The Complaint Thread

Am I an asshole? Like for real?
Because that is exactly the kind of situation where my verbatim response would be, and has been: "That's fucking idiotic, let me talk to someone more important than you."
 
Generally I like my job, but I don't like my job tonight.

If you've ever wondered why I post at weird hours and, like, on Christmas, I'm a 911 operator and often just sitting at a desk waiting for a screen to light up.

On New Year's Eve, however, it's a non-stop stream of people who have "spent a lot of time around guns" and "know what a gun sounds like" and "that was definitely a gun."

You can say that their neighbor just called complaining of fireworks they saw go off behind their house, and they'll still argue that it was definitely gunfire. Like, 30 rapid-fire machine gun shots and a couple really big shotgun blasts.

Also, people call on New Year's Eve to complain about fireworks.
 
911 Op is a tough job to begin with, but yeah... I can definitely see the potential for a lot of frustration today. The area I live in IS so weird for people randomly lighting fireworks on any given day -as well as- some minor gun violence. So you're legitimately never quite sure if what you just heard was yet another stupid kid lighting off a firecracker at 2am on a Thursday, or some idiot popping off a shot to impress his stupid buddies.
I can't imagine what being a 911 Op is like here.
 
well here in Illinois fireworks are technically illegal so calling 911 I believe is legit but since lots of people are shooting them up I assume they get ignored unless someone seriously injures themselves
the technology is getting better to differentiate gunfire from other loud noises
 
Same here. Tonight's kind of a "pick your battles" night, though. Most of our night is spent responding to the bigger complaints like rowdy parties and fire hazards. It's really not the night for "the neighbors have firecrackers."

My real complaint is all the callers who are 100% confident it was gunfire. We obviously have to respond to those and, 10 years on the job, so far it's never been gunfire.

True story, a couple years back, someone shot himself in one of our parks. Not one single call. People really have no idea what a gun sounds like.
 
Damn, I can't even imagine how hard that job can be at times. Good on you, Fletch. Takes a special kind of person to do that and help others. Hope you're still able to shake it off at the end of the shift.

It's something I've thought about before- how traumatized we are as a nation and how it must manifest itself in ways we don't even know. You hear stories all the time of war veterans being triggered by fireworks, and God knows it scares our poor pets (which always pisses me off). I live right off a major highway and intersection, so I've heard all manners of loud-ass car mufflers backfiring, and I often see people have that moment of panic cross them, and not just from being surprised at a loud, sudden noise. I'd like to think I'd recognize the sound of gunfire, but I don't honestly know, and I hope I'm never in the situation that I'd have to identify it quickly. I suppose maybe it depends on the type of gun, how much it sounds like fireworks.
 
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