Being the only female on the shift stinks!

out of the 17 dispatchers we have, 2 of us are female.. I am stuck on nights, the other one is lucky and is on days... on the overnight shift we can watch TV, and the shift leader "controls" the tv 2 days a week that is me (alt shift leader) I am usually nice and say you guys can watch whatever, since I dont' really care, but there are times, like tonight when I am stuck watching something I really don't like.. ie, the John Wayne marathon on AMC and on Christmas yet.. shooting and bombing, not exactly the Christmas spirit, ya know....... oh well, that is what I guess for being too nice! My gift to the guys, shoot um ups haha brianna

We generally don'****ch anything but news with closed captioning on our set at work (which they only allowed us after 9/11), but on the holidays sometimes they will let us watch a movie quietly. It's either on Fox news (ugh....so sick of Fox news) or sports when one of the guys commandeers the controls. I should grab that remote and switch it to HGTV one of these days! Dina

Normally day shift isn't able to watch tv at all, not even the news (unless there is some major event happening) they can watch on weekends and holidays . The 'rule" is, after 8:00 pm, it can be turned on, and it pretty much stays on until 7:30am, when day shift starts rolling in. we even have a vcr/dvd player, so it helps pass the time.. if you are in to tv and movies and when I am at work, I am not that into it (I have odd tastes, so no one wants to watch what I do) oh well... brianna

They leave the news on closed captioning 24/7 where I work but only because of national security issues. When 9/11 happened we were trying to pull in local news on rabbit ears in order to hear what was going on. Generally we don't venture far away from that but on the weekends sometimes the guys will turn it on sports. We rarely ever turn the volume up though - too much going on for that either day or night. We will if there is a news story related to our department or something important though. And then, like I said, on holidays when it is really dead they will let us watch a Christmas movie or something. Now there was ONE time a few years ago where it was really really dead on night shift and the supervisor on shift let us watch a Carol Burnett marathon on TV Land. That was kind of fun, but more of something we knew we couldn't usually get away with. I have to say I kind of think while it was fun, at least for our center it would be too much background noise and possibly too distracting for some that I think it's probably best not to have the volume up. You never know when the s*** will hit the fan, and sometimes you just can't react quickly enough to get the volume down before it interferes. Dina

we usually keep the volume low enough that radios and phones can easily be heard over it.. when I was on days I had no problem not having it on, even on weekends, I kind of liked it not on, because you are right, you never know when it is going to hit the fan.. now 4-12 shift is their own animal, I cannot stand workig that shift becuase they have it turned up so loud, and you are right, they don't get it down fast enough when something happens (but our 4-12 shift is a mess anyway, all the guys who work it have bad attitudes and seem like they just don't care), but that is another story most nights on overngihts, we are lucky to get 4 ambulance calls, and the cops might do a traffic stop or two, if there is no inclement weather.. one drawback (??plus??) to living and working in a small county.. population 120,000 at last count Brianna