“You just sit behind a desk with a headset, how stressful can your job really be?”

How stressed would you be if this was your daily shift?

A child calls 911.  “My mommy and daddy are melting. They won’t wake up.”  [Child’s parents have been murdered and are covered in their own blood, child is 4 and doesn’t know their location.]

A man, middle-aged: He tells you that he has a gun and he’s going to shoot himself.  You hear his wife in the background and his kids are crying.  You hear his wife ask “What are you doing!? NO!” and the sound of a gunshot. You hear the gunshot again. The kids have stopped crying.  The man is heard, and hangs up.  [Family murder and suicide.]

A woman in hysterics:  Her vehicle became stranded on the road. A man offered to help her, and instead abducted one of her small children.  The woman won’t calm down to give you pertinent information and becomes suicidal.

A man calls, young adult: You can hear scuffling and nothing else at first, and then the sounds of pain.  The caller manages to tell you he’s been shot.  You hear someone else in the room, and you stay on the phone while trying to get information from the caller and listen to his death rattles as he dies on the line. [Caller was shot by an intruder.]

A woman calls, elderly:  There is an intruder on her property. She sounds calm, a little confused as to why he’s there.  She doesn’t seem to know where she is. Suddenly she is heard screaming bloody murder, over and over, as he kills her on the line. Link to Call: (Very graphic, you hear her die.)

And then the plethora of calls like assaults, DUI, medical (where yes, sometimes they die as you walk them through what to do until EMS gets there.  It’s very easy to feel responsible for things you have no control of) angry complaints about burger king making their burger wrong, suicides…the list goes on and on.  And these can sometimes be daily occurrences depending on where you work. 

Dispatchers are also prone to PTSD due to exposure to listening to people dying from violence, health problems, accidents, auto accidents, and other things the 911 dispatcher must respond to on a sometimes daily basis.

And, most importantly, dispatchers carry on their shoulders their officer’s safety.  Knowing where they are, where they are going, if there is danger where they’re going, getting them the help they need immediately, and sometimes even listening to an officer be killed over the radio.

It is a harsh job and not meant for everyone, and nobody should ever say you are just “Sitting behind a desk with a headset on.”