Written scenario · Empathy, Professionalism

A pipe burst at work

You take calls at a utility company's billing center.

Isabel, nineteen, calls asking to delay this month's bill. She has used the three extensions allowed per year; after that, policy moves customers onto a fixed instalment plan that starts with a down payment, because repeated extensions left people owing several months at once. Your calls are monitored. Isabel works at a daycare that closed for two weeks after a burst pipe, so she went unpaid, and she can't make the down payment until her next check in ten days. You could hold to policy, refer her to a hardship fund that takes weeks, or log the call as a billing dispute, which pauses disconnection though nothing is disputed.