Dina, I can see your points on officer safety being a need for the checks.. our officers are bad at doing all kinds of things without telling us what they are doing or where they are, which is scary. but that is all day, not just overnights. Being in a small county, we tend to think bad things don't happen, but we all know that is wrong. In this field you just never know. I am glad we don't have to deal with the attitude of having to do the checks, but not knowing if everyone is o.k. does wear on the nerves sometimes

Does your dispatch center use 10 codes or not? I know there are various codes for the same numbers, heck, our state police use different codes then what we use. Rumor has it that once we finally switch to the high band radio system we will discontinue using the 10 codes, which will be hard for some of the old timers, I am sure, heck even for me at 3 years it will be odd to speak 'English" over the radio... I am torn on if I like them or not, I see the use, keeping transmissions short, but on the other hand sometimes it is just easier to say what you mean (especially when dealing with new dispatchers or officers)

Cahier/sales, housekeeping, nurse's aide/home health aide, waitress, real estate agent, school bus aide. I think that's all of them lol. Carol

I've been at my wits end many times with my job and the one thing I'm thankful for is that I've stuck it out because the good times far outweigh the bad. Not neccesarily in equal amounts of time but in that I love my job more now than I ever hated it. Because there was always a little vein of me loving my job even when I hated it. Sleep is one of those things I don't do well anymore regardless of what shift it is. I function better on nights though. I recommend trying to force yourself to stay up later for one. If you keep waking up at 10 or 11am, go to bed then and see if that doesn't work for you. Run your errands in the morning and stay up. Then see if you don't crash good with that later shift. Other than that, you can do what I do and that is psych yourself into it by saying "I can get by on 3 or 4 hours...I've done it before" and then catch up on the weekend. I know it's not the greatest, but over the years my body has gotten quite used to it. As for everyone else, I used to get wrapped up in all that and still do from time to time, but I discovered one key factor in my happiness and that was letting go of all the crap. I had to quit focusing on it and just started letting it slide and I ended up much happier. You know that saying about accepting what you cannot change....well, it's true. Sometimes you have to work to change things, but other times you can't. So you just focus on yourself and what is best for you and let all the other stuff be background noise. I know it is easier said than done. I've spent years learning it. But it does make a huge difference, and little steps to improve your center can make a big impact when you depersonalize it and not let yourself stress over it. Dina

Hi Luna! I see we both had Dr. Aguirre! I saw you over on the SOTB forum! My recommendation to you is to take your computer and open the Word processing program then turn on the TV and try to type everything as you hear it. Then try to make sense of what you are hearing and paraphrase it. Over time you may be able to weed through the junk and get to the meat of what is being said and be able to keep up as it is going on. I'm not sure what kind of testing they are doing where you are, but with the dispatch simulator we have a lot of it is being able to switch gears quickly and make decisions about what type of call is what. Then being able to cull pertinent information from a call and be able to relate that to the incident. Just keep trying and hopefully you'll get there. 85% isn't bad at all, so I'd say you should keep trying. If you have more specific questions, let us know! Dina