Emergency Dispatcher Needs Your Help

Hi everybody. If you don’t know me my name is Kristin. I am a 20 year 911 dispatcher, who also spent years of my life as a volunteer EMT. I have fallen on some real hard times - through absolutely no fault of my own. The story I am telling you is long so please stick with it.

After 17 1/2 years with the current city I work for, many of those years spent on night shift, I was promoted to manager of our 911 center last June. We have always been understaffed and reached critical lows after my promotion, losing several operators for various reasons.

Coordinators before me were always paid overtime when they needed to help out in the 911 center due to staffing. This position is designed to be a Monday - Friday spot, but can supplement the center when needed. Because I knew others before me in this position received their money I did not hesitate to jump in to help our staffing. The citizens of our city deserved to have someone in those seats when they needed to call for an emergency and our responders deserved to have someone there should anything go wrong on their end. Literal lives depend on our jobs.

The city I work for paid me my first check in this position, however, instead of overtime they paid in comp time. This was not agreed upon by me, which our state law says the employee has to agree to it. That check alone I worked my 80 regular hours and 64 hours of overtime. It was immediately brought to their attention and they stated this was an exempt position and I wasn’t eligible for overtime. NO ONE had that conversation with me, or submitted an offer letter to me in writing, so I could only go off of how others in this position were compensated prior to me.

I have still not received any of my money, they now owe me for 380 hours of unpaid overtime wages. I have an attorney but the city has prolonged this for 8 months now.

This is where it gets tough. I am struggling to pay bills from being behind on automatic payments and withdrawals that were set up prior to not actually getting money for my overtime. I am a single income household and that money means a great deal to me and my bills. I have been late on rent several times, every credit card I had is now in collections, my lights have been turned off a couple of times, my water bill is behind, I no longer have cable or internet, my cell phone was turned off for so long I had to get a new account and number, and there are weeks that I eat macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, and any other cheap things I can find because I simply can’t afford anything else. My mental health is the worst it’s ever been and my physical isn’t great either. I’ve gained weight because I can’t afford to eat healthy.

It is my understanding that the only thing some of the people involved have been able to say is “I don’t know why she kept coming to work if she wasn’t getting paid.” I have yet to miss a day because of any of this. And I won’t. We hold lives in our hands and if we aren’t staffed appropriately people can die. So for human resources employees to make such glib statements is incredibly irresponsible.

It is atrocious that this is how a city that I have given 18 years to treats a good employee. Countless hours of overtime, nights, holidays, weekends, special occasions away from friends and family have gone into serving the citizens we work with and the city.

The picture above is a stack of bills and late fees/notices I have received in the last month that I haven’t bothered to open. I couldn’t pay even one of them right now if I tried.

If you’ve made it this far thank you. Anything will help. I am just trying to catch up on things so life doesn’t feel so heavy. I have the most amazing friends and family who have carried my burden with me but now it’s time to reach out to a broader audience.

If you can’t help I completely understand. Life is tough. I hope we all make it through as unscathed as we can!

*ETA - if you work with me please understand this isn’t a jab at our department - they have tried to be as helpful as they can. This goes higher than them.