SHARE YOUR STORY
Some things deserve to be said out loud.
Dispatchers carry stories most people will never hear.
The hard calls. The funny ones. The moments that stayed.
The things happening in our own lives while we were helping someone through theirs.
This is a place for those stories.
your name never has to shared.
It doesn't have to be a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Maybe it's something you're struggling with. Something that made you laugh. Something about this job-or your life outside of it- that you haven't known where to put. This is somewhere to put it.
YOUR STORY. YOUR CHOICE.
You decide how much of yourself you share.
01
Anonymous.
No name required. Ever.
02
Your Words.
Tell it the way you experienced it. It doesn't have to be polished.
03
Your permission.
Nothing gets share publicly unless you tell us it can be
FROM BEHIND THE HEADSET.
Stories from people who understand the chair.
Real stories from dispatchers, call takers, supervisors, and support staff who live it every day.
This community submission has been sitting in a dispatcher’s notes for years.
Maybe she didn’t have anywhere to put it then.
She does now.
911
We’re classified as secretaries, and I guess we are in a way.
We do file things almost each and every day.
But not in a cabinet, a folder or drawer.
The things that we file mean so much more.
They get filed deep down, in a box we don’t touch.
We try not to open it, or think about it too much.
It holds the cries of a mother whose baby won’t breathe.
The begging of a spouse who’s not ready to grieve.
The last gasp of a man who died all alone.
But I guess not really, we were there, on the phone.
The sounds of the shot that took someone’s life.
The voice of a man who just murdered his wife.
The loud thump of our hearts while we wait to hear,
The voice of our deputies ring in our ears.
The things left unanswered get jammed in there too.
Did we ask the right questions? Did we do all we could do?
We may not be there, our feet on the scene.
But we see the same things, in our minds I mean.
We work long shifts, away from our homes.
We miss holidays and birthdays to answer the phones.
We’re more than just secretaries. In each and every way.
We’re 911 dispatchers, here to help on your worst day.
—Mcay
You don't have to carry the whole story quietly.
You are more than the console.
