sometimes it's them, sometimes it's us

Them:

I took a call Friday at 10:00am from a guy reporting his wife as a missing person. They have a paper route and she got up at 02:30 to start the delivery process and he was too sick or too tired or both to do the route so she left by herself in something of a huff over his lack of participation. When he woke up just before 10, he became concerned because even angry she should have been home by then. The newspaper wasn’t very helpful telling him if there were complaints about missed papers.

So I started colleting information and I got to the part of the conversation which goes: does she have another job?

Caller: yeah, she works for the State, the Department of (Blah blah blah).

Me: um, would she normally be at work right now?

Caller: uuuuuuuum. wait. Yes, yes she should. It's Friday, right? Oh man, I thought it was Saturday.

Another missing person case closed.

Us:

A coworker got a call about a male and female having a physical fight inside a vehicle. To clarify what was actually happening we are trained to elicit specific details. Unfortunately in the heat of the moment a calltaker might choose the wrong words.

Calltaker: You saw them physically fighting? Okay, tell me what you saw: was he slapping her or, um, fisting her?

Eeeyow.