911 Operator: "I don't give a S---"

911 Operator: "I don't give a S---"

www.newschannel5.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- When you call 911 you hope you're talking to someone who cares about what happens to you, but an exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation uncovered a shocking 911 emergency where the exact opposite happened.

Sheila: "I'm scared to even leave out my f***ing house."
911: "OK, ma'am, I updated the call. We'll get somebody there as soon as possible."
Sheila: [Hangs up.]
911: "I really just don't give a s**t what happens to you."

(visit the link for the full news article)

For my own peace of mind I'm going to assume this was a 911 operator with mental problems, but looking at it in the much larger scheme of things, is it possible these operators are being trained to be a bit more callous for other agendas?

www.newschannel5.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Uh oh, someone missed the mute button.

Nah, we see this kind of thing with Tech Support Agents all the time.
If you don't hit mute once in a while, and let a quick bit of steam off, you'd go mad dealing with so many frustrated and angry people.

I can only assume 911 operators have the same stress issues.

The only difference is, most call center agents, dispatch personnel, and phone counselors hit the mute button before cursing at you for being, well, rather infuriating.

This one simply missed the mute button, or assumed the Voice Recorder switched off once the line was dead.


Most call operators swear at you... you just don't know it.

I used to work at a 911 emergency services call center and I can say that nothing like this was ever said, even with the mute button on. In fact, swearing wasn't even allowed in the call center. If someone ever made a comment like this they would have been sent home for the day at the very least. But I guess not every operation is run so tightly. I think it's more indicative of a badly run call center than any sort of "agenda".

reply to post by johnsky


LOL. Yeah, I agree with you. Its probably a non-issue. 911 operators are just people like anyone else and this type of thing is probably rampant. How many of you say some rather unpleasant things about some of your customers in your line of work? Not much different here. Call centers and other jobs with high volumes of customer traffic are so stressful and so annoying that its a wonder that this doesn't happen more often.

I chuckled a bit at this article. Yup. John is right, someone missed the mic button.

Working on the phones is a tough time because normally they are busy and you are ending up talking for 8 hours straight with little to no break. Couple that with combative people, angry people, and others it's enough to drive one insane. I imagine at a high population city as a 911 phone support person, it'll be highly stressful and high volume.

I myself cuss when the phone is muted. The biggest complaint is mostly when people require me to turn my headset volume volume to the max because they are quiet. Then after the call I immediately get another call it blasts my ears off. Minor things like that build up over an 8 hour work day especially if you get yelled at the people you are suppose to be helping.

The only people who will make a big deal out of this, is people who never worked in a customer service related job.

I would lean towards the previous post. 911 dispatchers are under extreme stress, and it is not just in the busy cities anymore either. Old poorly working communications systems. Higher (much much higher) call volumes, less police to respond to calls. In smaller, rural systems a single 911 operator can be responsible for answering AND dispatching not just police, but throw in Fire and EMS to the mix.

I know of 911 operators who have run cardiac arrests, structure fires and traffic stops all at the same time. When this happens on a regular basis, and you throw in an abundance of false 911 calls, or calls for hang-nails, toothaches, and 'my neighbors dog is in my yard again'. You can begin to see where that 'mute' button comes in handy.

But I am in no way defending what this dispatcher did, even if he was just in the middle of extenuating circumstances (like not having any police to send at that moment) he picked the wrong time to vent.

911 operators are trained how to behave on the phone, hopefully if they are using a Priority Dispatch system with either cue cards or a computer aided system with cue cards, it tells you exactly what to say, what to ask and what to do. Every dispatcher I have come across in 20 years of EMS is dedicated to helping people and takes the professionalism of their job very seriously.

Sounds to me like there are several issues with this system, not just from the 'dispatch' side.

It's not a bad beat-up of a story. To put it my local context, it's the sort of thing A current Affair used to excel at, in fact they had it almost perfectly matching the script here...

What makes this investigation especially shocking is what one call taker said about the woman he was supposed to be helping.

Excellent set-up. Of course, we wait until 85% of the way through the story to find out what they said. Gotta build up that anticipation with some gory, B-movie woman-in-distress imagery...

"I felt danger, I felt threatened, and I felt fear. It was like I was seeing myself being dead that day," Sheila recalled.

"And you wanted help?" Phil asked.

"I wanted help," she answered.

You know, I can even hear the tone of voice in which Phil "asked" if Sheila wanted help. Why do these journalists have to tell their subjects how they felt?

anyway, back to the "shocking" statement made by the operator...

The worse part was what Sheila had not heard. The worst part was what the 911 call taker said after Sheila hung up the phone.

Right, (as others have pointed out) after Sheila had hung up. So Sheila didn't hear it. So it has no effect on Sheila, presumably...but let's listen to it anyway.

Sheila: "I'm scared to even leave out my f***ing house."
911: "OK, ma'am, I updated the call. We'll get somebody there as soon as possible."
Sheila: [Hangs up.]
911: "I really just don't give a s**t what happens to you."

"What kind of people have they got answering these phones?" Sheila asked. "He actually said that?"

"He actually said that," Phil assured her.

That's right, Phil, you had to assure her that he actually said that because Sheila had never heard it and it didn't in anyway change what the operator had already said to Sheila or the actions taken.

The report also fails in one major category: balance. The report is quick to tellus what was happening to Sheila, no, sheila tells us what was happening to her, but it doesn't have anything to say about what was going on in the call centre. It makes a two-line mention of the fact that the first operator phoned back to check on Sheila and a seven-word quote about the story's subject (Operator 2) from the Metro Police Chief. A guy who has probably never seen the inside of the 911 room.

Shoddy journalism that actually highlights the apparently shoddy treatment meted out to a 911 operator without highlighting the excellent performance of another 911 operator.

Filed under "The Ray Martin School of Journalism".

poor operators under stress. Aren't the people calling 911 under a lot of stress? I know I have a hard time being nice and calm and polite when I have to deal with an emergency. I'm blunt and to the point, sry if I don't say please and thank you.

They should have thicker skins.

Is there "posting stories for dummies" on ATS somewhere..anyways, heres my go and apologies if I goof this up lol

911 Reports Severe Shortage Of Dispatchers

"You have like a baby die on the phone with you, or you're giving CPR, or you have a tragic accident -- and a lot of people can't handle that," said Critese.

Source

The above story by WSMV in Nashville, Tn underscores the situation I mentioned in my post.

Its easy to say "they need thicker skin", well folks..big newsflash here but we ARE all human.

And from the sounds of it the Dispatchers they do have deserve some props for working under the conditions they are, more then likely doing a stellar job at it, and for pay that is probably a lot less then anyone deserves to get paid.

reply to post by johnsky


It was bad enough when I worked for BAA - I can't imagine the stress that 911 operators are under.

Luckily for me, I was management and didn't work the phones - but I've seen enough of it to know it happens every day.
Probably every minute come to that.

So yeah - it looks like someone was blowing off a bit of steam and didn't hit the mute button.

The voice is then picked up by the digital recorders that all contact centres have.

I'd be interested to know what happened to the operator - if they were fired, or disciplned etc.

It's a very bad lapse, but I think only a lapse.

Contact centres are like battery farms for hens, and in this instance are likely to be very stressfull environments - not an excuse, an observation.

If I was her boss, she/he would be getting some "re-training" pretty damn quick.

Mostly in how to use the buttons on the phone, and a follow up in customer care.

BTW johnsky - I don't think MOST operators swear at people.

I think ALL of them do

I saw this earlier when I was trawling through the news sites, but I didn't think to post it because the reasons seemed so obvious to me.

[edit on 14/5/2008 by budski]

reply to post by budski


No doubt!

I remember when I worked for a call center. We knew about the time they would stop listening to calls "for quality assurance", so we would try to be nice until then.

9/11 operators need to be a bit more patient, but I'm sure the job can be amazingly frustrating.

Manning the phones is a tough job. I did customer service in a call center for an office supply company. Not only did we have to deal with rude people all day long, but the performance evaluation standards were impossible to meet and supervisors were known to play favorites.

The best part was during the big UPS strike back in '97. 95% of our merch was shipped UPS. The day before the strike we were in a big meeting for the CS personnel and I asked the obvious:

"What about the UPS talks? Is there a plan in place in case they strike?"

My manager gave me an angry look like I had just slapped her with a steel gauntlet.

She said, "Don't worry about it. They always resolve these things at the last minute. We won't need a plan because there won't be a strike".

Next morning I woke up to the news. I walked in the door at work and it was utter pandemonium. My manager was saw me as she was running past to talk to the director, and blurted out "Don't say a G*d-Damned word!" I guess she was waiting for the "I told you so" I had no intention of saying.

The next six weeks were Hell on Earth. Even though shipments weren't being picked up at our docks, we were still filling them, and leaving them to sit. We tried local and alternate carriers we couldn't trace shipments with. Overall I estimate we lost at least a quarter million in merch just from "lost" shipments, and maybe even more from (justifiably) angry customers who never did business with us again--some of them fairly major regular clients. For another three months we were still cleaning up the mess, because even in the face of absolute disaster, the higher-ups refused to ease the rules regarding what could simply be credited and written off as a loss (given the uniqueness of the situation it would have been in the company's long-term interest to wipe the whole slate clean, make it up to our clients and start fresh).

Even today I work the phones in a different capacity, as a recruiter for a company that handles hiring for other companies. People call me looking for jobs--people who, frankly, should be kissing my ass in hopes of securing a position--and they are some of the rudest, nastiest, most demanding people I've ever talked to. I've spent half an hour with someone arguing with me about information we need them to provide so we can complete their background check, or why they essentially lied on their application about their credentials (my primary client is a major airline with very strict hiring requirements).

So yeah, I can sympathize with 911 operators letting off steam. Manning phones sucks big-time and there's very few people doing it who get paid enough for the crap they take.

A popular misconception is that contact centres only record SOME calls - like they did before digital recording.

Fact is, most of them record all the calls, and then pick a few at random to test for QC.

Each call handler will have a folder where all their calls get recorded automatically and each call will be date and time stamped, which is done via a system like lucent CMS or similar, when it comes through the call centre computer "switchboard" and is routed to an individual handler according to skill sets in many cases.

So beware - ALL calls are recorded, not the "some calls may be recorded for training purposes"
Your number is also logged and time and date stamped when you call one of these places.

What has this got to do with the topic?

The 911 contact centre WILL have the original recording - unless they saw the news and deleted it.

I dont think I have seen anyone ask this but why did it take 3 hours to get a cop out there? If this call was going on for 3 hours on and off where was the men in blue.....

reply to post by budski




You just reminded me of my favorite phone call.

A woman had been escalated twice to a supervisor, and I was the last tier she could get to. Basically, I was a "No" bot.

So this woman got internet service from us and forgot about it and was paying for it for over a year. Used it a few times and forgot about it. The most I was able to give back was a couple months.

She was freaking out about it. She said, "My husband and I build barns. If we promised to build a barn and never did it, we'd have to refund it for them."

I saw the glaring hole in her little analogy and jumped in.

I said, "Yeah, but what if you built the barn, and then they never used it. Would you refund their money then?"

Let's just say, she didn't argue much after that.

reply to post by Quarantine


I'm not sure that this is such a big deal. The 911 operator gets calls all day long, and sometimes repeat calls. I can understand their frustration and need to vent. They never know what's on the other end of the call they are picking up and they have to be prepared for anything from a drowning infant to a murder to a baby being born in an elevator.

The emotional lows, I'm sure, are more common than the emotional highs. So once the caller hangs up, I think venting is not only common but probably called for.

You need two units to perform a traffic stop? Jesus Christ.

Its almost at the point where the traffic stops have the most emphasis put on them by cops. Like thats the only reason they're employed; to "serve and protect", is to perform the traffic stop.

It looks like some fear instilling campaign. They can't spark fear in you from your house, so they do it while you're out on the road.

All the while someone is being threatened with a knife.

Yep. Thats what I call serving and protecting!

Serving the people traffic tickets and protecting the financial interests of the state.

Originally posted by NovusOrdoMundi
You need two units to perform a traffic stop? Jesus Christ.

Its almost at the point where the traffic stops have the most emphasis put on them by cops. Like thats the only reason they're employed; to "serve and protect", is to perform the traffic stop.

I asked a guy I play hockey with about this. He told me it's because of two reasons; In his particular county (no I'm not naming it) the police are solo-one cop per car, having another officer at a stop often diffuses things before they have a chance to heat up, and it allows the original officer some additional safety. The second reason is: More money. The second, third and other additional cars can qualify for overtime by assisting the arresting officer.

If people would start taking responsibility for themselves and protect there selfs instead of waiting on government then we wouldn't hear this crap. 911 operators are just people who probably really don't give a sh@t about you but need to make money anyway they can. I hope I teach my girls "who are little now" to take care of themselves and to carry a gun, knife and know when and how to use them. To many boyfriends are killing their girlfriends or ex and if my kids don't do what they need to do to protect themselves then I'll have to do it. So mine are gonna know.