Disclaimer: This column is not meant to be disparaging to dispatchers. I love dispatchers. They’re wonderful people. I especially love MY dispatchers. They're handsome, articulate, and they smell nice - even over the radio. In fact, they’re the best dispatchers in the whole darned world. Especially if they’re reading this.

I've always held the opinion that there are three types of EMS dispatchers.

Type A dispatchers are the pleasant but benignly incompetent ones who screw you over by accident. Getting mad at them doesn't work, because bless their heart, they're also too dull-witted to recognize sarcasm over the radio.

Type B dispatchers are the malevolent geniuses who have thoroughly mastered your agency's deployment and dispatch system. They can simultaneously field a dozen calls and keep track of all their units, play solitaire on the computer, and eat a combo burrito without spilling chili on their shirts. When they screw you over, it is with malice aforethought. You anger a Type B dispatcher at your peril.

And then there are the Type C dispatchers. They combine the best qualities of Type A and Type B: they're pleasant, funny, supremely competent, and they take care of their ambulance crews...