I’m a 9-1-1 dispatcher.
I love my job. It’s vital to the safety and health of my family, my community, my world.
It’s stimulating, balls-to-the-wall, terrifying, amusing, soul-touching. It’s also boring, slow, horrifying, sad, soul-grinding.
Not all at the same time, thank the gods.
Public safety telecommunications, my part of the public safety (police, fire, EMS) picture, is the starting point for almost every emergency and routine response of law-enforcement, fire and ambulance crews in any jurisdiction. Yet it’s rarely given credit for the role it plays. Telecommunicators are used to being the red-headed stepchildren of our industry, blamed when anything goes wrong and ignored when everything goes right.
And I work nights. This means there are periods of non-stop work, with call upon call upon call upon call, often from irate and uncooperative people. Many of these callers think they “pay my salary”* and seem to believe that my calltaker abilities include mindreading (so I should know what’s really going on without them telling me anything helpful, including where the problem is) and that our dispatch center has transporter devices (so I can “beam” the responding units to them in a second, rather than the units having to drive there). That stuff is all in a night’s work and goes with the territory. (* Can I get a raise, please?)
What also goes with the territory are the dead times, when no one is calling, no one needs help (knock on wood) and the county is at peace. Sometimes these quiet times last for hours, especially between 3 and 6 a.m. And telecommunicators are expected to be as alert in these down times as they are when the phones are ringing off the hooks. That means you have to find activities that let you keep your mind sharp.
For some people, that means reading. For other people, reading leads to sleeping. Some people play solitaire on their desktops, some do crossword puzzles, some – gasp! – knit. Or crochet. Or read blogs. Or write short stories. The same activities don’t work for the everyone. Hell, the same activities don’t work for any one person every time. Variety is the spice of life, after all, and it’s hard to sleep through something spicy, right?
Why am I going on (and on and on) about this?
Because there was a blogreader on another site who became incensed when he/she read that this blogger (also a 9-1-1 dispatcher, in fact her center’s current dispatcher of the year) does knitwork in the center, on duty, on the clock. Horrors!
This incensed reader sent an e-mail expressing his/her horror and threatening the blogger’s livelihood. (Go read about it on the yarnagogo site. It’s the second of the May 13th posts. You’ll get the gist of it from Rachael’s response to this jerk.) Can you imagine? The presumption!
I was totally pissed at the incensed reader and simultaneously pleased at Rachael’s eloquent reply.
Then I read the comments to Rachael’s post and realized that people get it! They really do! The incensed reader was the exception, not the rule. Go back to the post and read those comments. It’ll warm your heart, especially if you’re a dispatcher too.
And then (’cause it gets better) I read Rabbitch’s May 13th post, which was inspired by her visceral reaction to the incensed reader’s attack on all of us telecommunicators who are just trying whatever works to stay alert enough to save lives and protect property in a job that requires nothing less than our best every time the phone rings. And then I read her readers’ comments.
Wow.
It was amazing to read such supportive, passionate defense of the folks in our profession. These people have our backs, y’all! They’re ready to kick ass and take names!
It’s humbling and heartening and just amazing to know that we red-headed stepchildren are valued and admired.
So while I deplore that Rachael was attacked by that JFMF (jerk-face mother frakker), I love that it gave me a chance to see the other side of the people who pay my salary. ‘Cause those folks rock. And it’s a privilege to work for them.
* seriously, though, I could use a raise.
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