p0x0rz

You only mention the positive scenarios...How are you changed by the negatives? My wife is also a dispatcher, and I can tell you that there have been some calls that have been hard to shake...Weeks later, still thinking about them.

Yeah, some of the most consistently hard calls to take for my wife are anything involving family and domestic violence. When it comes to things like car accidents or accidents at work, there's an element of randomness to them...They're still hard to take, but it's not the same as exactly the kind of scenario you describe.

X-Files was never JUST about aliens.

I can understand your point, but this is an AMA that's giving people an idea of what it's like being a dispatcher. I don't want to know what particular calls have driven this person to drink, but I do think it's important to people reading this, people thinking about this as a prospective career, to know that calls like that exist. If this AMA is a "dispatcher slice of life," then acknowledgement of the good and the bad is important.

Partly, it's also personal. As I said, there have been calls my wife has really struggled with. Knowing that other dispatchers out there in the world have the same problems, can be in the same place at times, is cathartic. OP responded to a similar question down below with some of his/her coping mechanisms, and it was wonderful to read and something I'll pass on to my wife.

awwwwwwwwwwww yisssssssssssss