Starry-Eyed

I know that there are stars in my eyes that might not always be there.

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The other day, I took a call meant for another town. That can happen for a variety of reasons, but most commonly it's because a cellular signal bounces from one of the two towers in our town. The system that routes cellular calls to the appropriate PSAP makes a mistake, accidentally sending it to us. It can also happen if the town we're a backup for doesn't answer it in time and it gets automatically "rolled over" to our town. 

That sort of thing happens a lot, and it's not really a big deal. We just take a note of the location and the callback number, then transfer it on over to the correct town. 

As a dispatch junkie, I always find it a bit disappointing when an interesting call finally comes in on a dull night, only for it to go to somebody else. It makes me feel like an old-school telephone operator, which, while neat, is not the vibe I signed up for.

But I'm also young and fresh on the job. After all, I've only been a dispatcher for like, six or seven months, and only on my own for about two.

After I initiate the transfer, I usually introduce the call: "Hey, (their town), it's (my town), I've got a 9-1-1 caller out of (address) reporting a (situation). Caller, go ahead." Then I mute myself, but I don't disconnect until I'm sure that everything goes smoothly. 

This time wasn't too much different, except I had made a mistake and started toning out the call to our EMS before I realized the address was over the town line.

Fortunately, the dispatcher in the town it was meant for had been listening to the scanners in their office, so she had heard my tone. Realizing it was meant for them, before I'd even gotten the call transferred over, she was already starting EMS response. 

That dispatcher had been doing this for years, I'd guess. After I transferred the call over, I muted myself and listened. 

"My mother is having a stroke," the caller said, his voice shaky and crackling. 

"I know, sir," the dispatcher said. "I've already started help." 

"Please hurry," he moaned. 

Now her tone shifted. "Sir, I said I'm working on it," she snipped. "I'm here alone, you know." 

This made me pause. Of course she was there alone. Small-town departments are often single-seat PSAPs, which means that during a single call, a dispatcher is in charge of starting help, providing pre-arrival medical instructions, communicating with response units, entering the call into the computer, and quite possibly also making phone calls to other agencies in search of resources their town might not have available to send. All of this she was now dealing with alone.

But the caller didn't care that she was alone. What he cared about was his mother, who was currently having a stroke. As often happens in moments of crisis, his perception of time was slowing down, which meant he was feeling every moment without an ambulance as if it were a lifetime. To him, the fact that the person on the other end of the 9-1-1 phone call was working alone didn't matter. All that mattered was that, in his mind, he'd been on the phone for a long time, and still there wasn't an ambulance outside. 

I see a lot of clips or compilation videos on YouTube showing rude, apathetic, or unprofessional call-takers. As somebody who cares deeply about my job, these are hard to watch. It's upsetting at best, and at worst, downright heartbreaking. Somebody is calling you because they need help, and the best you can manage is "I'm here alone"?

It's not entirely fair to blame the dispatcher for being burnt out. After all, her job-- our job-- is hard.

In 2022, a study was done by a consultant working for the U. S. Department of Labor ranking occupations by stress. Emergency telecommunications was listed as the seventh most stressful job in the United States. PSAPs all over the nation are experiencing strain: low retention and even lower recruitment means ubiquitous staffing issues, and even amidst a global push for mental health reform, there is still something to be said for the emotional toll that such stress can take. 

Michelle Perin wrote in an article for Officers.com about the three ways that dispatch stress manifests. 

The first is "compassion fatigue," a popular term for the emotional exhaustion that "carers" (as she describes those who care for others for a living) experience. 

There is also "Vicarious Trauma," which she says "creates a profound shift in world view for the carer." 

Lastly, she explains "burnout," which can often be a point of no return for first responders.

Most of us get into this job because we want to make a difference. We love what we do, and many dispatchers I know wouldn't want to do anything else. That also goes for a lot the cops I work with, many of my EMT friends, and nearly every firefighter I know. And yet, more LEOs and firefighters die by suicide than on the job.

I remember once at Reg, there was a tarp that fell across a stretch of  highway passing through several of our towns. Concerned passers-by called by the dozens, all reporting the rather benign traffic hazard. 

Each caller we handled the same way: we've already advised State Police, they're working on getting the highway department to take care of the tarp, can I please have your name and number for our records? I put each caller in, per protocol, as the list of reporting parties got longer and longer. 

Between calls, I turned to one of the trainers, a cranky older man whose sense of humor consisted mostly of bitching about work. 

"Do you think we could temporarily change our greeting?" I asked him. "Something like: 9-1-1, this line is recorded, where is your emergency-- and if you're calling about the tarp, WE KNOW, get a damn hobby or something?"

He threw his head back and laughed harder than I'd seen him laugh yet. 

"Finally!" he cackled. "I was wondering when you'd get here with the rest of us."

By "here," I think he meant "to this place where the stars in your eyes don't shine quite so bright." Was I really there? I thought not. After all, I still jumped for the phone each time it rang, still felt a thrill of excitement with each emergency call I got to handle.

Older and more experienced dispatchers often tell me that the longer you work this job, the harder it is to maintain that thrill. The stars fade, and that rosy tint in your glasses turns a bloodier shade of red. It infects the way you see the world, and each passing year makes it harder to maintain the levels of compassion you might've started out treating every caller with. After a while, it gets harder and harder to care.

That thought terrifies me. More than anything else I've heard, more than anything I've witnessed or heard about. The idea of becoming apathetic scares me to my core. 

Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe I'll be more like Gabe, who, after fifteen years in the field, still sounds like a kid on Christmas morning every time he gets called out for response. Maybe I'll never fall out of love with the things I write about now with such enthusiasm and joy.

But more than likely, I too will fade with time. My experiences will weigh on me, and one day I might wake up to find that I too have lost the stars in my eyes. That's one of the main reasons I keep this diary. Every time something excites me, I want to write about it, to capture on a page that sense of wonder. 

I write it all down so that maybe, one day, when I wake up feeling weighed down by everything I carry, haunted by the things I can't leave behind when I go home, it's all here. I can pick up these pages and reread the perspective of a young, wide-eyed "baby dispatcher" all of the exciting and wonderful things about my job. Maybe having it immortalized, even just as an anonymous blog, will sustain me when things are no longer shiny and new. 

And who knows? Maybe someone else can benefit, too. A dispatcher of twenty five years, someone who once was like me but has since outgrown the reason they got into the field, will find it, just by chance, and discover a new or forgotten perspective. Like a long-married couple looking through their wedding album, remembering why they first fell in love, maybe they will find it in them to renew their vows to the job.

I can't fix the systemic problems underlying the criminal justice or healthcare systems. I can't change the past or erase whatever happened to sour emergency responders against their careers. But I can write about what I love. And maybe, just maybe, that might help make a difference for somebody.

For works cited, see here.