Getting Fired After Failing The Training

[Vanenix]

I am an EMT but sometimes I think that this career is not worthy. Spending a couple of bucks to get your CPR Class, take and pass your EMT Class, pass the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technician, applying and spending money for your State or County License, do your live scan and vaccinations and medical certificate, study and passed the DMV Ambulance Driver Certificate, and ending with no job here in California which ending up volunteering to gain experience, or getting paid 10 dollars per hour which is the same income as working in McDonalds. Then they put you on probationary period and if they don't like your performance, you get fired on the spot.

 

[TransportJockey]

I am an EMT but sometimes I think that this career is not worthy. Spending a couple of bucks to get your CPR Class, take and pass your EMT Class, pass the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technician, applying and spending money for your State or County License, do your live scan and vaccinations and medical certificate, study and passed the DMV Ambulance Driver Certificate, and ending with no job here in California which ending up volunteering to gain experience, or getting paid 10 dollars per hour which is the same income as working in McDonalds. Then they put you on probationary period and if they don't like your performance, you get fired on the spot.

Ya know a lot of jobs of any kind are like that. 90 day probationary period, can be terminated for no reason. NM, for instance, is an at-will state. They can fire you at will for any reason they want.

And as for EMT... the field is oversaturated with EMTs and, in some areas, medics. Training that is too short to weed anyone out, coupled with attracting adrenaline junkies and people who just want to get into it to enter the fire service... It's not surprising

EDIT: and when I worked a private IFT/911 company in NM, I made $9/hr, which for hte area wasn't too bad at all. Better than local fast food or hotels anyways

 

[JJR512]

I didn't say it was impossible to find. I said odd are you employer won't find it, and if you don't mention it, neither will they. not only that, but if your HR manager and EMS manager who interview you like you, and want to give you a job, I would be very shocked to hear that you will be offered the job and then be terminated because you omitted a job on your application.

And I said you were correct, the employer won't find it. They won't find it because they're not the ones looking for it. They've most likely contracted with an investigation company to look for it, and they are the ones who will find it (if their contract is to look for it, of course).

I have never been offered a job before all background checks were completed. Therefore, I would never have been fired for leaving something out of my application, because I never would have been hired in the first place. I have been conditionally offered employment after an interview, pending clearance from the background check, reference check, and drug screen. A conditional offer of employment is not the same as being hired.

back in 2002, I worked for an ambulance company called Able Ambulance. I worked there FOR A WEEK, before deciding it wasn't for me. I also worked for Long Branch EMS, for about a month, once a week. After getting tired with dealing with their scheduling nightmares, I left them to. Not only that, but in addition to my EMS work, I have worked a full time non-ems job up until 2006. When I applied to every EMS job, I put my FT job (as an IT contractor, I had a few of them), but non of the past ones. and it never caused a problem.

Then you have been lucky. Either nobody checked, or they did but didn't care. And it is very possible that a potential employer might not care about jobs you've held for a short period of time. Employers understand about probationary periods.

But your right, it's probably better to say you were fired from a job after a few weeks, and having to explain it to an interview committee (if they even give you an interview, many HR gate keepers won't even look at you), than to omit a short term thing and let the rest of your history and resume actually get you the job. I guess to each his or her own.

If you work for an employer, whether for five minutes, five days, five weeks, or five years, you were employed with that company.

A job application might ask you to list your last three (or some other number) employers, or all of your employers for the last some number of years. If you were employed somewhere during that time (or it was within the last X number of jobs), not listing that employer is a lie of omission. I believe many people, maybe even most people, stretch the truth on applications and in interviews. Some exaggeration or spin to make you look better. But not listing something you are specifically asked to list because you're scared it will make you look bad is just as wrong as listing a complete invention that you think will make you look good.

But you're right. If you can sleep well at night, if you can live with yourself knowing that you're a liar, knowing that the ends justified the means, knowing that your integrity is lacking, then as you say, to each his or her own.

 

[LonghornMedic]

Completely wrong.

If you got paid on a previous job, and it wasn't an under-the-table cash deal or anything, then there's a record of your employment. Those records are looked for when background checks are conducted. You're right that the employer might not know where to look, but most employers don't do the background checks themselves; they've hired a contractor to do that for them. Professional background check companies know where to look. The information is there. The IRS has it, the Social Security Administration has it, other government agencies have it—even if no taxes were withheld from your paycheck.

The information is there, it isn't hard to find, and it's perfectly legal for a background checking agency to look for and get it if you've signed permission for the background check to be conducted.

Whether they actually do the background check, what they decide to do after finding out you withheld information, is up to the potential employer, of course. But if they want to find it, they will find it, make no mistake.

No private company can access any of that information. Your IRS and Social Security records are off limits to everyone except law enforcement agencies with search warrants. The only way a background check company can track employers is through the info you give to them or through your credit report that can also list employers you listed on credit applications.

 

[emtJR86]

Seems like the company is quick to pull the trigger on these things...however, sometimes choices in the field must be made with haste, and those who succeed at that, make it a long way.

 

[46Young]

I am an EMT but sometimes I think that this career is not worthy. Spending a couple of bucks to get your CPR Class, take and pass your EMT Class, pass the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technician, applying and spending money for your State or County License, do your live scan and vaccinations and medical certificate, study and passed the DMV Ambulance Driver Certificate, and ending with no job here in California which ending up volunteering to gain experience, or getting paid 10 dollars per hour which is the same income as working in McDonalds. Then they put you on probationary period and if they don't like your performance, you get fired on the spot.

Think about it, those requirements are there for a reason. The driving stuff is necessary because you can be driving L/S, and you also have a passenger in the back, along with your partner who may not be buckled in due to pt care requirements. An ambulance doesn't take hits or rollovers very well, either. It a serious responsibility, well past that of the typical driver. You're transporting patients, so consider yourself lucky that you don't need a CDL like bus drivers or ambulette drivers.

The vaccinations are obvious. You may get infeected, and you could also pass those diseases to other pts, your family, and general society. It's not all about you.

Background checks are vital. We're going into these pts homes. We're privy to sensitive medical information, as well as all their demographics. It would be easy enough to record this info and sell it for identity theft.

As far as the pay, it's supply and demand like anywhere else. If the supply is low, you can write your own ticket. If it's high, you'll be offered less, and have to jump through many more hoops to be employed.

 

[JPINFV]

Background checks are vital. We're going into these pts homes. We're privy to sensitive medical information, as well as all their demographics. It would be easy enough to record this info and sell it for identity theft.

As an aside, I do hope that they exempt EMTs from the ambulance driver cert background check soon now that background checks are a state requirement for EMT certifications instead of a county by county requirement. It made sense when a couple of counties didn't require background checks, but that's not the case anymore. Keep the requirement, though, for the handful of non-EMT ambulance driver cert holders though.

 

[Aerin-Sol]

A job application might ask you to list your last three (or some other number) employers, or all of your employers for the last some number of years. If you were employed somewhere during that time (or it was within the last X number of jobs), not listing that employer is a lie of omission. I believe many people, maybe even most people, stretch the truth on applications and in interviews. Some exaggeration or spin to make you look better. But not listing something you are specifically asked to list because you're scared it will make you look bad is just as wrong as listing a complete invention that you think will make you look good.

But you're right. If you can sleep well at night, if you can live with yourself knowing that you're a liar, knowing that the ends justified the means, knowing that your integrity is lacking, then as you say, to each his or her own.

Meh. If I were an employer, I'd care much more about the long-term jobs someone had than the one they quit after a week because it was a bad environment. I look at those application forms the same way I look at a resume - it's not a lie of omission to leave off irrelevant short-term jobs. It's simply giving the information that's actually wanted.

 

[John E]

Hmmm...

I think you could make the case that since the person in question was fired for not passing these mysterious "attendant" and "drivers" classes, neither of which are required to work as an EMT in California by the way, that they never held the job in the first place.

I don't list my short time working for one private company in Los Angeles county because I don't want to be affiliated with any company who's sole reason for being in business was Medicare fraud.

P.S. I sleep just fine and I know I have integrity.

 

[JJR512]

Meh. If I were an employer, I'd care much more about the long-term jobs someone had than the one they quit after a week because it was a bad environment. I look at those application forms the same way I look at a resume - it's not a lie of omission to leave off irrelevant short-term jobs. It's simply giving the information that's actually wanted.

From the employer's perspective, I agree with the first half of what you said. A person's performance on a long-term job, and the reasons for why they left that job, are more important than that they got a job somewhere and decided quickly that they didn't like it. As I said earlier, most employers understand the probationary period, during which either party can terminate the employment.

But I continue to disagree with the sentiment you expressed in the second half of your post. It is not the applicant's job to make judgements about what the employer wants on the application, especially if they're using that "judgement" to justify concealing something potentially detrimental. That's not giving the employer what they want; that's giving the employer what you want them to know, and concealing the rest.

And you cannot omit something that's been asked for and accurately say "it's not a lie of omission". If you were asked for it, and you don't list it, then you omitted it. You concealed it. And when you sign your name at the end of the application, after the statement which usually reads something to the effect of, "By signing this application, I affirm that I have answered all questions truthfully, accurately, and completely to the best of my ability," then you've lied. It's just that simple.

Now if the employment section asks for all EMS work experience, and you held a non-EMS position for one day, sure you can leave that out. If it asks for your three most recent jobs, and four jobs ago was a short-term job, sure you can leave it out. If it asks for your employment history for the last five years, and you held a short-term job in 2003, sure you can leave that out.

I don't know what other EMS communities are like, but around the Greater Baltimore-Washington Metro Area, it's a small world. At the private companies, most of the employees are volunteers in the surrounding counties. At any given fire station, one volunteer may work for Company X and another may work at Company Y. Stories get around. I was once fired from Company A for a reason that at first glance, without knowing the whole story, made me look bad. When I applied to Company B, I could have left that job off my application entirely, or I could have put it on but listed some BS reason as to why I was no longer employed there. But my integrity was not sufficiently lacking enough to allow me to do so. In the interview, I explained exactly what happened. And a few months later, one of the supervisors at Company A decided he didn't like working there anymore, left, and got a job at Company B. He wasn't the guy that fired me but he knew the situation, and now he was working at my new job. Stories get around. Stories have ways of following you. You might get lucky once or twice, maybe a hundred times. You might not ever get caught lying. If you want to take that chance, I can't stop you. Just don't try to justify it to me with "well they didn't want to know about that job anyway" and if you think you can lie and have integrity, you need to buy a different brand of dictionary.

 

[looker]

I think you could make the case that since the person in question was fired for not passing these mysterious "attendant" and "drivers" classes, neither of which are required to work as an EMT in California by the way, that they never held the job in the first place.

I don't list my short time working for one private company in Los Angeles county because I don't want to be affiliated with any company who's sole reason for being in business was Medicare fraud.

P.S. I sleep just fine and I know I have integrity.

What you considering medicare fraud might be totally legal. As employer i always do background check on prospective employees. All information get sold, if checked hard enough everything can be found about you including what you eat in the morning etc.