What the Holidays Teach You in a 911 Center

Most people drift into the holidays with a script and traditions in mind. The lights come out. Families gather. The expectations rise. December is supposed to feel peaceful, or at least warmer than the other months. It carries its own pressure to be happy.

Inside an emergency communications center, though, the view is different. The holidays are a study in contrast. They always have been.

On one call, a family is laughing in the background while someone calls with a general question. On the next, someone is watching their worst nightmare unfold on what was supposed to be the best night of their year. A dispatcher moves between those worlds in seconds. No transition. No warning. No time to adjust the emotional settings in their own head.

Dispatchers exist in a strange middle space. For a few minutes, they live inside someone else’s crisis, guiding them through the part that they will remember forever.

Then, the dispatcher hangs up, and answers the next call. It may be routine or absurd or even funny. The contrast is constant. The job requires that flexibility, and over time, it changes how you move through the world.

Working dispatch during the holidays teaches a specific kind of gratitude.

You’re grateful for the quiet nights, because you know what they could have been. You’re grateful for your own ordinary problems, because you know what extraordinary ones sound like. Sometimes, you’re grateful when calls come in, as terrible as that sounds, because it makes the shift go by more quickly.

For all the stress and all the long shifts, the holidays can remind dispatchers why their work matters. Little wins can seem especially meaningful. Tragic calls can seem more poignant.

It’s more obvious during the holidays: nothing teaches perspective quite like a job at a 911 center. It’s one of the best lessons we can learn in life. And for that, there is something to be thankful for.