You had me in full agreement, until the last paragraph. Under duress, we do say things we would not normally do. And yes, the Military does alone possess the right to make verbs, adjectives and explictives from a noun. It’s a gift, really.
But, for the 911 Dispatcher; it’s a hard defense to make, but as I do enjoy a good arguement (personality defect my wife loves to point out), it goes back to the statement that you may swear however you like - but you can’t force someone else to listen to you.
I’d be curious to know if there are 911 Dispatcher guidelines regarding this. I’m sure that there has to be something. If a person is to be fired, it should be for a willful infraction of known rules. I wish I had the transcripts as posted yesterday, as quotes are much better than my memory. But, as I recall, the first hangup was a result of profanity. The second hangup was the result of profanity, the third was a series where the Operator and caller got into a name-calling match. It went downhill from there.
Was this professionally handled? No. Is there a mountain’s worth of room for improvement? Yup. Was this handled in a way that I would have handled it? Not at all.
What should have happened? All the 911 Operator had to do is firmly insist that he will not tolerate profanity - then allow the young lady to proceed. But, then we wouldn’t have a story. And as pointed out on a previous post, this happend months ago - why is it making the news today? Could it be because she’s planning to sue?
The transcript’s here:
Firmly insisting to a hysterical woman is probably what got him in trouble with the exchange. Smooth reassurance and ignoring the outbursts instead of feeding them would have calmed her instead of instigating her. He was not cut out for 911 that day, maybee not ever.