Life Alert employee checking in. Those commercials can also save lives as well as generate comedy.
This has been the worst job I've ever had, as well the best job for generating stories. About 80% of the calls you get are from people who are unable to hear anything at all. Either from their hearing loss, distance, environment noise, or the fact the life alert unit is a speaker box connected to a phone line. Couple this with how sensitive the pendant button has to be made for folks that have difficulty pressing buttons. Based on numbers from the newsletters they give us, out of the hundreds of thousands of calls we take every month, only 6% are calls we dispatch on, and about 67% of those dispatches are false alarms because of a no response.
Old folks always have a tv or radio on at all hours of the day. There's not a day on that job since I went on the floor where someone I haven't gotten a call with someone's tv on full blast. In those scenarios, a lot of times someone can hear someone not the TV is talking to them, but they can't make out what you're saying, and boy will the person on the other end let you know that... repeatedly.
I had one call with that. Lady was watching Wheel of Fortune (I always hear Wheel more often than Jeopardy, and that saddens me. Fox News and Turner Movie Classics are also pretty high up there), and I do my opening script.
She responds with, "Help! Help!"
"Okay ma'am, help is on the way. What's wrong?" Pat Sajak announces a commercial break in the background (really the foreground, since her tv's louder than anything else)
"Help! Help me! I need help!"
"Yes ma'am, help is on the way, but what is wrong?"
"Help me, help me!"
Since we're contractually obligated to dispatch within 3 minutes of receiving the call, I start dialing up 911 (yes, surprise, that's literally all companies like LA do for your grandparents. Call their local 911 dispatch center) ready to tell them I have someone not responding properly only saying they need help. As the phone's ringing, I hear in one ear, "This is Life Alert, are you ok?" And, since I hadn't seen the commercial yet my first thought was, "that's not the opening script."
"I've fallen and I can't get up!"
I check in on her line, "Ma'am you fell?"
"Help! Help! Help me, someone please!"
911 picks up, "911 what is the location of your emergency?"
I rattle off the address and other vital info that gets every 911 call going. The dispatcher asks what the nature of the emergency is.
"At first she was shouting for help and not responding, the tv was on very loud and she has hard of hearing on her account. I'm not really certain if it was her but, well, our commercial came on..."
"A Life Alert commercial?" The dispatcher asks.
Then as if on cue, the commercial again plays the, "This is Life Alert, are you ok?"
"I already told ya! I've fallen and I can't get up! Get your ass over here now and pick me up!"
My sentence was stopped by a burst of laughter. The other dispatcher cleared their throat the way people honk while waiting for you to back out of a parking spot. "Did she respond to you?"
"Well, not to me. But she told the commercial she's fallen and she can't get up."
"Are you sure it wasn't the commercial? Isn't that ya'lls catch phrase or something?"
"It's the catch phrase of the elderly. You have no idea how many times I hear that a day. I have a key location available for entry."
The rest of the call was uneventful, mostly because the TV was so loud. But that was the first time encountering our commercials while at work. But I've definitely had some unfortunate comedy, and a whole lot of reminders why getting old sucks.