Civil servants told to pretend to be answering machines to ease workload

Civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions in Carlisle say managers ordered them to pretend they were answer-phone machines to ease their workload during a national strike. The claim has come from staff not taking part in the current two-day national strike.

One worker described how regional bosses within the DWP issued instructions that workers should pose as an automated answering service during their busiest time of day – between 12 noon and 2pm. Staff had to tell callers: “Due to the high volume of enquiries we are currently experiencing we are unable to take your call. Please call back later.” They then had to hang up.



The man said: “To start with, we all found it hard to keep a straight face. But we were told to do this. Occasionally, I slipped up and gave my name to the person who was calling. I believe the idea was that we would have difficulty coping because of the strike, but it just seems like a silly way to handle it.

“We were asking why they didn’t just prepare a proper answer-phone message saying we couldn’t answer calls because of the industrial action. It just seemed wrong to hang up on people.” He said some workers were so appalled they were considering joining the strike.