Imagine if you will….
14 women – 86% of which are type A personalities .
1 20′ x 15′ room with 4 workstations
Shiftwork and the inability to tune your annoying coworker out with music or by moving away.
And you can see why Big, Tough cops fear our jobs and don’t understand how we do it. It’s dangerous, I’ll tell you. If you’ve worked with a group of Type A women, then you know.
Shoot. Let’s be honest- any group of women.
It’s especially hard in Comm Centers because the very nature of our job is to work cohesively as a team. We’re almost telepathic. Our senses are tuned so finely to each other that we can’t ”not listen” to someone. For example- I may be on the radio channel and my partner is on an emergency phone call. Not only do I have to listen to and relay information on the radio, I need to also listen to every question she asks and interpret the direction of the call by her questioning. While she’s on the phone with the caller (usually agitated) she has to listen to the radio and anticipate what is needed on that end. If an officer asks me something, my partner should hear it, interrupt the caller and ask that question - repeat the answer back so I can overhear (she’s also typing this on the screen) and I relay it back. I guess you could call it an auditory ballet.
That’s how it works so it’s impossible to not listen to all the calls that come in. From the non-emergency stuff, the difficult caller all the way to personal calls such as a coworker baby talking to her husband (for real!). This also applies to general conversation in the room. OMG, TMI! And we can’t shut it off.
So we have that issue. We also have the typical lunch thieves and the brown nosers, loud talkers and the functioning incompetents. Lately, another petty irritation has sprung up. Maybe you have this in your office too?
Someone cut the sponge in half. A regular sized sponge is now reduced to Barbie-sized. At first, some of us just tried it out, thinking the Sponge Cutter would realize it’s rather tedious. But after 3 or 4 mutilated sponges, it was becoming “a problem”. Heh.
Okay- we get the “conservation” angle. But in practical use, it just doesn’t work as well. One gal went as far as bringing in her own sponge and keeping it safe from mutilation in her locker. So, as I am prone to do, I sent out an email poll.
Original Email:
From: Wallace, Denise
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 10:19 PM
To: all dispatchers
Subject: random lame poll
I would like to know what the majority opinion is on the mini kitchen sponge. It is cut in half when a new one is put in use. Please vote using the voting buttons at top left . Thank you.
(the voting buttons were “prefer full size sponges”, “prefer small sponges” and “I HATE ALL SPONGES” since there are legitimate issues with sponges overall).
Findings:
From: Wallace, Denise
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 1:59 PM
To: all dispatchers
Subject: RE: random lame poll
Findings:
- 7 people prefer a full size sponge
- 4 people HATE SPONGES
- 2 people prefer a small size sponge
For Visual Learners-
I would like to thank all of you who participated in my random lame poll. I would also like to point out that a majority prefers full size sponges. :D
I’ll let you know what happens next. :D
