rabidhamster87

Whoa.

I used to work as an IP Relay Operator. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a service intended to help the deaf, hard of hearing, and speech disabled use regular phones. They could connect to my monitor through the internet (or sometimes a Sidekick phone... this was before smartphones were so huge) and I would read what they wrote and then type what the other party said so that they could have a conversation through me.

Once I had a caller tell me to call 911. I asked if it was an emergency. "Yes!" Oh God. I dialed 911 right away! I was so nervous. I was afraid something was going to happen and I didn't want to delay their call in case they were hurt or something. When the 911 operator came on the phone? They were locked out of their car... I wanted to apologize to that operator soooo bad. I couldn't though because our calls were monitored and I didn't want to get written up. So... I would like to say I'm sorry to you.

You're getting some hate in here from people who think they're experts in everything just because they have internet access and a little education, but I want to say that what you've written is beautiful and you seem impressively... self-aware/emotionally mature. That's really something I admire. Please don't let the hateful people steal any of that from you.

When I worked there we had all kinds of scammers trying to use it for personal profit. It was terrible. We actually had a protocol where we were allowed to warn the person that we suspected it might be a scam if the call met certain criteria like trying to ship to Nigeria, ordering multiples, paying with money orders, etc. It was nuts how many of those calls we got though! What made me really sad was when a legitimately deaf person was trying to call a business to ask about their hours or something, and the person would hang up on us as soon as I said it was IP Relay because they just assumed all IP Relay calls were scams! Those scammers weren't just abusing people's wallets, but also making life more difficult for people who were already handicapped. >.<

Yup! We were basically like a conduit for their speech. We were supposed to make it seem like we weren't actually there as much as possible. Which means no variations, no refusal to read/say certain things, no interjections of our own, etc.

I would do an AMA if I thought people were really interested and it hadn't been so long since I worked there! I quit in 2005 or 2006, so my memory isn't that fresh. If it's still a service, maybe a current IP Relay Operator could do one! When I was there it was also mostly prank calls or scams, so it was exciting for me when I had a legit call. There might not be much to talk about since most of the calls were so routine.