Shift Work

When I read this post over at Big Fella's, it brought back a lot of memories.

Once upon a time, I was a dispatcher for the county sheriff and the city police in a podunk little town in Oregon. I loved the work, but the hours sucked.

We worked 12 hour shifts. Mine was from 8 at night until 8 in the morning. But the way the scheduled worked was really screwy. We worked 4 days on, 4 days off, 3 days on, 3 days off.

It got really confusing. And it was really hard to plan things in advance because it was hard to calculate the days off without actually sitting down with a calendar and counting the days.

I don't know if they are still working that way, but it was a killer. Twelve hours of dispatching and answering 911 calls can be very taxing. We weren't busy, but I think that made it worse. If we had been busy, time would have gone by much faster. As it was, we got a few calls, but mostly in the evening. By 2am, it was dead until the morning officers came on duty at 7.

Did I mention I only had 1-2 officers to deal with? One or two county guys until Midnight and maybe one city officer until 2am when the bars closed. After that, there was only one guy on duty.

Ugh. Good thing I was young and stupid and didn't know any better.