Outta practice.

Recent changes in "quality control" have produced some new procedures for dispatcher ratings/reviews.  Coming from a company where a lot of what we did was monitored for revenue purposes, I wasn't a stranger to someone listening in and wasn't phased by the extra ear on the line.

Our supervisors are essentially restricted from assisting on the radio or phones unless we are slammed, which begs the question, how can you adequately and correctly rate performance when you are no longer equipped to do the job and are out of practice?

Shouldn't the supervisor rating you know how to do the job?  Know how to run the radio system?  Know how to correctly and succinctly enter call information, be it emergency or delayed reports. While no one expects the perfection and speed of a veteran dispatcher, there should be a certain level of competency.

No one disagrees that there has to be a certain degree of separation between levels for reasons of impartiality and enforcing discipline when clear violations of policy occur.

While so much of what we do is set in stone, i.e., number of units per type of call, send or phone call, code 3, etc., when the situation is unique, how is a write up determined?  Are we working on the whim of the supervisor and what if there is any existing personal bias.  One supervisor may disagree with what was your course of action and handle it one way where another may find little or no fault and simply pass on a few words of advice.

Lets say there was a revolt and the whole room got up and walked out (an almost non-existent chance this would happen but for shits and giggles lets say it did).  What would happen to the city, the citizens, the calls entered and retained in the CAD system?

As you 'monitor" me and add it to my running file and possibly put a negative mark in there, should I be confident in knowing that you're being accurate if you don't know how to do the job yourself anymore?  

911, It's MY emergency!

I had an episode recently that brought me to the realization that I am a much more effective dispatcher than caller as I had to make my own call to the good folks at my local 911.

I'll spare you the details but in summary, I was blindsided and surprised.  Apparently neither the flight or fight reaction was working because I sucked at both.

The only concrete thing I managed to get out that sounded semi-decent was my address, which only confused her further when I told her what agency I worked for because it's a waaaaays away from where I live. 

I've come to realize that I handle the emergencies of others much better than my own. Give me a messy suicide or shooting anytime.....at least the words I spit out would have had some sense of organization.

Oh well.....better luck next time.

But I loooooooove him!

"I don't want him to get in trouble, I just want him to leave."

Too bad, shouldn't have called us then.  Enough of the hysterical screaming which makes me think you are really in danger and you can't even tell me where you are.

There really is a difference between someone having a weapon on their person and pointing it in your direction.  It's not illegal to carry or wear, think twice before your lying, sorry ass tells me that he held it up to your head and threatened to pull the trigger.

While I can understand the fear in the minds of many domestic violence victims, disgruntled wives or pissed off girlfriends, if you don't want the end result to be your baby's daddy cuffed and hauled off to jail then don't call the police.

In a state like mine, participation of the victim is not required to prosecute. The officer, regardless of your pleas, will arrest whether or not you agree.

Don't want help?  Handle it yourself.

Last call.

I've only had one real call bring me to big tears.....and that person ended up surviving.  He wasn't supposed to, but he did.  There's been many calls that I still dredge over in my mind and wonder if I could have done something different but it takes a lot to shake me up. I was fairly new with that one tear jerker, not the hardened old fart dispatcher that I am now. 

In a recent call, a newly released dispatcher needed to leave the room for a while and later in the evening spent some time with one of our crisis counselors who happened to be in the building.  It's one thing to tell a dispatcher that she couldn't have done anything different to change the outcome, it's another to get her to believe it. 

We're supposed to be stoic and robotic and move on to the next 'customer', if you will.  

It's not necessarily that easy when you're the last person to ever speak to the caller. 

Verbal tug of war.

There's a saying I keep in mind that goes "speak your mind, even if your voice shakes."

It was something I kept in mind a couple of years ago as I stood my ground on an issue at work when confronted by a supervisor.  While it was a situation where I was undoubtedly 100% in the right and he was all wrong (by anyone's standards) it was a verbal smackdown where I took a stand and a risk.  I stood my ground, gained the respect and attention of my co-workers and the supervisor stepped back.  In a case that would have passed the headline test in my favor, a second supervisor actually thought I should have been disciplined.

Dare I tempt the knock on wood Gods and say it out loud but I haven't been screwed with since.

I'm by no means the best performing dispatcher in the room.  While I think I rank up there pretty high, I make mistakes like everyone else.  Are they just slipping under the radar and are marginally significant or have I pushed the buttons enough where you're not going to bother with fruitless shit that won't fly?

There's certainly a line to be drawn between sticking up for yourself at work and pushing your luck so far as to be insubordinate.  At what point though does a dispatcher get fed up with micromanaging and bitchiness where they say enough is enough and stand up to the perp in the room?  Mine was a couple of years ago and I won, both in the court of public (dispatcher) opinion and in policy.


Do the right thing, even when no one is watching, but when they are watching, stand up for yourself like there's no tomorrow.

And as the saying goes.........speak your mind even when your voice shakes.  Win or lose, you'll be happy you did.

May CSI and the like be damned for the misinformation.

"What's taking them so long???  If they had broken the door down, I would have already been dead before the officers got here!!  Are they coming?  When are they going to get here???""

Words of wisdom spoken by someone not in the police business but independently wealthy as a result of the estate of her late husband, an unnamed older singer with many hits.....one of whom I've had now stuck in my head for the last two days.

It was a normal "Clear Residence" call of which at least 90% are closed with a finding of no suspicious subject and/or no crime.  She wasn't putting together the correlation of living in B.F.E and the officers having to respond to other areas.  I stayed with her on the line as she requested until the officers arrived. I explained that they were coming from farther south due to several incidents of emergency traffic and that it wasn't their intent to dawdle.

My officers were going fast, just as they usually do.  This wasn't emergency traffic, but priority.  Still worthy of an expedited response but not bad enough for some blue and red lights and my boys hanging their heads out the window yelling "woo-woo-woo."

What I wanted to tell her that had someone actually come through the door we would have really floored it with lights and sirens.  That wouldn't have gone well on the playback should there have actually been a crime or a supervisor happened to be observing. 

Police response is something that most folks understandably don't understand.  With the advent of police and crime scene shows, patrolling has evolved into momentary response times with apprehension and crime scene processing in less than an hour.

Frankly it's just impossible for us to complete the job as quickly as some places can make your eyeglasses. We're getting there as fast as we can.  And believe me, this business about staying on the phone with you until they arrive is more painful for me then it is for you lady......

525,600 minutes....that's how you measure a year.

Fifty-two forty hour weeks, plus or minus some overtime and vacation.

Every year I do this I get a little more cynical and sarcastic, all the while picking up new skills and knowledge even after this many years in the business.

This job causes you to take a pretty dim view of most of humanity.  Be it working the radio or phones, upwards of 98% of the things you hear involve someone getting in trouble or someone troubled by something.

Each day brings another shift of uncertainty.  Will this be another call I must listen to where nothing I will say can console the distraught person?  Will this be the day that one of my officers gets hurt, or the unthinkable.....and killed? 

I talk to nice people, but except for the rare citizen calling solely for the purpose of offering up a commendation, the calls come in day after day, pretty much only because someone is having a bad day, getting screwed or being victimized.

Have to wonder what kind of a person signs up willingly for a job like this.  I must admit though that the pay is good, we are compensated well and have fantastic benefits as compared to people who get down to the nitty gritty in their jobs and are not afforded the luxuries of a comfy office.

I never wanted to work when I had children.  Having not had that option like most people my age, in this day and age, this is where I will finish out my working years.

I gripe, I complain, I disagree with a good deal of what is orchestrated as procedure but, who doesn't really?  None of us want to go to work, we're there for that bi-weekly checking account deposit.

Truth be told, if I had to toss a coin between this and my old job, I would hope the flip would end up exactly where it is now.  I switched from handling minor complaints to ones that were mostly legitimate as a dispatcher.

It could be a lot worse and I wouldn't have it any other way.  It was a good year.