It's thankless but somehow I still love it.

Most people have a general idea of what 9-1-1 dispatchers do. Somewhere there is an emergency, someone dials 9-1-1, and the dispatcher answers and sends help….Simple right? I wish. No, nothing is ever simple when it comes to dealing with people, especially when they need help.

They expect you to push a button and solve their particular problem. You may not know where they are. They may not know where they are. They may be sick, injured, angry, crying, belligerent, insane, mentally challenged, hysterical, high, drunk or dying. They may speak like they have a mouth full of marbles…”mush mouths” we call them. As an English speaking dispatcher, you must be fully capable of understanding different dialects of English like Redneck or Ebonics. (For those of you who think those aren’t separate dialects complete with their own vocabulary, pronunciations and grammar, you’re sadly mistaken.) They may be able to do nothing but wet their pants and scream at the top of their lungs into the phone and expect you to decipher from their blood curdling shrills their location and nature of the emergency. It’s amazing to me how many people in this world can absolutely lose all of their faculties when confronted with an emergency. They instantly become useless, blubbering idiots, totally incapable of controlling or helping themselves, much less anyone else. Equally amazing to me is the high percentage of people who walk around every day having absolutely no clue where in the hell they are. They may know how to get where they are going but to tell you where they currently are…not a chance. Most people can’t even tell north from south. As if fate had a sense of humor, these are always the people that call 9-1-1. For this reason, a dispatcher must be intimately familiar with their entire jurisdiction…geographical geniuses, if you will.

Multitasking is probably the most essential ability required of a dispatcher. One must be able to give patient information to responders on the radio for one incident, while typing notes from another incident. They must be able to simultaneously take one call while finishing the narrative of another, and looking up the location to yet another in a map. Try talking about one thing while typing a complete thought about another. It’s tougher than you think. Their short term memory must be excellent. They must be able to remember to make that notification to the Highway Patrol or Power Company after the rush slows down, which may be 10 phone calls later. You may be working three channels at one time. Someone can call you on one channel, and while you are answering them someone calls you on another. Now you have two conversations going simultaneously. While you are communicating with one unit, the other unit is delivering important information that must be absorbed and properly disseminated. Trust me…it’s an art, not a science.

Twelve hour shifts take their toll on the mind and body. We have no regularly scheduled breaks. That’s right, public safety is exempt from what the department of labor requires of other industries. You eat while you work. Because of this, management is quite flexible on unscheduled breaks. Smokers get the most breaks. Needing a cigarette is like needing to go to the bathroom. Apparently it’s a good reason to have to leave the room. I don’t smoke so the only breaks I get in twelve hours of work are those involving the restroom…usually 3 minutes or less. Down times, or periods of inactivity require nothing more than you manning your post. So it’s hard to complain because those times may be spent reading, watching a muted television or having a personal conversation with a coworker. These times of inactivity usually don’t last long but inevitably they are the times when visitors enter the room. Firefighters and Medics come in and see you doing absolutely nothing and form the unfair opinion that that is all you do. They of course have no room to judge. Anyone who has ever walked in a firehouse and seen 5 firefighters kicked back in lazyboys, sleeping or watching their big screen TV could vouch for that. Medics at an outlying post spend much of their day in a similar fashion. They often fail to piece together the simple puzzle that if they are busy so are you.

But dispatching involves no immediate threat or hazard to life or limb so they are often viewed or treated as the redheaded stepchildren of public safety…no doubt an integral and essential part but less the glamour and recognition. Some Medics and Firefighters can come across as snobbish, high maintenance primadonnas whose egos constantly require stroking. Certainly not all of them are like that. Most of the those types are rather new to the job. Occasionally they will literally strut in and strike a pose in all of their tactical gear and expect some kind of hero worship almost like they assume that we all somehow aspire to get out of the radio room and into an ambulance or fire truck. Most of us have years of field experience and, having been there done that, are not easily impressed. Their higher pay and fatter retirement benefits add fuel to the belief that they are somehow higher ranking than we are. As far as EMS is concerned, the smart medics know that we actually manage their work load and could make their day absolutely miserable if we chose to. We could easily control the difference between, say.... 6 transports and 12 transports. I've always got plenty of non-emergency BLS transfers to spare that I can put on a particular pain in the ass crew. Or I can purposely leave a central post wide open for them...knowing they won't sit there long. It usually doesn't take long for the rookies to learn.

So why do this thankless job? Well it certainly isn’t the paycheck. It’s most definitely not the glory or recognition. (If a dispatcher makes the headlines you can bet it’s because he or she screwed up.) I do it for several reasons but the most significant is the satisfaction of knowing that I do an important job that not many people can do and that at least once a day (usually more) I make a difference in some person’s life. Whether they recognize it or not, I do. At the end of the day, somehow that’s enough. It’s a constant reality check as well. I take less for granted. I look both ways two, maybe three times before pulling into traffic. I spot and scrutinize suspicious people more thoroughly. I monitor more closely the whereabouts of my children. I take every opportunity to tell them I love them because I know first hand that tomorrow may not come. It keeps my feet firmly planted on the ground. My personality has a natural tendency to forget such things, and I need the constant reminder.