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You’ve worked as a Public Safety Telecommunicator for over five years. Congratulations, you have now beaten the odds and made it past the average time a dispatcher stays in the profession. Chances are, you’ve hit a few bumps along the way but you picked yourself up and muddled through the storm. 

I am curious, why did you stick with the job? Since I can’t ask everyone I meet, I have given my ‘top ten reasons why I keep right on dispatching”. Is your list similar to mine? My explanations may not fit yours. I try to keep a sense of humor about my job, and my life. There are times when a little laughter is all that keeps me from loosing it. Agree with me or not, here is my top ten excuses / reasons/ crutches/ for still clutching on to my job as a Public Safety Dispatcher (my official job title).

The list is in reverse order:

10) It’s a steady job. Well sure it is. Fire departments may run with volunteer firefighters, but have you ever heard of an on-call police department? No one shift is the same and I do love variety. I could work as a Pharmacy Technician, but counting pills is tedious and I'd have to be on my feet all day. 

9)  Pay and benefits. This goes hand-in-hand with the steady job. My medical co-pay for my family has risen each year. The way my paycheck keeps shrinking, I can see the day when I’ll be paying to do my job and by the way, I pay taxes, too! If I had to pick between decent pay & benefits and decent management, I’ll taken the management over the pay. At least they listen to us and even act on our suggestions. I do wish our department could convince the State to abolish the furloughs.  

8) The dating pool. Where else do you find like-minded people to go out with? Face it folks, the nine-to-five crowd doesn’t get us and never will. The way I saw it, my only chance at a long-term relationship was to find a man in the profession. We knew what the other was going through on bad days, shared excitement for the good ones, and didn’t stress over working on nights, weekends, and/or holidays. How could an accountant really understand the stress of dealing with simultaneous in-progress calls while working short-handed AND dealing with trainees? Nothing in his day could remotely compare. Accountants don’t deal with life and death. We do. Who else can sit with me and make fun of the 'Monsoon Morons' on the news? He doesn't get offended at my dark humor, nor I at his.

7) I get to talk with nice people on the phone. Remember when we were teenagers and loved to talk on the telephone about nothing all day? Now I'm are paid to be on the phone. Oh, and some of the callers are not very pleasant and a small percentage need to have their mother’s hand them a bar of Lux soap to stick on their mouths. Seriously, get creative with the English language and tell me off with a twenty-letter word that doesn’t end in ‘er’. Buy a dictionary or thesaurus. Oh, this is also why I don’t like being on the phone when I not at work and especially won’t use a Bluetooth! My husband was opening a new cell phone once and handed me the earphone cord. He laughed when I threw it at him. No headsets at home. Period.

6) There is a lot of interesting reading material as part of my job. Do you know who your neighbors really are? Yes, you to can go to the internet and check for sex offenders, but that is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The rap sheets of some people are thicker than a James Michener novel. That’s not to say that I can randomly run inquiries on my neighbors: that’s forbidden by the Powers That Be. I can only do these checks for official purposes, but I do read them when I do.  Tonya Harding and friends would have field day with most of the folks we deal with. Talk about dumb criminals.

5) I get to tell cops, firemen, and paramedics what to do. I’m basically a control freak. Hey, what dispatcher isn’t? Having power over what field units do with their time is a rush. Am I on an ego trip? No, I’m thinking more along the lines of a conductor in a symphony. Sure, the musicians can play without the guy with the thin stick but they sound a thousand times better when he leads them, coordinates the sounds (activities), and even fixes to occasional goof. Sure, the guys & gals are good-natured and do a great job. They will mess with us a bit, in good fun, but when it's time to be serious, we all take care of one another. I won't go home if one of 'my' units is still out there. I don't rest until he or she is code 4 (secure).

4) I like handling ‘hot calls’. I love that adrenaline rush when an in-progress call (event) comes in. There is no better drug than adrenaline. Let’s face facts, our heart rate speeds up, we get excited, and high-five co-workers when the event ends on a positive note. In that respect, we’re no different from the field personnel. In my earlier days, I loved handling working fires, in-progress calls with suspects, and pursuits. I loved it when we caught the suspect. I felt like I’d done my job and was part of the team. No one can multi-task like a dispatcher. No, I like an easy shift. The days of crazy demonstrations, riots, disasters, and mayhem are over if I have any choice. Well, maybe an occasional in-progress poaching call where we catch the bad guy is okay.

3) I’m in the ‘know’ about the big crimes or tragedies before the media even finds out. We find out and tell each other what is going on faster than The Flash can ran around the World. I can’t say how many times a member of the press has called wanting information that I was told not to say a word about, or officially had ‘no comment’ on when we really had a wealth of data. There's nothing worse than being the last to know about a crime spree, especially within your own department. I never cared for talking to the press. That's not a problem now thanks to a very responsive Press Officer.

2) Seniority. Life is a pain in the neck when you’re at the bottom of the totem pole in dispatch. As you start to move up, the sky goes from Los Angeles hazy brown to neutral to a gorgeous blue. From the top you get a fantastic view of the sunrises and sunsets, but that does take a while. Nothing is better than having a choice in shift hours and days off. Seniority gets you better vacation picks as well. We all dream of the time when we are in the magical, mystical top 5% of the crew, and maybe even the #1 position. I am right in the middle, which gives me choices. Selection is good.

1) My co-workers. Although there are days when we can irritate the hell out of each other, I do work with a good bunch of men and women. We have one another’s backs. I know if I call another local agency, I can get help or information. Dispatchers are good folks. We offer a place to stay when another’s house burns down. We have fund-raising to help pay for medical bills. When a disaster hits, we’re there for our companions: hence the development of the Telecommunicator Emergency Response Team (TERT) concept now enacted across the country. Dispatchers are part of SWAT as Tactical Dispatchers, wildland fire response in Incident Management Teams (IMT), and provide medical instruction in many agencies via Emergency Medical Dispatching (EMD). Most of all, we watch over out law enforcement, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel every shift come heat, cold, or rain. We laugh, yell, hold our breath, and cry with you. Our best part of the shift is when the field personnel get to go home at the end of their shift and the worst part is when they don’t.

What are your top-ten reasons?

Stay safe out there!!