> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.holdtraffic.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Problem With “Thick Skin” - URL: https://www.holdtraffic.com/the-problem-with-thick-skin/ - Published: 2026-08-31T18:30:52.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-31T18:30:51.000Z - Description: Dispatch requires thick skin—but we should be careful about what we’re asking people to be resilient against. There’s a difference between handling the realities of the job and tolerating a workplace that makes an already difficult profession harder. - Author: Justin Storch - Tags: 911dispatch, leadership, public safety communications, wellness, culture If you've worked in dispatch long enough, you've probably heard some version of this: **“You need thick skin to work here.”** And you know what? They're right. You do. Public safety communications isn't always a gentle profession. People will scream at you. Callers will curse at you. Responders will occasionally get frustrated with you. You'll hear things you can't unhear. You'll make mistakes. You'll get corrected. Sometimes you'll have to put an incredibly difficult call behind you because another 911 line is already ringing. There is absolutely a level of emotional resilience required to do this job. But somewhere along the way, **“you need thick skin”** became an excuse for some things that have absolutely nothing to do with the job. And I think we need to talk about the difference. ## The Job Is Supposed to Be Hard Let's get this part out of the way first. Dispatch is hard. There are parts of this profession we cannot—and probably should not—sanitize. A caller doesn't care that you're having a bad day. The radio doesn't stop because you're overwhelmed. A critical incident doesn't wait until everyone in the room feels emotionally prepared. And sometimes feedback is uncomfortable. If someone makes an operational mistake, we have to talk about it. If performance isn't meeting the standard, someone has to say so. If a trainee isn't progressing, pretending otherwise doesn't help them. Professional growth occasionally requires hearing things we'd rather not hear. None of that is bullying. None of that is toxicity. And none of that means leadership has failed to create a supportive workplace. Sometimes being a professional means hearing something uncomfortable, processing it, learning from it, and moving forward. That's part of the thick skin this profession requires. But there's another kind. ## The Workplace Doesn't Need to Be Hard There's a difference between saying: **“This profession will sometimes make you uncomfortable.”** and saying: **“We should be allowed to make you uncomfortable because that's how dispatch is.”** Those aren't the same thing. A caller screaming at a telecommunicator is an unfortunate reality of the profession. A coworker deliberately making that telecommunicator miserable isn't. Hearing traumatic information is part of emergency communications. Being mocked, excluded, humiliated, or constantly talked about by the people sitting beside you isn't. Getting corrected when you make a mistake is part of professional development. Having that mistake repeatedly thrown back in your face for entertainment isn't. Yet sometimes all of those things get lumped together under the same explanation: **“They need thicker skin.”** No. Maybe we need better behavior. ## “That's Just How We Are” Dispatch centers can develop some strange cultures. Spend twelve hours in a room with the same group of people, add stress, dark humor, sleep deprivation, caffeine, and the occasional complete collapse of civilization at 3:00 in the morning, and you're going to develop some interesting relationships. That's part of what I love about this profession. People joke. They give each other a hard time. They develop running jokes that make absolutely no sense to anyone outside the room. Sometimes the humor gets dark. That's normal. The problem begins when **“that's just how we joke”** becomes more important than the person on the receiving end. There's a simple reality we sometimes make unnecessarily complicated: If everyone involved is laughing, you're probably joking with someone. If everyone except one person is laughing, you may be laughing **at** someone. And if that person tells you they're uncomfortable and your first response is that they need thicker skin, maybe the problem isn't their sense of humor. ## Intent Matters. Impact Does Too. One of the most common defenses when someone is upset by a comment is: **“I was just joking.”** They probably were. Most people aren't walking into work thinking, *I'm going to make somebody miserable today.* Intent matters. I don't think we should automatically assume malicious motives every time someone says something poorly. People make bad jokes. People misread situations. People say things they immediately wish they could take back. That's being human. But intent isn't the only thing that matters. Impact matters too. If I step on your foot accidentally, I didn't intend to hurt you. Your foot still hurts. The reasonable response isn't: **“Well, I didn't mean to step on you, so you shouldn't be in pain.”** It's: **“Sorry. I'll move my foot.”** Workplace relationships don't have to be much more complicated than that. Sometimes being a professional means recognizing that something you intended as harmless didn't land that way and adjusting. That's not weakness. That's basic respect. ## Thick Skin Goes Both Ways Here's another part of the conversation we don't have enough. If we're going to tell employees they need thick skin, then **we need thick skin when someone tells us our behavior bothered them.** That includes coworkers. And it absolutely includes supervisors. Someone saying: **“Hey, that bothered me.”** isn't necessarily an attack. It's information. Maybe after talking about it, you still disagree. Maybe there's context they misunderstood. Maybe they misunderstood your intent. Maybe you misunderstood their reaction. Fine. Have the conversation. But immediately becoming defensive, angry, or retaliatory because someone expressed discomfort doesn't demonstrate particularly thick skin either. Sometimes the most resilient person in the conversation is the one willing to hear: **“You crossed a line.”** and respond: **“I didn't realize that. I'll do better.”** ## “This Generation…” Eventually, almost every conversation about workplace culture seems to arrive here. **“This generation just doesn't have thick skin.”** Maybe. Or maybe different generations simply have different ideas about what they're willing to tolerate at work. Someone who entered public safety communications twenty or thirty years ago may have come into a very different workplace than someone entering it today. You didn't question much. You took the joke. You accepted the nickname. If a senior dispatcher gave you a hard time, that was part of earning your place. If a supervisor hurt your feelings, you probably didn't schedule a meeting to discuss it. You went back to your console. That environment produced some incredibly resilient dispatchers. It also created some very unhealthy coping mechanisms and probably ran some incredibly good people out of the profession. All this is true. Today's newer employees often arrive with different expectations. They're generally more comfortable talking about boundaries. They're more willing to question workplace behavior. They're more likely to say something when they're uncomfortable rather than simply accepting it as part of paying their dues. I don't think that's automatically weakness. Sometimes the new employee asking, **“Why do we tolerate this?”** is asking a question the rest of us should have asked ten years ago. But there's another side to this. Not every uncomfortable experience is a toxic workplace. Being corrected isn't bullying. Being told no isn't disrespect. Being expected to meet a standard isn't an attack. And having a supervisor tell you something you don't want to hear doesn't mean they violated a boundary. Sometimes you're uncomfortable because someone treated you poorly. Sometimes you're uncomfortable because you're being held accountable. Learning the difference is part of becoming a professional. Maybe that's where generations in the workplace can actually learn something from each other. Experienced dispatchers can help newer employees develop the resilience this profession absolutely requires. Newer employees can challenge experienced dispatchers to reconsider behaviors we've defended for years simply because **“that's how it was when I started.”** Neither generation needs to win. We need to build a workplace that keeps the best of both. **Resilience without cruelty.** **Respect without avoiding accountability.** That's a culture I'd take over “thick skin” any day. ## Resilience Isn't Silence This may be the biggest problem I have with the phrase. Sometimes **“you need thicker skin”** really means: **“Stop complaining.”** Don't say anything. Don't make it awkward. Don't challenge the culture. Just absorb it. That's not resilience. Resilience is the ability to experience adversity, process it, adapt, and continue functioning. It doesn't mean accepting every behavior around you without speaking. In fact, healthy organizations need people who are willing to speak up when something isn't right. That's how cultures improve. If the only people who can survive in our communications center are the ones willing to tolerate whatever gets thrown at them, eventually we shouldn't be surprised by the kind of culture we've created. ## Leadership Has a Role This is where supervisors and managers have to pay attention. Culture doesn't exist because of the motivational quote hanging on the wall. Culture is what we allow to happen repeatedly. If employees constantly belittle one another and leadership ignores it, that's culture. If new employees are treated like outsiders until they've “earned” basic respect, that's culture. If gossip is the primary form of internal communication, that's culture. If someone raises a concern and immediately becomes the next topic of conversation, that's culture too. Leaders don't have to police every joke or turn the dispatch floor into a library. Please don't. A communications center should have personality. People should laugh. People should enjoy coming to work. Some of the funniest people I've ever met work in public safety. But leaders do have a responsibility to recognize when joking becomes targeting, when teasing becomes humiliation, and when “personality conflicts” start affecting someone's ability to come to work and do their job. That's not being overly sensitive. That's leadership. ## We Need Resilient Dispatchers I still believe dispatchers need thick skin. Maybe I just think we need to be more careful about **what we're asking them to be resilient against.** They need resilience for the caller screaming into the phone. For the terrible call. For the officer who gets short on the radio during a stressful incident. For the nights when the calls don't stop. For making a mistake and learning from it. For receiving honest feedback. For seeing people on the worst day of their lives and then answering the next call professionally. That's enough. We don't need to manufacture additional adversity inside the communications center just to prove someone belongs here. The job is hard enough. We shouldn't have to be hard on each other too. Maybe having thick skin isn't about tolerating everything. Maybe it's about being strong enough to handle the realities of this profession while still expecting the people beside us to treat one another with respect. Those two ideas aren't incompatible. I'd argue they're both necessary.