O’Dark Thirty

So there I was getting ready for bed.

Yesterday I was wrapping up the most amazing trip away from work and everything else with my beloved beautiful girl. Driving back to her mother’s place while it was turning dark. It was a near perfect moment.

Then I looked at my phone cause it started to ring. The most annoying name popped up on my phone.

Dispatch was calling me. Crap…

I thought I got my on-call shift taken care of and I’m more than 50 miles away from home. So I answered and it was one of the Lieutenants.

“Hey Alex how are you?”

“Good. Just out-of-town like I said earlier this week with the lady friend. You?”

“Oh that’s right, I forgot. Well I was wondering if you were okay with leaving early tomorrow since we are running over the amount of officers needed”

“Sure thing. I’ll plan on that then”.

So I told my girl that it was work and that they asked if I wanted to leave early. We both thought it was cool since that rarely ever happens.

She dropped me off at my place and I was pretty excited to start my short day of work.

Then all of a sudden right when I was about to fall asleep dispatch calls me again.

“Hey Alex… We just had four officers call off and we are scrambling for people. You need to come in at 2am to help cover. And we can’t cut you out early like we said we could. You’ll be doing a full 16. You may need to do this for a few days.”

“No I’ll come in at 3am at the earliest and do a 15 hour. I just got home not too long ago. Sorry, but I can’t come in that early.”

“Okay that’s fine. See you then”

So three hours and some change of sleep later I was geared up and ready for the shift to start. The birds weren’t even awake yet…

The crappy thing about my job is that you are pretty much on-call 24/7. Working in a law enforcement type job pretty much is dictated by the department’s needs, not yours. Whatever they need, you will do. It’s very demanding (and really annoying).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called at random hours to come in to fill in. The worst was when one of our officers was involved in a shooting.

I’m beyond exhausted. My mood is not the greatest. And I broke my promise… I had an energy drink (I never ever drink soda pop).

On top of all the no sleep, long work hours, and no energy level I still owe my mom dinner since we tried to go a few days ago but I was too busy with work. I think I might die or just pass out right on the spot.

Like I told the day shift dispatcher here. Panda bear needs his sleep.

Wish me luck!

Ten more hours of handling calls and having people treat everything like it’s a crisis.

Yay…