911

Emergency dispatching can be a very rewarding career. Aside from the fact that some (not all) agencies pay their dispatcher well, the satisfaction that one gets out of helping people can be a pleasing reward in itself.

There is always the good, the bad, the difficult, and even the boring at times. Sometimes one can feel more like a secretary or receptionist than a dispatcher. There are people who call often that you get used to hearing from, and some you would rather not deal with at times. You can get cussed quite often, rarely thanked for your help, and are always expected to know the answer to every problem. Prank calls happen occasionally and can be daunting. Often, you won’t know the result of a call until much later, if you find out at all. I’m not sure about other agencies, but ours is both the 911 center AND the non-emergency center. It can be a handful to juggle the two, and a lot of times people don’t know the difference between what is or is not an emergency.

A caller isn’t happy with what the officer told them? Chances are they will call back and take it out on the dispatchers before going to the officer’s supervisor. A caller gives false information or wastes a responder’s time? Guess who the officers are getting mad at.

There can also be tensity in the operating room itself. A little more than a handful of people all stuck in a basement room with limited space (9/10 being female in our case) and patience can run thin. One person may talk too loudly while another taps their nails on their desk, another person hums absentmindedly, and someone across the room flips through papers constantly. It can all become nerve-wracking when combined in an enclosed office space. It may be difficult to stay calm and not snap at one’s coworkers, or to not cry when someone snaps at you.

Then there are the call types themselves that can be hard to handle. As a dispatcher, one is expected to remain calm at all times, gather information, and to try to keep the caller calm as well when needed. [Again, I’m not sure about other agencies, but we are not allowed to give advice or tell a caller what to do for liability reasons.] The most difficult for me to deal with have been the suicidal callers and the calls that involve hurt children. The worst have been calls where one child intentionally hurt another child. I have had a call where one child ran over another’s foot with a lawn mower, and later found out the kid said it was because the other wouldn’t get out of the way. There was also a call where one child shot another child in the head (although why any parent would have a gun where a child could access it, or why the children weren’t being watched, I have no idea). Both of those calls involved children all under the age of 10. It was very hard to keep my own personal opinions and feelings out of my actions, let alone out of my voice.

Some people are built to handle the job, some are never cut out for it, but for others it takes a toll after a while and becomes stressful and draining. The latter is what happened to me. I didn’t always get along with the people I worked with, but I loved the job itself. Being a dispatcher wore away at my mental health and unfortunately became too difficult to deal with after we had a close death in our family; I was left with the only choice being to resign.