Sounds like it's the same no matter what agency you're at. I'm at a smaller agency (Highlands county) and we just consolidated with Sebring PD. We're getting ready to consolidate with EOC dispatch, where we'll take over medical and fire also, and we're so short staffed it isn't even funny. We have the same problems keeping trainees. If they hire five or six at once, then three or four months later we're lucky if one of them is still there. Everyone seems to do okay until they hit the radio. Only one of the Sebring PD dispatchers that come over with the consolidation made it through our training. I doubt that many or any of the EOC ones will stay long, since they're used to only medical/fire dispatch, and they have a much slower pace over there. One thing our agency does that I HATE--someone comes in with an application for a position elsewhere in the building, either administrative or something else, and if there isn't an opening there, they talk them into putting in for dispatch. We end up getting people who not only have no freaking idea what a dispatcher even is, or what we do, but it's not the position they wanted anyway. So we waste our time training them for a couple months before they predictably walk out. Or else they tell them that the opening they actually want will be available in a few months, and meantime why not work in dispatch? So they put them with us, and when months go by and their promised position never opens, they get disgruntled on top of it. It's hell, I tell you!