Partner showed up reeking of booze...

I am absolutely against being drunk on duty.

However, someone who is a weasel enough to make assumptions and go behind a peers back to a supe can toss it. I don't want to work with anyone like that.

Reporting is the right thing to do in the cited circumstance. Especially if in your professional opinion the safety of everyone is compromised. Just have enough integrity to tell your partner to his face what you're doing and why you are doing it. If you do that everyone else should understand. You also have to remember that rumors travel faster in EMS than an all girls high school. In Hawaii we call it the coconut telephone. I'd also give it an 80% chance that the supervisor will be the main person spreading it.

Keep writing your partners up behind their backs and then observe how the rest of the workforce treats you. What am I saying? Most of the people that do that are self centered and oblivious.

It's easy to be a boy scout on a forum in the internet. However, this job, life, and the real world are all about the grey area. Like someone said before me, there are two sides to every story.
 
Seriously, you need to ask?

Seriously, you need to ask what to do. I can remember 20 years ago when I first started in a rural ambulance station coming to work and finding my partner wrapped around the throne vomiting after a night out. People, the public expects a high standard of us and the profession should demand it. The patients often desperately need it. Call a supervisor, send them home. The message is bring your "A game" and a smile to work or go home. No, gum doesn't cover the smell of rum.
 
Back
Top