You missed public safety telecommunicator week by just a few days...
Dispatchers have some awesome stories if you ever get to sit down and talk to one off the record. A very twisted sense of humor in most cases.
I spent 23 years as a dispatcher; having a twisted sense of humor is an absolute necessity in that job....
One of my favorite "heard on the radio" things happened on Christmas Day in the late 80s. Our office was just a few miles away from Don Scott Airport (KOSU) in Columbus. One of our residents had got a new shortwave receiver for Christmas, and was tuning around the band when he stumbled across 515 kHz, which is the NDB for KOSU; the signal it sends is "OS OS OS OS."
This man was convinced it was SOS and wanted to report it; the poor guy sounded almost crushed when I told him it wasn't an SOS, and explained what it really was. I praised him effusively and thanked him for doing the right thing by calling in; that seemed to make him feel better, so we exchanged our "Merry Chistmas" greetings and that was that.
I almost hated to have to tell him what it actually was. Of course, I think I was the only dispatcher in the Columbus area who even
knew what it was....
Reminds me of 1978, when Orange County (CA) had a female with a sweet voice doing dispatch on a 38 MHz freq. (I think it was 38.880???) We would hear her in eastern Michigan on the Sheriff band radio. A few times our units would say hello by saying, "Good morning So-Cal, from Lapeer County MI." She would respond with "Good morning, Lapeer. Stay safe." One of the deputys nicknamed her "Skip".
We had a similar situation at the fire department I worked at for several years; our primary frequency was 33.92, and every so often on a Sunday morning, we would hear a county in California doing their radio and roll call checks where they go through and check each station (Station 10, Station 20, etc).
When they finished we would respond with "Station 160 clear" to which the California dispatcher would respond "thanks Ohio, you're loud and clear!"
Good times.