Sleeping arrangements

AJ Hidell said:
Fixed that for ya.

While I am completely with VQ on the first part of his post, I have to disagree with his final statement. If you are going to force me to sleep on the job, it is unreasonable for you to dictate how I do it. NOBODY should be sleeping in a uniform. It looks like crap when you crawl into a patient's house like that, hurting our professional image, and diminishing public support for EMS. Not to mention that some people simply can't sleep like that unless they are way beyond exhausted. My underwear reveals no more than my bathing suit does. If you have a problem with that, look the other way and stay away from the beach. If you don't want to show yours, that's your business, that's fine. I won't tell you how you should sleep. But don't tell me how to sleep.
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Just throw on your EMS jacket and voila! They can't see the wrinkled shirt. :P
 
nomofica said:
Just throw on your EMS jacket and voila! They can't see the wrinkled shirt. :P
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Well that's not the only problem. What if during the night you get too hot, you dont know about it, no-one wants to see / smell sweat!

I sleep with a t-shirt and shorts and that's good for me! It takes all of 5 seconds to throw your shirt on!
 
Our 24 hr bases all have two bedrooms with a bed. Sleep is allowed and expected from 11pm to 7am. If you are back at base. The 24hr sites are rural and have a slower call volume. However they tend to run 24 hr trucks on long hauls and extended coverage areas. These sites have a two minute chute time requirement.

The 12 hr bases had the beds taken out years ago. You are expected to come to work able to do your shift. However if we are not busy most of us are sacked out on a couch on night shifts. Day shifts are usually busy enough to keep us awake, however we do get one and two nap days now and then. A 1 minute chute time is required here.

If there are not separate rooms then it's you on one couch and your partner on the other, whether they are man, woman or beast.
 
BossyCow said:
Wow, quite a reaction! Someone was sitting in the back telling jokes during sensitivity training! To assume that its always the female 'demanding' to have seperate quarters or raising the issue of segregation is obviously coming from some nasty incident in your past. I'm sorry for your pain, get some therapy or just grow up. Today's workplace contains both genders. Not all women are whiney princesses who are intruding into the male workplace with all their girly demands and ultimatums. Most of us are just people, wanting to do our jobs, get along with our co-workers and get paid.
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I didn't say you are all demanding princesses. Most women are like you Bossy in that there's no problem with coed sleeping situations. You are right in that I've had experiences (plural) where women manipulate a situation to get private quarters; I didn't extend that comment to include other "demands" for special treatment. You all punch in, work, lift, assess, cover shifts, push meds, show compassion, etc just like the next guy.

But yes, the past is oh so painful, I really should call my crisis managment hotline... :rolleyes: My eyes just dilate when I remember another one of the guys (minus male anatomy) giving our managers liberal syndrome (aka liability fear) because it's a "sensitive issue coercing" co-ed dorms.

AJHIDELL said:
Someone was sitting in the back telling jokes during political correctness indoctrination!
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Fixed that for ya.
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Amen!
 
We only have one 1-bedroom apartment, so we have to share, male or female. It's against the law, but our supervisor doesn't care. I personally get along fine with the male partner I have for 2 out of the 4 days of my rotations, so I don't mind sharing living quarters with him (the guy who's with me the other 2 days lives in town). I just wish we had a 2nd bed - we only have 1 bed and a couch. It's been like that for months, since I started...before, they didn't even have an apartment, so they couldn't get any staff.
 
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vquintessence said:
I've had experiences (plural) where women manipulate a situation to get private quarters;

And I've had experiences with the 'wimmins don't belong here' jerks who would bring porn to work just to make the females feel uncomfortable. I started my work career in the early 70s when a woman's right to earn a living raise had not yet been accepted as mainstream opinion and those of us willing to do a days work for a days pay were seen as threats to the American way of life. If you were cute you were prey, if you weren't, you were ridiculed.

I believe that there are jerks in all genders, races religions and creeds. But when you single out one to talk about, you reinforce a stereotype which by your second post, you don't even believe.
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We do 24's and now started 12's as well. Each station has private bedrooms with t.v., etc Problem we are not there very much any more. Main HQ has separate locker and showers per genders. The substations have one shared.

Years ago we had men's/ women's bunk rooms & separate showers, r/r.

If you don't believe things don't go on in EMS one is naive. Personally what one does is their business, but don't come whining later when the litigations to be paid and I don't want to hear about the break ups...

R/r 911
 
Sasha said:
I'd hope people were adult enough not to need seperate sleeping quarters to prevent them from doing eachother like hormonal teenagers.

And when you think about it, will seperate sleeping quarters prevent sex? It's not like they sit in their respective rooms groaning "Oh no. There's a wall between us!"
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Yeah but doing it sure is fun :rolleyes:

On the serious side, we have 12 hour shifts, 24 hour shifts and some 48. You can sleep right when you get there if you want, after you check of the ambulance, which only takes 1 hour. But you have to be ready to respond and such. I sleep with all my clothes on and boots, during the day. At night I sleep with everything on but my boots. We have seperate girls and boys sleeping quarters. But a both girls and boys shower (only one allowed at a time).
 
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In a word: zilch. If you aren't lucky enough to grab a couch, you sleep in a chair, in the back of the ambulance, or you steal the cushion from an O.O.S. litter, put it on the floor, and sleep.
 
rhan101277 said:
But a both girls and boys shower (only one allowed at a time).
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Now thats a progressive EMS system. The only thing I would require, is one boy and one girl mandatory in the showers at all times...To conserve water and time of course. :)
 
We have 2 24 hour trucks out of my station. 2 bedrooms up stairs w/ 1 bed each, 2 bedrooms down w/1 bed each. On my shift the paramedics are men, EMTs women. The men sleep upstairs, the girls down.

Its not a privacy thing, in our case the men snore like polar bears and fart all night, us girls dont!

And, if hidden during the day you can sleep. You can't pile up on the couches until after 5.
 
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i work out of a hospital and we have a boys room and a girls room with bunk beds, and a matress that can be layed down on the ground in each room
 
Separate bedrooms for all crew members. TV in each room. Sleep once chores are done. I think it is BS for any 24 hour service to say no sleep before 5pm as you can not be sure I will get sleep later. Then the 24 becomes dangerous. Now at busy services w/o 95% + chance of getting sleep we should not do more than 12 hour shifts which we all know will end up being closer to 14-16 by time come in early for shift change and finishing reports, etc at end.
 
ErinCooley said:
Its not a privacy thing, in our case the men snore like polar bears and fart all night, us girls dont!
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Nonsense. The worst snoring I have ever endured was from a couple of the cows I have worked with.
 
We have one bedroom with a king size bed. We all pile in and cuddle all night. This saves on heating bills!!
 
The department that I just left, we could sleep whenever we wanted to. We had two stations in our county and there was just one big bedroom with 5 beds. There was co-ed sleeping. When I first started there I wasn't used to that and it took some getting used to. Sleeping in a room full of guys I didn't know was weird. But they became some of my best guy friends and now it doesn't matter where Im at. It doesn't bother me. I have to sleep with guys at the firehouse when I do my clinicals for my medic. A fire department that has a little ole measly 3 females on the department! So that can be interesting with those guys!
I see no prob. with females sleeping with males..and no not in that sense either ;) Its a mans job right now and everyone should keep their hands to theirselves! haha
 
our station is actually an old house... we have two bedrooms with two beds in each. normally partners sleep in the same room. the only time there is any exception is when someones spouse would throw a fit if they found out that their spouse was sleeping in the same room of someone with the opposite sex.. or if there are only 2 people on shift, sometimes they will sleep in separate bedrooms.. as for me, at night i normally sleep on the couch in the living room.
 
Back in Bedrock...

In the USAF fire station, we had a too large second story bunkroom and we each received Hermann Miller-type dividers with a bed and a one drawer nightstand just before we received our first female firefighters. Most of us slept in GI underwear (like civilian but plain) and slid into our shirts and then the boot/pants combo to respond.
Civilian: one company had a four bedroom "dorm" and no females at night. The other company had 16 hr overnight shifts, each of the two stations had a room to sleep in (the older little station used the dayroom as the bunkroom and kitchen too), we usually rested in our uniforms on top of the covers and sometimes slept.
In the field with the Guard, we usually had the back half of our old GP Medium tent (like M*A*S*H* 's chow tent) to billet, we were on 24 hr call, and the front half was for pts. If they multiplied, we contracted. Once we camped out of the ambulance and worked on a table alongside under a tarp. Would alsways keep a clean pair of BDU's and socks for sleeping
Sleeping in your unit is great publicity for your company, no? :unsure:
 
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