that describe to me the the, the metrics that were being
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  applied. Sure.
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  Thank you for that question. So the metrics that were being
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  applied was the amount of time that you were staying on a call.
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  What a lot of people fail to realize is that veterans that
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  are getting help from the responders at the crisis line,
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  they call back, for example, even though we're told it's not
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  a clinical role, a lot of us that are licensed, we will
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  literally de escalate, give them suggestions on homeworks, walk
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  them through deep breathing. But those things can be easily
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  frowned upon because it takes the call longer to be completed.
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  I am not willing to leave anyone behind that needs my assistance.
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  So the idea of production didn't work for me because that Human
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  Services and human life was more valuable than the numbers.
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  Well, I fully understand that. I'm amazed that there would be
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  such. I mean, the last thing you want
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  to do if you're talking with someone in crisis is to say, I'm
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  sorry, but our time is up. I mean, maybe if you're a cable
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  TVI mean a, you know, a cable services call center that's
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  different. I'm surprised that that would so
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  anyone would even think of applying that metric.
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  Well, we would frequently receive direct messages in team
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  saying, hey, I noticed that you've been on this call for a
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  long, a long time. Do you need any help?
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  Well, what kind of help are you going to help me with?
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  If I'm the one de escalating someone, you can't come in and
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  take over the call. You don't know what's going on
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  within the call, so you're literally distracting me from
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  completing the call and paying attention to the veterans.
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  Is this when did this metric system come into place?
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  In I believe it was 2018 when we, so we had a director and
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  then he hired a new person and that person had come from a
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  background in a call center that was more production guided
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  versus being able to be human guided.
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  I noticed that you left in May, so you went through at least
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  several months of the new administration at the agency.
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  It's no secret that there firings, hiring freezes, threats
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  of more firings, reorganization. Did that affect the the
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  operation of the of the the call center in terms of of people
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  morale and dedication, people wanting to stay or go talk to me
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  about whether the the difficulties at the agency level
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  affected the call center. Thank you so much for that
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  question in in bringing the humanism back into it, it
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  absolutely affected the morale. One of the things that happens
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  when you're a crisis responder is you can develop vicarious
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  trauma by listening to listening to the repeated situations that
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  individuals are going through. However, when you're concerned,
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  if you're going to be able to pay your bills, if you're going
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  to be able to keep your health care, if you're going to be able
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  to function, that is going to impact your ability to stay
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  focused. Now, I have to admit my peers at
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  the Veterans Crisis Line, as Mr. Cone said, are rock stars.
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  They stayed focused. We all came together in teams
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  and I would say, hey, here's my phone number.
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  If anybody needs me, text me. We had to create situations
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  outside of teams to offer support to each other because it
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  was so overwhelming every week having to the.
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  The the chaos. The chaos was overwhelming and
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  it was distracting. Every week you're having to
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  write or what did I do next week or last week letters to send off
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  to an invisible e-mail that that.
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  Was the famous 5 things you accomplished?
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  Yeah, the 4th enrolled I. Sent one of those in myself to
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  Mr. Musk. I never heard back.
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  Yeah, because you weren't the The mailbox at one point got
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  completely full and nobody was answering it.
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  Let. Me, let me ask another question
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  and this just this is not about this subject, but what are the
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  issues that are there? There must be a pattern to
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  issues. Are they financial?
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  Are they you mentioned Healthcare, is there any?
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  Can you give us a summary of what for the most likely calls
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  are about? So most of the calls that we
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  received are usually individuals that have faced levels of trauma
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  from military sexual trauma, remembrance of their their time
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  in combat, individuals that may have not gone to combat but may
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  have been on a ship and felt like they were in a sleeping,
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  coughing, marital issues. We became notorious for being
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  marriage counselors, sometimes having to break up arguments
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  over the phone between spouses. And so it just varied between
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  that individuals that were homeless or individuals that
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  specifically just felt unseen, unheard and easily forgotten.
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  And did you have the capacity to refer them to VAPSPTSD programs,
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  for example? I mean, in other words, did your
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  duties go beyond listening? So the referral process, the
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  first referral process is to the suicide prevention coordinators
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  and those individuals are usually housed at the VA medical
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  centers, a social work department that takes those
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  referrals and then tries to disseminate them to the
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  appropriate areas directly. Referrals, we will send
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  individuals that are facing homelessness, we go send them
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  over to the to the National Call Center for homeless Veterans.
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  When it comes to things like needing appointments, I was a
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  little different from what the SOP said.
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  If I have a veteran on the phone and they needed to get through
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  to make an appointment, I'm going to make the call to get
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  them through to make that appointment.
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  The SOP says transferring blindly let them pick up on that
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  end. To me, I believe that we needed
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  to be more of a one stop shop so that we would not.
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  Can you imagine and 90 year old veteran calling in and the call
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  just keeps circling because he doesn't know what button to
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  push. I'm not going to send them over
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  blindly. And those are some of the
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  things, some of the stressors for our our our elderly veterans
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  because everyone was wanting to force them to use a computer, go
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  and navigate a phone system. They can't.
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  It's not a part of their generation.
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  And why would we want to do that?
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  So I mean the most. Frustrating things in the world
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  to be on some kind of call like this, tell your story and then
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  have somebody say, well, I'll move you over to this other
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  department and then you're on hold listening to music.
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  Well, your testimony has been very important and impressive.
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  I, I hope you can, I'd like to assign some homework.
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  Could you supply to the committee further thoughts about
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  how this system can be improved because that's the business
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  we're in here. And to the extent you have such,
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  both of you have first hand experience, to the extent you
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  can make suggestions about the standard operating procedure or
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  the productivity metrics, those kind of things that would be
• 8:01
  very helpful to it. Hey, thank you so much for
• 8:08
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 8:10
  support. If you could take a second and
• 8:12
  hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
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  appreciate it. It helps out the show
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  tremendously and you'll never miss an episode.
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  And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you
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• 8:28
  support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero.
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  And please take care of yourselves and each other.
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  And I'll see you tomorrow.