The Most Underrated Job

I love my job.

In any given day this job can be boring, overwhelmingly busy, heartbreaking, comical, or even terrifying. It can make you feel sick, happy, sad, frustrated or angry. This job can make you want to go home and celebrate a job well done, feel accomplished, it may make you want to hold your loved ones tight, or grab a bottle of whiskey and stare at the wall until sleep comes. It is not an easy job, nor for the faint of heart. But I love my job. I'm a a 911 dispatcher.

I've been dispatching for about ten years now. The things I've heard and the conversations I've had are things that will never leave me. I talk to people as they take their last breath, as they try to pump life back into the ones that they love; as they pull the trigger on themselves. I've heard screams from so many people in such terrible situations, and I'll hear them the rest of my life. I'll hear them scream while I try to sleep, while I do the dishes, while I'm on vacation, in the shower. I'll hear the cries the father who apologized over and over to his own son who gave him no choice but to shoot him during a physical fight, the screams of a mother who made it out of a house fire and realized one of her children was still inside; the screams of an officer yelling for help because his partner was just shot.

But I'll also hear the first cries of a baby after I've directed a caller on how to deliver a baby. I'll hear the laugh of relief from a mother who just brought her child back to life, the yelling of an officer calling out with a child that's been found alive after being missing for days. This is why I love my job. The good that you do will always outweigh the bad. People call you on their worst days, when they are scared, angry, alone. If you are a person with a passion for helping others, this is a job that will always be underrated.

Sure, it's not a regular 9-5 job with weekends off. You don't usually get to spend the holidays with your loved ones. You'll work nights and countless hours of overtime, you'll often have to hold over for hours after you were supposed to be home in your bed. But when you're able to talk a veteran into receiving help after he called to let you know he was going to kill himself, to send the police to find his body before his family does, it makes it all worth it. When you're able to get the police to the caller's home to save them from being beaten one more time, a responder to a house when someone needs CPR and they're able to get the patient breathing again, the fire department to their destination with complicated directions in time to save a home, it's worth it. Even if you never hear a single "thank you" in your entire career, it will forever be worth it. This is a job where you receive your own sense of accomplishment, your own appreciation, knowing that you helped save a life or help another person being when they truly needed it. For every bit of haunting this job causes you, there will be a heart warming to follow.

Whenever anyone asks me what I do for a living, people always tell me how they could never or would never want to do what I do. The truth is, it's the most underrated job.