Who are you tonight?

They used to laugh a me because I would call on the radio and no one know if I was in a patrol car, ambulance, 911, emergency room, with the tribal department or the county department.  It was a joke and they called me Ms. 911.

I was in a grocery store once and was talking to someone and I kept seeing this lady staring at me for a long time. I was thinking she was upset that I had the company car running around town spending her tax money as many thought that. Well I was a volunteer, we got no tax money for our department and I was buying supplies for the department.  Finally I looked at her and said "is there something I could help you with?"  She said "I hear your voice and I think I know you but when I look at you, you don't look familiar. I laughed and said "do you have a scanner?"  She said "OMG you are Linda".   Scanner land is the most listened to radio station if all 50 states. My voice was known by most people. I have a bad habit even to this day of calling a business or a person and not telling them who I am as they know my voice. The problem being I have been out of it for over 11 years and not everyone knows me anymore.

Being a dispatcher you must listen to several conversations at once and talk to people in each conversation at once. The first time being a scatter brain ever helped me...lol  Anyway it makes for a habit of being rude to people when I am talking to them I am also listening to the conversations around me and adding to their conversations and people think I am not listening or interested in what they are saying.  Once when a friend got mad at me for not listening I asked them if they wanted me to repeat what they said word for word. They said I couldn't. I repeated the conversation to them and instead of making it better they said "that really %$&%^ me off, how can you do that?" and walked out.

All the dispatch centers I worked for had one person in dispatch except rare occasions so the 911 person is the same person as the business line person.  We have at least 6 phones lines, radios for police, fire, ambulance, alarms, doors etc that all have to be monitored while we deal with the calls and people at the window and officers in the office. We don't get to tell them to go away because what someone needs is important and they need it to do their job. It is a hectic busy lifestyle like no other. I laugh when I read in the paper about someones job stress level in a study as they person had to deal with 50 calls per shift...ha ha, sometimes we deal with 50 phone calls per wreck.  We get 100 calls per shift and many of them are life and death calls.  I really don't think even most officers understand the pressure of being in dispatch. You put a police officer on a 911 desk by himself and he will be screaming for help.  It is the hardest by far job I have ever done and one of the most rewarding.