Any takers?

It seems that there's a problem finding a dispatcher to work in the OC on 2nd Watch. The Deputy Director sent out a memo, now in the C.O. book, seeking volunteers to work across the hall on Days.

They're even trying to sweeten the deal by offering a Saturday/Sunday day-off group to any volunteers. But they're in such dire need that they had to throw in the old "reverse seniority will be used" clause in case there are no volunteers.

Guess the old demoted Acting Deputy Director is still like a cancer on the growth and forward movement of OEC. There can't possibly be any other reason why people would avoid the OC like the plague, especially given that there weren't people clamoring to avoid it before she got reassigned over there. She's not allowed near us on the Operations floor anymore, and noone wants to be remotely close to where she has to be, either.

Goodbye.

According to NBC 5 News, Daley is pushing for Huberman to become the next CTA president, now that Frank Kruesi has announced his resignation. We assume that the rubber stamp known as the City Council would have to vote on it. We know how THAT would go.

At least in that capacity, all of you POs who'd be in an all new Hell if he became supt., and all of us PCOs who know he'd have a hand in the pot at OEC, can rest a bit more easily, although he might still meddle to some extent.

We still wonder, though: Would he still be on "active" status with the department, toting a gun and a "brass" star.

The Olympics

It was just announced that they'll be in Chicago. Word is that there are other countries vying for the Olympics, and that it will be in Chicago if the Committee decides on the U.S.

Here's to having the 2016 Olympics in Djibouti. We dread the thought of how that summer would be for us and the police department and, to a certain extent, the fire department.

Updates as time and new information permit.

Guns in schools

According to the Tribune and NBC 5 News, two CVS (Chicago Vocational High School for the north siders) were *accidentally* shot while one of them showed a handgun off to the other one in 8th period science class.

That makes the second shooting this year at CVS. Not this school year. This calendar year.

A perfect example of why it's hard for us as city workers to have families while being forced to live in the city (or is that "shitty?") on a city salary. With the exception of a small handful of decent schools in the Chicago Public school system, if we want our children to get decent educations, or we at least want to not have to worry about them get to and from the educational institution safely, we have to pay for them to go to private schools.

And when we were children, we oddly only recall people getting a few lumps here and there after school. We don't remember worrying about getting bullet holes during class. The times, they have a-changed. And they're not going to get any better any time soon.

Expansion

So far (including the first poll), the polls show a 17-7 vote in favor of bringing media topics into the blog. Much to our chagrin, that means more work for us. But we'll do our best. We will, however, try to limit the media topics to subjects that relate in some way to the job.

Unless we find something too absolutely hilarious or shocking to not mention.

That'll help the blog stay focused and true to its initial premise, and at the same time minimize our headache. Blog maintenance ain't a cakewalk if you're going to update with any frequency, even with an average of only ~110 visits per day.

If we miss something that you think is pressing enough to mention on the blog, CPDDispatchBlog at yahoo dot com is available 24/7. Don't count on us sitting at the computer 24/7 monitoring the inbox, though.

Poll update

The poll didn't go away within a few hours by our doing. We didn't play favorites, the site we linked the blog to seems to be unreachable from some ISPs. Therefore, we've created another one. This one will be up until next Sunday.

By the way, in the interests of "transparency," we'll mention that the last time we saw the poll results from the first setup, the votes were 7-4, with the "ayes" ahead.

National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.

We forgot it existed, but it's this week. The weeks's activities for OEC include:

Pizza and cake served in the atrium on Monday and Wednesday (which we hope will be followed up with workout room sessions);

Casual business attire from Thursday through Saturday;

And "Family Day" on Friday, from 1100 until 1500 hours. Bring your families to see all of the wonderful OEMC vehicles and facilities that we have no knowledge of.

This is the first time we can recall when much more than the hanging of a couple banners was done to mark the week. We do a lowly-regarded, thankless job that most people wouldn't want to do anymore after two weeks. And it's nice to get some recognition for the efforts that we put forth.

Happy Easter

Taking a poll

Don't worry, this won't be a common occurrence, and it won't stay for more than a week. We're just curious, and this gives us a more "targeted" approach to finding out what you think.

Not to mention, it gives us the chance to try something different for once. Feel free to fill out the poll to the left side.

Perspective.

Good news for all you people at the job who apparently suffer from mysophobia.

Administration has heard your complaints, and are allegedly considering the suggestion that many of you had to put "sanitizer" stations next to the time clocks. We don't know how cost-effective that would be, though, or how often the sanitizer would run out and go unreplaced.

Also, when we clocked in/out, we decided not to put our hands directly on the platform, to see if it would register. Turns out we got better "scores" that way, than placing our hands directly on the platform. Although, really, it's hard to improve on 98 out of 100.

We wonder, though. For everyone who's been so concerned about "passing germs" by way of the timeclocks, we suppose that you don't touch door handles, or touch toilet handles, or touch the keyboards/mice, or shake hands with people, or place your fingertips on the readers to get past the lobby, or any number of other things that would cause the passing of germs while at work (we won't go into at home, you'd become nauseous).

And all you "germophobes," it's not like we don't see you get up from the console and go to lunch, going directly into the refrigerator without washing your hands. You even partake of potluck dinners in the same fashion, we can't imagine what you do with your own food. You've touched those filthy keyboards/mice we mentioned last paragraph, for Christ's sake. Keyboards and mice that have been touched by people who touch door handles, touch toilet handles, shake hands with people, place their fingertips on readers, etc... What's worse, these keyboards have been touched by people (you might be one of them, we know who you are) who go to the washroom and leave without washing their hands, proceeding right back to work.

But there's an uproar about the new timeclocks? We guess that things have to be literal, and shoved in people's faces at point-blank range for them to realize inherent "dangers." Not that we're minimizing the dirt that abounds at OEMC, but it was there long before this week and present in ways that people didn't ever think much about.

Some dictionaries define "-phobia" as an "abnormal or irrational fear" of something. Make sense now?

P.S. First poster on the "timeclock" thread, yes, we read instructions. Yes, PCO14EVER, we were being sarcastic. Our "better" scores today were 26s.

Slap the timeclock, please.

What a surprise. We arrived at work with swipe cards (and a ton of other things) in hand, prepared to mindlessly swipe in on the red punch clocks we've been using for years. We were a bit surprised to see big grey monstrosities stuck in the wall. We swiped in, put our hands on the new timeclock that apparently requires a handprint for verification, and puzzledly proceeded on our way.

The city isn't proactive. It's REactive. Someone must have been rumored to be swiping out for other people, or vice versa. Funny thing is, noone knew it was coming until it was there. We guess the clocks are self-explanatory, but we also guess that some people wouldn't know what to do with the big palm print on, and the typed instructions above, the clock. Therefore, we are here to provide service with a sarcastic smile (or smirk). Simply swipe your city ID as always, and place your right hand within the hand outline, being sure that your fingerprints show prominently. That would be about it.

We scored a 98 when we swiped in. We're "A" students around here.

Publicity.

Sometimes we ponder what we can do to bring more outside attention to the blog. It would be nice to have some of our issues heard by citizens so they can see what we really have to deal with on a daily basis (as if they'd really care anyway). At times, we actually wish the media would take notice and make mention of us.

Then we think back to the fact that the only major media mention we've had in recent years was that NBC 5 News fiasco this past winter that made us look like utter fuckoffs, with the help of one particular CPD ADS. And we can't help but notice that CPD is plastered all over the news in a light that is in NO way positive. No reports of the outstanding job that many POs do, sometimes above and beyond the call of duty. It's to the point where in most recent weeks, Second City Cop has been dedicated mainly to scandal discussion.

So we'll tread on the way we've trodden since August of 2006. If we don't end up with a sizeable following outside of the job (the police world is its own subculture with outsider curiosity, whereas noone really cares about dispatching outside of dispatching - including the police), we'll live. At least we still provide a forum (one of two, now) for quite a few Operations employees to vent and otherwise talk about the job.

And that was the initial purpose, anyway.

By the way, thanks for the votes of confidence in the last post. But we can't and wouldn't kiss enough ass to fit ourselves into the mayor's pocket well enough. We know of some coworkers who'd be more than happy to, though.

Cline resigns

It was bound to happen. Phil Cline will be stepping down as superintendent as soon as his replacement is named. Lot of speculation on who's going to take over, including mention of our old boss, current mayoral chief of staff R.H.

It seems unlikely if you look at it logically, but how much logic does the mayor run the city with? If ever there was a "policeman" who Daley knew was in his pocket, it would be R.H.

And mark our words, if he's named superintendent, police officers won't be the only ones crying. He'll make sure he plays a hand in making our jobs miserable again. Unless you dispatchers have forgotten the micromanaging way he ran OEMC, and drove morale into the ground with the help of L.L and M.K. We can only hope that the promotion of the new Deputy Director, under who morale has been better in two months than it was in three and a half years under the previous Acting Deputy Director, won't be overshadowed and be for naught due to the indirect return of the most hands-on-yet-knowledge-of-the-job-lacking boss we've had in OEC's twelve years.

P.S. Yeah, we've been gone for a while. So? Everyone deserves a break now and then.