did the Cleveland 911 dispatcher sound uninterested / unsympathetic?

[magical thyme]

50. on dial-up so can't easily download, but

I think that when you work emergency-type jobs, you cannot allow your emotions to run you. This is based in real life experience as I am a med lab tech who works 2nd shift, which is a lot of ER work without oversight, often alone with only a lab assistant in the lab. It's not only that you will burn-out, although you will from sheer exhaution. It's that you cannot focus on your job, which is getting the facts and, in this case, getting the police to the right address asap. You need to stay focused on process to reduce the opportunity for errors and get the job done faster.

Furthermore, showing compassion has a way of often causing the recipient to break down. I know that from my other job as a customer service rep who is required to offer condolences when a beneficiary calls to say a mutual fund shareholder has died. I've learned to leave that for the end of the call, when the person can cry as needed without keeping us from getting the job done and causing me to make a mistake or forget some critical piece of information.

I would think in this situation, there is time for compassion after the rescue; in the moment the recipient needs to hang on and take care of herself until help can actually arrive.

I don't think it was necessarily a bad call for her to hang up, either. If the caller has been kidnapped and has gotten to a phone and says she is in danger, keeping her on the phone could increase her danger. What if the kidnapper arrives and catches her on the phone? Having a voice at the end of the phone isn't going to help her in that scenario.

Bottom line, it's not fair to "monday morning quarterback." Especially when you don't actually do the job yourself, you have no idea what parameters the professional is operating under.