Training the new girl

I love new dispatchers and their reactions to different things.  We had one dispatcher that was as tickled as anyone I have ever seen about getting the job. She had listened to the scanner for years and wanted so bad to be a dispatcher and talk to the officers.

She started training and did really well remembering things. She tried really hard to do a good job but her goal still remained to talk on that radio. She kept saying “when do I get to talk on the radio?”  I told her to practice reading a license plate back to the officer and when she could do it correctly I would let her read it back on the air.

She learned her radio codes and the words for the alphabet letters and was ready. She reminded me of the little kids at Christmas just waiting for an officer to run a plate.

In those days you had a mike that sat on the desk and you pressed the button at the bottom and talked.

For some reason that day traffic was slow but finally an officer called and wanted a plate ran.  I ran it on the computer and handed her the print out to read back to the officer. She grinned from ear to ear and took a breath, pushed the mike, opened her mouth and FROZE. She could not talk and she would not remove her finger from the mike where I could pull it over and talk. I finally had to pry her fingers off the mike and read it back.

She was in tears!  She wasn’t going to get to be a dispatcher, wrong. I told her it was like stage fright and that first time is hard sometimes. 

She went on to being a very good dispatcher and loved her job. That is the one and only time she ever froze about anything. She was fast and accurate and always loved the job she always wanted