i work in the office now, so I’m not often on a truck. But today, I made a crew with one of the other admin staff for a diff breather call.
Got to the house, found an 85 year old guy who was watching a movie, sitting on the couch when he developed acute dyspnea. He was in moderate distress, pretty crackly and hypertensive. We treat him and get him loaded. Once at the ED, I had to wait for a bed so we made some small talk.
Me: “so what movie were you watching?”
Him: “uhhh... well.... it was a porno.”
Me: ...
Him: “it wasn’t even very good. I only watched like 10 minutes of it and now look where I am.”
I laughed out loud.
I feel like it might have been too good...
Unrelated, but it's time to complain.
We had a staff meeting the other day. Without much warning, seven of the eight partnerships were broken up and some people were moved off their shift. I lose my partner of three years which is a huge deal. Not only do we work really well with each other but she and I are pretty good friends which will significantly screw with future travel plans. I am very close with the other crew on shift as well. When I was initially hired on fulltime I was told the organization would never seek to break up partnerships, so we all thought we were fine.
I'm now on a new shift, which is a real drag as my friends from this and other agencies worked for about a year to all get on the same shift. I also had tons of plans on days off for the next two days (two weddings, several red rocks shows) that now somehow I am responsible for finding coverage for and likely burning a bunch of vaca for.
All for what? The needs of the company. That was the only reason. With the way the new crews are, I see what they are doing. Put the low performers with the motivated folks and the two people least likely to ever contribute to growth and closest to retirement are together now. I'm just dismayed that our management has never once engaged any of these employees to work harder and are instead putting it on the backs of folks who already work hard for average compensation.
One of the captains suggested this might have been a possibility at one point with the tag line of "sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the company." My "sacrifice" is to bring in 15% of our operating budget via grant writing and the actual acquisition of most items funded (like ambulances and whatnot). I am not in management and my pay does not remotely reflect those responsibilities and now I get told to make some sacrifices?
Yea I'll go look for a new job now. I was hoping to find an agency that would hire me in a few years into entry level management role but I think at this point I'd prefer to live in a more desirable place and just get treated ok and call it good. Maybe in a few years I can get promoted internally.
/whine.
