First Duty Crew

For reasons unbeknownst to me (not true), Chad (Gaynadian), my former Red Hat trainer is on hiatus (permanent).

Without going into the reasons (PAH) or my thoughts (hate PAH) I will continue to discuss the happenings at the station with my leveled and objective eye (horribly skewed and biased).

Unfortunately, things have become less eventful now that I'm working with people who are less action oriented, and more sitting oriented. In fact, the duty crew to which I was assigned stated, upon initial introduction, that when it came to training (mandatory at my station) they were more inclined towards the 'not' end of the spectrum. The officer went so far as to tell me he was only training me as a favor to the Chief - I was thrilled to hear that. It's not like I'm contributing my own time to try to better the station, provide a community service, or further enhance my and my crew's skills - wait, it is like that.

The crew is made up of 3 guys;

• [Ernst] the officer, is a 10 year vet who likes to 'relax' because it's his 'rest night'
• [Chuck] the driver, is a 6 or 7 year vet who likes him some computer card games - to the tune of about 8 hours straight.
• [Steve] the firefighter, is a 3 year vet, IT goob, clearance, etc. Reads blogs and such at the station. He's actually pretty cool - but I already know cool people.

Steve wasn't there on the first night, in his stead was Jordan. I need to eludicate a bit on Jordan but I haven't exactly pinned down what to say. I think the primary reason she's on my radar is because she seems to be the epicenter of a lot of activity at the station. Outside of the aforementioned flirting (incredibly feckless) with everyone (not just management anymore) she has a way of placing herself in a position of authority or knowledge, and then when called upon to fulfill the responsibilities of the position, relegates the yeomen work to someone else; all the while somehow maintaining something akin to credibility.

I'm no stranger to this type of behavior, but I wouldn't expect it in a volunteer organization. Volunteers, are by definition, people who are willing to contribute mindshare/work/effort to a cause with no tangible compensation. Jordan seems to want to maintain the illusion of being a person with this comportment, but doesn't want to actually commit the resources.

I was going to list all of the evidence here to support my claim, but it seems trite and childish. Suffice it to say - Jordan is not somebody I want to follow into a fire. Nor is she somebody I want following me.

My duty crew went to dinner and then did a quick hydrant drill (at my request) before wrapping it up for the night. I would love to delve into all of the humorous and interesting aspects of the drill, but the fact was, it sucked, and all it did was convey to me the fact that the crew was desperately in need of more drilling.

At the very beginning of the drill it was evident that the crew didn't do this often. What followed was a series of rationalizations reminscent of the hapless sidestepping at a Senate Hearing: frantic justification of why they didn't know where something was, constant re-evaluation of how something worked vs. how it should have worked, multiple tries to get something to work, multiple tries to get something back in the truck, and extensive enumeration about how the truck sucks and should be able to accommodate all of these issues. Basically, they had the entire suite of ailments present in PAH save the predilection towards unfettered rage.

Needless to say, my outlook darkened on the ride home. It was doubly darkened when we were joined in the tv room by what could possibly be the biggest (both in waistsize and relativity) blowhard I've met since the 22-hour class.

This character, let's call him [Hemorrhoid], couldn't squeeze more bullshit into his conversations if he had an implement specifically built for bullshit-squeezing. I'm not a great judge of character, or people for that matter, but this guy had 'asshole' emblazoned all over his countenance... it was tough to miss. He gave an exhaustive discourse on how good he was, how bad the Chief was, how much he didn't care what the Chief said, how much he didn't have to be there, how everybody knew he was awesome, how his experience trumped everyone else's, and how important he was at his other station.

Apparently my passive demeanor, or the fact that I'm a Red Hat, dictates that I have to tolerate irritants such as this. Hemorrhoid is not the first person to regale me with breathless exaltations of himself, but he was certainly the most unyielding. His behavior is completely without restraint because everyone is complicit. Besides the fact that all of these verbal assaults sound much the same, they also have something else in common: they would be easily disproven if anybody had the sack to call them out. I'm a new guy, I have virtually zero skills, but I'm still likely going to be that person. For some reason, I find it immoral and irresponsible to let this shit go on unmanaged.

Look for a future post on how my verbal invective and bullet-proof logic completely changed Hemorrhoid's demeanor and how he is now a very apt and engaging individual.

There was lots of activity that night; multiple EMS calls, and an actual fire call at 2am. I had never really gotten to sleep, so I was out the door and putting on my turnout gear (the actual fire gear) in a matter of 30 seconds. I was on the truck with all my gear on, or with me, and I didn't fuck one thing up in the process. Maybe not a truimph, but a stunning non-defeat.

The call was for a gas-leak. It was our 2nd due, meaning another station is responsible for being there first, but we were backing them up. We sat around the corner and I was instructed to, upon notice, jump out, wrap the hydrant, and flow water if called for. It never happened, and I never had to get out of the truck. However, the conversation that followed was a bit unsettling...

Ernst: We couldn't hook to the hydrant, we've got a 4" supply hose. Hydrant steamer caps are bigger."

Chuck: Yeah, well, I've got the hydrant couplings in the back, we could use one of those.

Me: "There is a hydrant coupling on the supply hose. It's intended specfically for hooking up to hydrants. There is also a hydrant wrench tied inside the coupling with webbing. The webbing is what I pull to get the supply hose off the engine."

Ernst: "You sure? I don't think that's right. I think we need to add a coupling."

Me: "I've run water through that supply line 3 times in 3 weeks, twice it was me that hooked it to the hydrant - so, yeah, I'm pretty sure."

Chuck: "Okay, we'll check it once we get back to the station."

It give me no pleasure to say this: I was right, they were wrong. Typically, I engage in a little dance I like to call the gloaty-smugnificent-swagger-step whenever I prove somebody wrong, but in this case, the wrongosity of their claims bent towards a somewhat sobering thought:

My crew was haggling over the most basic, most fundamental, most primary function of their job. The raison d'etere of the truck is to move water from a source to a fire. The primary means of doing this is via the supply hose hooked to a hydrant. They, quite literally, were not clear on how this was to be done.

Oh yeah, and they're training me.