A letter to the dispatcher...

I understand that you are 2.5 hours from us. I know that you have never had to drive in DC. I know you have a job to do to send us on calls.

But it's a rainy Friday afternoon in DC, when it's predicted to be a gorgeous weekend. We had to get from the top-side of DC to the middle, including getting fuel along the way. You did NOT send us a page for the call, you just told us to head to Virginia. You did NOT tell us we were going to be put on a call.

Therefore, when we are attempting to make our way through a mile long back-up of traffic, calling and copping an attitude with me is NOT a good idea. Telling me that you don't believe that it takes near an hour to get from where we were to where we are now (including filling up the tank with fuel) is an especially BAD idea. Then, when I request the page for the call, you say "Don't tell me that you're claiming now that you didn't get the page," really makes me pissed off beyond your ability to understand. You should bless my partner, who kept me from ripping you several new assholes over the radio.

This occurred a day after the same dispatcher got mad at us for 'taking too long' at the hospital because the patient was non-verbal, and we had to get information from the wife, who took a bit longer to get to the hospital. Then sent us to another hospital, but did not send us the page. We tried to call her for 20 minutes, and got no response. We had to call our supervisor and have him call dispatch in order to hear from her. And when we finally got the page, it was incomplete. We finally got the whole page, and found that it was wrong, and it took her another 20 minutes to find out where exactly the patient was. This of course was after she got an attitude with me again, wondering what we had been doing, and why we hadn't found the patient yet.

It seems that my partner gets a better response from her than I do, even when I really am trying to be nice.

I don't deal well with stupidity. I deal less well with it when it's coming from someone who is supposed to have the information I need.

I REALLY don't deal well with people calling me a liar.

She used to be on night shift, which meant that I only had to deal with her for an hour or two. Now, for some reason, she's on day shift, which means that I have to deal with her all day.

I'm letting my partner talk to her from now on. I don't think I can have another day like Friday, or I may drive up to Philly and try to smack some sense into her myself.