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When asked why she is incoherent, he replied: “How the hell do I know?” When chastised for cursing he said: “Well I don't care, ya stupid-ass questions you're a
by mekoka 7y ago
When asked why she is incoherent, he replied: “How the hell do I know?” When chastised for cursing he said: “Well I don't care, ya stupid-ass questions you're asking.”
It's my understanding that some people are particularly sensitive to cursing and aggressive language, while others don't really care much. When we read something like the above, both our worlds collide. The language sensitive people will relate with the dispatcher, while others will think what the hell, because it seems that she was not listening to what was being said, but rather focusing on how it was said.
In society it's each person's responsibility to be civil and courteous, but emergency dispatchers should not expect this from callers. Not everybody is polite, but everyone deserves to expect help when they call for it, regardless of the way they talk. Emergency response is not customer service, where you can just tell a client that you'll have to drop them because they berated one of the phone clerks and that's against company policy.
I'm not playing devil's advocate for bullies, nor saying that people who hate swearing shouldn't do certain jobs. But I believe that if the work is to be a public respondent to emergency situations, maybe learning to not take things so personally should be part of the training.
- chrisperkins 7y ago> emergency dispatchers should not expect this from callers Why should emergency dispatchers not expect a civil working environment? I do not condone the response of the emergency dispatcher here but I genuinely want to know why an emergency dispatcher must be required to withstand hostile behavior as part of their job?
- oddsignals 7y agoWhy? Because impoliteness shouldn't be punishable by death.
- Ensorceled 7y agoThat's what I was thinking ... "I don't care that (you/your wife/you child) is dying, call back when you can keep a civil tongue in your head."
- JulianMorrison 7y agoAlso the one dying is (usually) not the caller.
- smallnamespace 7y ago> why an emergency dispatcher must be required to withstand hostile behavior as part of their job Emergencies make people stressed. Stressed people often curse.
- mgkimsal 7y ago"emergency" rather definitionally indicates that "not normal" or "out of the ordinary" situations are occurring. For most callers, this may be the worst day of their lives - emotion/stress/danger/death/etc. They're not required to interpret a caller's phone voice as 'hostile' either. Unless the caller actually says something like "I'm going to come find you and kill you or your family" or something along those lines, I don't think there's any reason anything a caller says should be interpreted as 'hostile' to the dispatcher. If they're agitated/upset - well... they're having an emergency. Should medical staff not expect "sick people" in their office/hospital? Someone who can't handle someone yelling or swearing on the phone should't be in a dispatcher role, and... yeah, I think it's gotta be stressful for them too, and they probably shouldn't do it a whole lot, as they'll burn out quickly.
- Fr0styMatt88 7y agoTo this - surely this would be part of any psychological testing done to screen dispatchers for suitability, no?
- forkerenok 7y agoI would draw parallels here (though it's nowhere near in scale) with: * firemen often risking their lives approaching (and sometimes entering) buildings in fire. It's a hostile environment, but it's their duty, whether they are paid or not (volunteer firefighters). * policemen answering a call in a dangerous/hostile neighbourhoods (or just roaming). It's hostile environment, but it's their duty to be of service there. Compared to the above, expecting dispatchers to emotionally detach and not take anything said personally is a smaller ask, in my opinion.
- imglorp 7y ago“But why should I object to that term sir,” she says. “See, in our century, we’ve learned not to fear words.”
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- circlefavshape 7y agoFWIW the word 'hell' is not considered a curse in Ireland or, afaik, in the UK
- glenneroo 7y agoThis was also in 1984, a time when language was much stricter. Nowadays I wouldn't expect 'hell' to be considered a swear word in the U.S.
- GordonS 7y ago> It's my understanding that some people are particularly sensitive to cursing and aggressive language It depends on the country and culture too. Here in Scotland, swearing is basically part of the vernacular, especially if you're in informal terms with each other. For example, if I help out a friend, he might say "ta, you're a good cunt!", and it's a way of saying "thanks".
- cj 7y agoWow, that was surprising to read as an American. Here, "cunt" is universally a negative + derogatory term, without exception.
- rkangel 7y agoThe Scots and the Australians use it in a much more conversational way than everybody else I've encountered. It still has negative connotations, but in a much lesser way so it becomes part of friendly banter.
- GordonS 7y agoYep, I chose that example precisely because of the strong aversion to the word "cunt" in the US :) Another example would be if I told a friend something incredulous, they might respond with "get tae fuck!" (meaning, "fuck off!"), or "awa' an shite!", (meaning "what a load of shit!").
- soneil 7y agoIt still seems strange for "how the hell should I know" to ellicit such a reaction. Even if/when it's considered a curse, it's not aimed at anyone. It's strange to me to see someone take the defensive when they're not being attacked.
- homonculus1 7y agoI think people like that are absolute babies. It's okay if you don't curse or even if you want to privately judge those who do but who rebukes another adult for a bit of salty language? Does anyone have a view that might change my mind?
- soneil 7y agoI think it's very contextual. I'd expect such a rebuff from my grandmother - at any age. From a public service, I'd expect them to be overly familiar with the stresses involved.
- dustinmr 7y agoYes, but if your grandmother rebuffs me, I’ll think, “what the hell?”
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoMy grandmother was a school teacher. If you said it around her, you might well get the rebuke, whether or not you were her grandchild.
- inanutshellus 7y agoIf nobody speaks up for being civil, there's no incentive to be civil. Certainly we need folk speaking up for civility so we can keep using our expletives with appropriate conviction. After all, the whole f'ing reason for cursing is to offend. If you're not offended, I have to try harder to convey my indignity, you naughtyhead.
- dfsegoat 7y agoSomewhat O/T, but a dispatcher here in Sonoma County, California was recently named "best in the country" for her disposition and quick thinking during the 2017 Tubbs Fire in which several of my neighbors perished. Some of her ad hoc instructions included telling people to jump in a pool or pond. This saved numerous lives [1]. She is now literally rewriting the script for how dispatchers respond to wildfire emergencies [2]: "Her boss, Aaron Abbott, said that on several occasions “KT gave life-saving instructions to citizens in situations that were so unique that no emergency fire dispatch protocols existed for them.” 1 - https://www.pressdemocrat.com/specialsections/rebuildnorthbay/9651748-181/sonoma-county-dispatcher-kt-mcnulty https://www.pressdemocrat.com/specialsections/rebuildnorthba... 2 - https://www.pressdemocrat.com/specialsections/rebuildnorthbay/9651748-181/sonoma-county-dispatcher-kt-mcnulty https://www.pressdemocrat.com/specialsections/rebuildnorthba...
- jolmg 7y agoBoth links are the same. Were they supposed to be different?
- dfsegoat 7y agoThanks for catching that. EDIT for 1: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9586767-181/sonoma-stories-local-dispatcher-named https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9586767-181/sonoma-storie...
- Fr0styMatt88 7y agoThat is just awesome. I really wish as a software engineer that there were more jobs in my field that could make this kind of a difference to people's lives.
- wenc 7y agoI’m sensitive to bad language used out of context. I’ll admit it. Bad language in my brain wiring triggers fight or flight responses in me because in the wrong context, it sounds f’ing aggressive and violates all kinds of gentlemen’s codes. It’s not the words themselves though. I can watch standup comedy with lots of bad language for hours. Another example is Jon Favreau’s character in Chef who curses liberally but his personality is so teddy bear like it doesn’t do anything to me. Joe Rogan? No problem. But if I meet someone in a corporate setting who looks stern (especially a young insecure guy) and starts to let fly with bad language, I’m likely to cut the person down — because my brain interprets it as aggressive posturing and puts me in a mood to attack this person. I need to work on my responses (I’m not justifying them), but I also want to share so that folks know how bad language can come across in the wrong context.
- JshWright 7y ago> But if I meet someone in a corporate setting who looks stern (especially a young insecure guy) and starts to let fly with bad language, I’m likely to cut the person down That's obviously far less about the profanity, and more about the power dynamic and tone. My guess is the same response could be triggered with no actual profanity in that setting.
- csours 7y agoAKA Postel's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle I've never been a dispatcher, but I have worked in on-site assembly plant tech support, and I've seen the problem with escalating interactions quite a bit. The way I approach it, people who call in are upset and excited about their problems, not mad at me. Other people heard the raised tone of voice and took it personally.
- andrei_says_ 7y agoAlso many have triggers around tone of voice or curse words. So in some cases triggered ptsd( trauma related pattern) and not really a choice available to take it personally or not. I recommend nonviolent communication, the book and the practice. Teaches the ability to “translate” highly charged conversations into basic human needs and feelings.
- Bartweiss 7y agoAs far as people having instinctive reactions they can't control, this can certainly be true. But I don't really understand who you're recommending nonviolent communication to in this context? The person swearing was a random 911 caller attempting to receive help; we can't expect every caller to know nonviolent communication, or to recall it in life-or-death situations. The person upset by the swearing was a 911 dispatcher; if they have involuntary triggers around language then a job that absolutely requires remaining composed while talking to frightened strangers is dangerously poor fit. And I don't think it would actually be good for the dispatcher to practice NVC - whatever its merits, it's not a process meant for rapidly transferring vital information. Safety and emergency-response communication is an entire topic of its own, and emergency medical dispatchers already get specific training on how to achieve the goals of that work.
- SapporoChris 7y agoWhile in the military I got the distinct pleasure of driving a soldier with a dislocated shoulder to the local hospital. The soldier in great pain was cursing the entire trip. After a short visit to the hospital, I drove the soldier back untreated. The hospital refused to treat him because he was so vulgar. My point being. Yes there are limits to what emergency response should put up with.
- nosianu2 7y agoFirst, so you are fine in letting somebody else(!!!) die? Because the person calling 911 is not the person that is dying. Even if it was the same person - the death penalty for words? Really now? Second, your story does not support your point, it just adds words to it with no apparent relevance.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> The soldier in great pain was cursing the entire trip. After a short visit to the hospital, I drove the soldier back untreated. The hospital refused to treat him because he was so vulgar. This is hard to imagine, actually. An incredible dereliction of duty by the hospital. > Yes there are limits to what emergency response should put up with. And your conclusion, as applied to the context you provide, is clearly wrong. Of course there are limits to what emergency response should put up with, but that doesn't even come close.
- bilbo0s 7y ago>The hospital refused to treat him because he was so vulgar. Was this a delivery facility in the USA? Because if so, I'm 99.999% sure they broke the law. Just by way of example, recently, in one of the hospitals my S.O. runs, a gentlemen was cursing and racially berating a black nurse for attempting to treat his wife. Extreme vulgarity. (They had come in because the wife was having a baby. So emergency situation.) The hospital simply asked that the husband leave, and made sure that no black, hispanic or asian caregivers treated the wife. Why? Because it's unethical not to treat the sick, it's illegal in most states, and it will get you into serious problems with medical review boards everywhere in the US. All that then starts impacting things like Joint Commission, etc etc etc. Of course, if the facility is already full and operating at legal capacity, that's one thing. But it doesn't sound like that's what happened in your anecdote.
- atombender 7y agoThe call became the subject of a paper, "When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis" (1988) [1], which contains the complete transcript. The conversation is fascinating and frustrating to read. The paper breaks down the interactions to try to find out where exactly communication failed. > Our investigation revealed that the participants had rather different understandings of what was happening and different expectations of what was supposed to happen in this conversation. Over the course of the interaction the talk of both caller and nurse-dispatcher (and her supervisor) operated to extend and deepen this misalignment. This misalignment contributed in a fundamental way to a dispute that contaminated and transformed the participants' activity: the eliciting and giving of information concerning the condition of the caller's stepmother was displaced by the activity of arguing. We were thus able to show when and how words can "fail," not in the sense of failing to be heard or comprehended but in the sense of failing to achieve the "meaning" they might be perceived as semantically conveying. The paper is paywalled, but can be accessed with Sci-Hub [2]. [1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/800591 http://www.jstor.org/stable/800591 [2] https://sci-hub.tw/https%3A//www.jstor.org/stable/800591%3Fseq=1%23page_scan_tab_contents https://sci-hub.tw/https%3A//www.jstor.org/stable/800591%3Fs...
- the_af 7y agoThanks for posting it! I was initially infuriated at the nurse's response -- thinking "these are emergency professionals, how can they not know how to deal with people in distress?" -- but after reading the paper, I see the interaction was more nuanced. Like the article argues, it was a non-standard interaction, with bits of information offered in places where they aren't usually expected (even in informal conversations!), and both the nurse and the caller had built different mental models of what was going on, leading to disaster. Fascinating indeed. Also, I'm grateful Sci-Hub exists!
- ben509 7y ago> Emergency response is not customer service, where you can just tell a client that you'll have to drop them because they berated one of the phone clerks and that's against company policy. That's why it's good for customer service and their management to push back when people are rude and not accept excuses. Besides making life dramatically better for customer service, it helps train people to be courteous as a matter of course. They learn courtesy works and will tend to build an unconcious habit that's more likely to exhibit when they're in an emergency.
- weeksie 7y agoMy dad, a commercial fisherman in Alaska, was on the radio to the marine dispatcher trying to get a rescue because his boat was sinking and there was water lapping his ankles. The dispatcher scolded him for cursing and from what he related later that only turned up the firehose. A helicopter did show up in time, so all was fine. Baffling to me that people who are meant to be dealing with human beings going through stressful moments, perhaps the most stressful of their lives, believe policing civility should be part of the package.
- mellosouls 7y agoI swear like a navvy at times (which I have worked on decreasing over the years), but feel extremely uncomfortable with it in some environments and times. One concern I have about it is that it is a useful "letting off steam" step before an increase in physical aggression or temper. When that step is removed due to it becoming a form of punctuation, the escalation to physical becomes potentially easier or quicker.
- draw_down 7y agoI would go further, and say that focusing on how something was said is a way to avoid thinking about its content, which may be inconvenient, or painful, or whatever. I find it very suspicious when the reaction to something being said is to focus on its verbiage or tone. Gets my spidey-senses tingling.
- rurp 7y agoEven more bizarre than worrying about swearing, I once had a 911 dispatcher understand the street I was saying, but stop to correct my pronunciation. I had just moved to a new house and my roommate had injured himself. I called 911 and when I told them my address was "123 foobar" the dispatcher responded, "actually it's pronounced 123 foobaz". A long awkward silence followed which I eventually broke with a simple "ok". I really didn't know what else to say. Correcting my pronunciation of a street name is fine in most contexts, but it seems like an awfully trivial thing to spend time on while my friend is bleeding profusely.