|
Boe's Tips For Dispatch Longevity
The Journal of Emergency
Dispatch, Jan/Feb 2008
▲Click to view full-size pages▲
Help Wanted.
Dispatcher discovered her career in unlikely setting at Hotel Cadillac
Linda Boe started her dispatch career in not such a lovely place.
Hotel Cadillac was a combination hotel, saloon, and restaurant, a vestige from
the boom days when Whitefish, Mont., was stomping ground to lumberjacks,
railroad workers, miners, and a host of scoundrels eager to spend their pay for
the fast life the small town offered.
“I wish I had taken pictures of the place when I worked there,” said Boe, who
recently passed the 32-year career mark in dispatching and now works at two
centers in nearby Kalispell, Mont. “It’s torn down and when it went, so did a
lot of history.”
The Whitefish native remembers the day in 1975 when she reported to work her
first shift as the town’s dispatcher, a job the local police figured was best
located in the area’s landmark hotel. She was given a chair, desk, and phone in
a small, dingy front office where the self-proclaimed neatnick found “plenty of
room” at the Hotel Cadillac to apply elbow grease and bookkeeping skills.
“I think the owners of the hotel offered the space, and it was cheaper for the
city to pay the hotel a few bucks for dispatch rather than dedicate a desk to
dispatch at the station,” said Boe.
Luckily, Boe excelled at multi-tasking. Not only did she answer the emergency
line, but she also made hotel reservations for train crews passing through the
railroad town plus took service calls for local businesses. “I’d take messages
for places like a refrigeration shop and send out the repair person while at the
same time getting someone a room,” she said.
The place turned out to be heaven. “It was a lot of fun,” she said.
The fact that someone was taking emergencies over the phone, however, was quite
an improvement over the former system—an electric bulb on top of a utility pole
on Main Street that lit up each time the emergency line rang at the station. The
cop on duty might notice the light flashing and that meant rushing back to the
station in hopes of answering the phone before the caller hung up.
“I don’t know how many people were helped unless they kept calling back,” said
Boe. “You had to move fast to get to the phone.”
The dispatch desk at the Hotel Cadillac lasted about three years before somebody
not the idea to relocate the dispatch center to the local hospital. The job
there included dispatch, patient admission, and taking phone messages for the
medical staff. Boe said she almost didn’t take the transfer and nearly gave up
the dispatch profession because of her affection for the Cadillac and the owners
she still calls friends.
“They were great people,” she said. “The hotel was rundown, but I think they
bought it because of their interest in the restaurant. They really treated their
employees well. They recognized the people they knew were trying hard at their
jobs. It was a very tough choice but the police department wanted me to take
over as dispatch supervisor, so that’s what I did.”
Boe knew something about employee satisfaction. Her first job experience out of
high school was a place that had her “running for the door” or, at least, to the
Whitefish job service to find something else. “Anything had to be better than
the convenience store I was managing at the time,” she said.
The opening at the Cadillac Hotel for the part-time dispatcher/hotel clerk
intrigued her, she was also a certified nurses’ aide, and she was hired even
before completing the application. “My family got a kick out of where I was
working,” Boe said. “But, in my heart of hearts, I believe dispatch should have
stayed at the Cadillac Hotel.”
The hotel has since been torn down and in its place a brewery stands. But that
perhaps is only appropriate because, as local legend and the Great Northern
Brewery Company tells it, the Whitefish boom happened so fast that when they got
around to building sidewalks, the foundations were made from empty beer cans.
Whitefish, like the neighboring towns of Columbia Falls and Kalispell, is now a
popular stop for tourists on their way to Glacier National Park or other outdoor
destinations. Subdivisions, malls, and the other trappings of metropolitan
America are filling the open spaces once separating the small rural northern
Montana towns.
Boe’s career has had its twists and turns, but all within the dispatch
profession have kept her in the same corner of Montana. In 1980, Boe left
Whitefish and went to work at Kalispell Police Department (KPD). In 1992, she
went to work at Flathead County Sheriff’s Department part time while still
working full time at Kalispell Police Department. The next year she quit KPD and
went to work full time at Flathead County Sheriff’s Department (which is now
called FECC). Later in 2001 she was asked to come back to Kalispell Police
Department part time, which she’s currently still doing, as well as working full
time at FECC.
Boe no longer books hotel rooms, schedules refrigerator repairs, or checks the
blue chip charge cards of incoming hospital patients. The Flathead County
Emergency Communications Center in Kalispell and the sheriff’s office are state
of the art. She uses the Medical Priority Dispatch System® (MPDS) to help
deliver babies, give CPR instructions, and route emergency vehicles.
“There are times it’s hard, very hard,” she said. “I get callers screaming
they’re so scared, lots of outdoor accidents, and last year a local boy was
electrocuted when he got tangled in some wires underwater where he was swimming.
It was tragic, terrible. You have to develop a thick skin.”
Of course, Boe said, the job is also tempered by the positive side: the chance
to help people in their times of crisis. “We’re more than a voice that sends out
the knight in shining armor,” she said. “We don’t get a lot of credit but we do
quite a job.”
Boe finds a lot of satisfaction in what she does, despite the occasional rough
spots, and would find it hard leaving regardless of the job and retirement
opportunities in an area growing so fast she sometimes can’t even recognize it
as the place where she has spent all of her life.
“Dispatch gets in your blood,” she said.
Or, as the rock band the Eagles might say, “You can check out any time you like.
But you can never leave.”
Facts about the Flathead County
Emergency Communications Center
Dispatchers at the Flathead County Emergency Communications Center (FECC) in
Kalispell, Mont., obtain state certification in law enforcement
telecommunications and emergency medical dispatching. The Flathead County ECC
dispatches for dozens of public safety agencies including city and rural fi re
departments, ambulance crews, law enforcement, animal control, and the local
Office of Emergency Services (OES).
Boe’s Tips For Dispatch Longevity
1. Let go of the job at the end of your
shift, especially the tragedies
After a fire killed an
entire family, except for the husband who left early that morning for a job
interview, the fire chief sent everyone, including the medical dispatchers, to
debriefing classes. “I don’t know if the classes helped as much as what I’ve
learned over the years, and that’s to let go,” said Boe. “You have to let go.
You do the best you can while there. You leave it at the end of the day and you
release whatever happened.”
2. Have an outlet or plenty of them
Boe and her husband like to
fish, and where they live offers the perfect setting for pursuing their mutual
interest. She also takes a ceramics class and spends time with friends, many of
them fellow dispatchers. “You don’t take the job home with you,” she said. “You
leave that time for yourself. If you don’t, it’s just going to be a very short
life in dispatch.”
3. Establish camaraderie
It’s crucial to get along
with coworkers, and it “only gets lonely” if you come in with the attitude that
friends can’t be made on the job. She said this is true in the dispatch
profession since a good relationship is a major stress reliever among job
partners. “You have to bounce off things with the person closest to you. If you
don’t, I consider it a great loss and you won’t last.”
4. Know that what you do is important
Dispatchers are often the
unsung heroes of the emergency services profession. Boe wants people to
understand the high level of training it takes to accomplish the job and the
dedication dispatchers bring to their work. “It’s not as easy as answering the
phone and handing it off to someone else,” she said. “We’re part of the team.”
The Journal of Emergency Dispatch
January/February 2008
The National Academies of Emergency Dispatch
|
