The Specifics - vacation rentals

Ok. So I wasn't expecting so many of you to read this.
Apparently my pain amuses you. *dramatic sigh*

Who am I kidding. Switch circumstance and I'd be laughing my ass off at you. So I've decided to make another post. Tonight I'm not dispatching. Or at least when I wrote this, I wasn't. My supervisor was. (Note- she rawks. She will probs never see this, or if she does she'll think 'oh that can't be about me'. Well it is. YOU. RAWK. Thanks, for putting up with the endless complaints of both me and my coworkers, and of the people calling in. And never once saying 'oh will you shut up' or being rude or nasty or any of that. <3 )

On with the post.

Ok. It’s Saturday night. And I don’t have to dispatch (woohoo!).

I do, however, still have to deal with complete idiots. Lots of them. Cause, well, it’s Saturday night, and that means checkin night for most of the resorts.

So…. Lots of calls about ‘omg the ac doesn’t work’ and ‘omg the housekeeper didn’t clean the unit’. Those I can handle. Get the info, name, number, unit name and problem. Send it to dispatch.

It’s the ones that call in for the stupidly trivial bullshit. The one that wanted to yell about someone having their dining room lights on after dark because of the sea turtles. Yeh ok they’re endangered. I highly, highly doubt that someone having the lights on in a dining room that HAS THE BLINDS AND CURTAINS CLOSED, is going to attract sea turtles. Maybe creepy stalkerish people that are annoyed about the blinds and all that…. Oh wait. Yeah. Or idiots like the ones that call me. ¬_¬

I will say, the call I got last year about the gator on the sidewalk was priceless tho. Seems in the middle of a rainstorm, a gator had ambled out of one of the lagoons and was laying in the grass at the dog run. This woman, frantic because 'someone might not see him' and let their dog in there, called about 30 times in maybe 20minutes. Now. We are talking an 8ft gator. Big, greenish black, shiny scaly toothy gator. In a dog run thats about 20ft by 10ft. HOW could you not see him? WHY would you venture close enough to actually open the gate with him in there? (He had pushed over part of the fencing... apparently he had a thing for being behind bars?) The oncall guy loved it too. He didn't know what to do, ended up calling animal control who waited till the downpour stopped to go remove the gator. And the removal? dragging him back to the lagoon and dumping him back into the water. Brilliant.

Other minor things that have crossed my mind.

Do not assume, when you call in at 6pm on a Saturday night, that I am the same person you (or your oncall person) spoke with at 9am this morning. At 9am on any given day, I am still laying happily wrapped in blankets with my arm curled around a small sleeping cat in my bed.

I don’t do mornings.

So whoever it was that you are looking for, it’s not me. If you ask nicely, I can and will look up the message in question and tell you who the operator was that took the call, or that spoke with your oncall person. If you get shitty with me over it, after I have very nicely said that it was not me and that I do not work that shift, I will be forced to have my boss call you back. On Monday.

And no I can’t page her, she’s out of town with her family.

Actually this goes for the people that call back in after leaving a message in the mornings. If you call back in at 8pm, after leaving a message at 9am, stop and think for a moment. Do you really think that it will be the same person answering that took your message the first time?

It won’t be. So don’t assume it is. I can, however, pull up the message you left if you tell me that you called in. I’ll verify your name and the number, but please, please, do not go through every little thing that you will discuss with the nurse/oncall tech. I don’t need to know it, thanks.

Also, when I ask if there is a number they can call you back at, that means I would like for you to tell me the number. Don’t say ‘yes’ then sit there grinning idiotically into your phone. I’m not psychic, you need to actually say the numbers.

And if you are from out of town, or are using a cell phone that is from Elsewhere Montana when you are currently in Beaufort South Carolina, you need to give me the area code. I don't live wherever you are from, so I don't know off the top of my head that the area code for half of North Carolina is 304. (it's not. it's actually West Virginia, I think. Somewhere with far too many people that order idiotic golf things. At 5pm. That's a whole diff. story for another day tho. )

Tonight hasn't been *too* bad. I've actually been dispatching for about the past hour (I'm here alone starting at 8 or 9 pm depending on who works with me) and except for the one woman who was crying, yes actually SOBBING, about the water smelling of sulphur. We don't page out for that. They live in the middle-of-nowhere-Georgia. It usually smells of sulphur. It's from a well, thats just how it is here. But to be sobbing over it on the phone with an operator who obviously doesn't live anywhere near there, and can't do anything about it... you need to call your psychiatrists office, not me. Cause it's fairly obvious that you have gone off your meds. Thx.

I'm sure I will have more to rant about later. I actually have another post already about half-written involving a specific wrecker service, and exactly what I'd like some of their customers to do with mile marker signs on I95. But I think I'll save that one for another day.

Totals for the night - 2 in labor (both full term) and 1 at 15weeks that swears she's having contractions but refuses to go to L&D, 1 cat hit by a car (is fine, but will no longer be allowed to roam the streets near his house) 1 dog allergic to the fleabath his owner bought and another that got into a package of chocolate chips (both are fine. One's just about as bright as a burnt out flashlight and the others owner matches that same description.) The L.o.L with high blood sugar is doing fine tonight, but the young guy with the TPN still has a retard for a mother ( I feel sorry for him on so many lvls) Phone, cable and DSL went out for an entire county I think, but they should be up and running before my shift ends.
Fairly slow shift tonight, only 244 calls in, 104 out. (this doesn't count the dozen or so on the radio to the wrecker drivers) And tomorrow night should be even slower.