I live in the US and we’ve got elections coming up. Every day for the past several months, I get 3-8 text messages from political campaigns per day. I block them every time, yet they keep coming in.
My question is NOT how to stop them, but what happens to those numbers that I, and surely hundreds and maybe thousands of other people have blocked? What if an actual person gets that phone number and needs to call people? What happens then?
Because on a long enough time line, all numbers will have been used for spam.
Hi! Spammers often dupe a real number for a bit, then change it up. My wife’s office was the spammer’s number for a day. They got a day of getting hundreds of “I’m reporting you to the police” and “go eff yourselves” calls, and then the spammer’s moved on. The receptionist got a gift card from management for dealing with it.
I work in a 911 dispatch center. A lot of non-emergency lines for different police/fire/EMS departments in our county, as well as some lines for different county agencies like the department of children & youth, the coroner’s office, etc. come into our dispatch center at least some of the time (after office hours, over the weekend, if their office is short staffed and no ones available to answer the phone, etc.)
One day, the scammers were using one of those 10-digit lines that came into us
And it was mind boggling how many people don’t understand that they use spoofed numbers and tried to call them back
Got a whole lot of people wanting to report “me” to the police, which, i suppose, was actually kind of in my wheelhouse. Most of them were from way out of state though so not our jurisdiction.
How do you like the job? I was considering it as a career change. I like the idea of helping people and I’m used to fast-paced environments. At least where I live, it pays really well (at least compared to what I’m making now), and while I’ve never worked in an office-like setting before it seems nice to be able to sit down rather than being on my feet 9-12 hours a day.
As much as I’m capable of liking any job, I do like this one.
Funny enough, a big part of the reason I took the job was the same reason you cited, I was working in a warehouse, on my feet, carrying boxes around all day, and being able to sit down in the air conditioning sounded really nice.
Every dispatch center does things a little differently, but where I am we work 12 hour shifts on a 2-2-3 rotation, which is fairly common
So this week I’m off Monday and Tuesday, work Wednesday and Thursday, then off Friday-Sunday
Then the next week it’s the opposite, and Wednesday and Thursday will be my days off.
I love that schedule, I never have to work more than 3 days in a row without a 2 day break, , I have days off during the week to get stuff done, and every other weekend I have a 3 day weekend, if I plan my vacations right I only need to take 2 days off to get a whole week
The one I work at isn’t union, which has its pros and cons. Pretty much all the surrounding counties are union though, which helps keeps our wages competitive. I think most of the others around me make slightly more than we do, but one of the first concessions that tends to get made in contract negotiations is mandatory overtime, so since we aren’t union we don’t have that. If you do end up somewhere with mandatory OT, usually that means staying for a few hours after your shift ends as needed, not coming in on your days off. I don’t mind working 12 hours, but anything beyond that feels like too much, so I’m kind of glad that’s not something we need to do.
It can of course be mentally/emotionally draining for all of the reasons you’re probably thinking. I don’t think I need to list all of the horrible things I’ve gotten calls about, or the kinds of unpleasant people I’ve had to try my damnedest to help. People do of course get burnt out on it.
And it does feel good to be helping people, but if you’re on Lemmy I’m sure you’re not totally ignorant of all the issues that exist with policing, mental healthcare, etc. so you do also sometimes find yourself wondering if what you’re doing actually is helping.
Overall, it’s a good job, I do like it a lot, I recommend it semi frequently to people who are looking for a new career, and basically every dispatch center in the country is always a little short staffed and almost always hiring, so there’s plenty of opportunities for it. And usually the requirements are pretty minimal - clean background check, high school or GED, basic computer literacy, good typing skills, ability to speak clearly, etc.
Hey thanks for the write up, I really appreciate it. I think I’m going to apply to my local office. From a quick search it looks like my local police force hires in bulk, so you apply whenever and when they do a round of hiring they just go through all the resumes at once and go from there. Not sure when the next hiring spree is, but it doesn’t hurt to apply now and just let it sit. There’s also an online test and an in person test you have to complete before your interview so I guess I’ll have to do that too, but that’s not too bad I don’t think. It probably helps weed out people who aren’t taking it seriously, which could go in my favour maybe. Either way, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me.
Yeah, that’s roughly how my center does it, definitely go ahead and get your application in if you can, I know my center keeps them on file for a while and even if you don’t get picked for the next upcoming round of hiring you might potentially get an offer for 2 or 3 classes down the line. I think we usually do about 3 rounds of hiring a year, so it may be a little while before you hear back. There was one guy who took the test at the same time I did and ended up being in the next class, so it was probably about 6 months between him putting his application in and when he started.
When I started (about 8 years ago now) I went to a hiring event where we took the aptitude tests and got an interview on the spot. After that, we scheduled a job shadow to come in for an hour or two listening to calls being answered dispatched to see what the job is actually like.
To give you an idea of the timeline, I think the hiring event was around August, I got my conditional offer in September, and class started late October.
After getting the offer, I had to do a hearing/vision/drug test, and sort of a psych eval with the county psychologist. Some other agencies have more requirements, I’ve heard a lot of places have you do a polygraph test.
In addition to 911, in a similar vein there might be some similar dispatch jobs you can look into as well. Some police/fire/EMS departments s might have their own dispatcher in-house, some agencies like state police, park rangers, game wardens, animal control, etc. might have their own dispatch separate from 911 as well. Public transit and railroad companies often have their own police, so do some bigger colleges.
Or if you’re not bothered by the ethics, some bigger security/private investigation companies like the pinkertons have their own sort of dispatch roles.
And if there’s no residency requirements and you don’t mind the commute, you can look into your surrounding cities/counties to see if they’re hiring. We have a couple people who work at my center who actually live pretty far out of the county.
After doing a bit of research it looks like my local police force only hires once per year, in the fall. They don’t specify a cutoff date. Hopefully I haven’t missed it yet, I’m going to apply tonight once the little one is in bed and my wife comes home from work. I guess worst case scenario I’ve applied for next year and am stuck at this job for another year. I didn’t really have any other plans anyway.
Since you keep talking about your local police, I’d also double check that that’s who handles 911 in your area. That might be a role just for police dispatch for that one department.
There’s a lot of different situations, and in some cases it is run by the local police, but very often 911 is part of either the county sheriff’s department or department of public safety, and will handle police, fire and EMS dispatch for a larger area than just one town.
Not that being the station dispatcher is a bad job, I think most of them around me make more than we do at county, but it may not be the job you’re thinking of.
The position I was looking at (through the local police force) is specifically called “communicator” and according to the job description:
Does that sound like what you do? It’s the position I was looking into when I initially asked you about the job, but I’d definitely be down for applying to other dispatcher/call roles like you mentioned too.
Were the managers in on some of the spamming?