Sometimes I am impudent...

...but for good reason.

I work with a group of people who are 95% hard working and outstanding. There is 5% that really is working overtime to strain the saint's patience. However, our work environment is fast-moving and stressful and we are Unionized. In Texas that is akin to saying, "And I like to club baby seals in my off-time." but what it really means is that your employers have to negotiate with you for working conditions and wages. Why this remains a mysterious concept to people is beyond me... but I digress. You are also afforded certain rights and luxuries like representation in discipline and a sympathetic ear that is on your side... that isn't a hired gun. Hired for zillions of dollars but no certain outcome.

My sister was recently disciplined for "being mean" to another employee, her supervisor. They also alleged that some time ago (that they never documented) that she self-reported that she was talking bad about another employee (why take a break if you aren't going to gossip?). She, probably in a rare moment of passion, signed their document. She will now have to hope they let her take it back. Because this is Texas. And she is NOT in a Union. And she wants them to become a Union... to prevent this exact sort of thing.

In the FD the Union regulary is "responsible" for preserving people's jobs who should be not only terminated but sterilized as well before the damage can spread but rather than blame the Union I wonder that people do not look out and exclaim, "Oh hell n!. The administration is PAID to manage a high-powered fire department. The best in the nation. You mean to tell me some volunteer at the Union hall is regularly able to defeat the concentrated efforts of the Command staff and all the managers below them to preserve a certified loon's job?!?! Fuck 'em. They get what they deserve." The extracted argument to this conundrum is this, though. The Administration regularly in their hand holds what we deserve. Painful thought.

My first line item of business when I return to work is to run amok. In honor of my sister's 3 day suspention for "being mean" to a grown supervisor.

I didn't mean YOUR First Amendment rights...

All the rage right now in Texas is whether or not we should be able to allow for purchase a Texas license plate with the Confederate battle flag on it. The weird part is a Texas politico dreamed this disaster up. Wait... I just thought about that. It is not weird; it is par for the course. I digress...

1) That flag never flew over Texas. 2) The United States of America would no more allow a flag of a country that attacked us be flown than it would admit that there is a problem in the general tax code but we are actually debating this. 3)The Civil War was in part over State's Rights as the pedantic few keep whining about but it was over State's Rights TO OWN SLAVES!! To pretend that this flag is a "proud part of your heritage" or a symbols of Southern charm is clearly indicative that you were not paying attention in history class (any of them).

So it may not be fair and it may not be open-minded but when I see someone with that goofy flag plastered on their bikini, truck, beer koozie I am already in the process of formulating an opinion of them and it usually entails a tattooed rose on a tube-topped boob, a trailer house with some rusty cars out front, and an impoverished teeth to head ratio in the adult population. When I see that flag on something I am already informed that this person is either comfortable with the thought that other people (probably themselves as well) can be used and degraded at the leisure of the wealthy or that they are too lazy and ignorant to explore the meaning of a losing battle flag and what history has told us.

I had a segue into calendar people but I am going to stop this here for now.... one tirade at a time. 

At least she was honest...

...about saying she didn't know.

In the FD there is a strict refusal to adhere to a quality called the Peter Principle which says that people will rise to their highest level of incompetence and no more. In the FD this is frequently seen as a direct affront to one's self-worth and they will exceed this maxim and with full disclosure by the people that put them in those positions, rise far BEYOND their level of incompetence.

Here is a transcript of the letter I sent to my other station captains about some records I have been trying, for 6 months, to get archived.

"Dearest Other Captains,

You will note the bathroom door does not remain wedged open. I went through the records and put the Captain’s Logs by decade. Other than that there is no discernable order, I am afraid. I have piled them out in the bay because they WILL be going away soon.

I called Chief Riley again and told him our dilemma again and how I was looking forward to recycling all this paper no one wanted. He made some calls and shook trees and a nice lady called me from Quartermaster. She is nominally in charge of archiving station records. She freely admits she doesn’t know what she is doing and we would limp through this together. I sympathized. She and I made several researching calls and I was told this…

She asked how many boxes we needed and I said just three at this moment (if someone wants to send their ffers up to above the watch office to retrieve the other records I will sort through them). She was quiet for a minute and said, “But we only send out 25 boxes at a time.” I replied, calmly I thought, that we had two and a half decades of records and it barely filled 3 boxes. I asked her why don’t you put our piddly three boxes with the others that must surely be waiting to go to Iron Mountain so as to make 25. She said she would call me back. When she called back she said that would be impossible because there was no room at Dart to store records waiting to be shipped off (Arson must be hogging up the place.) I said for us to accumulate 25 boxes of records would take 22 more years and I would be close to retirement by then. She acknowledged that that did seem to be a problem. Then she whispered into the phone that she was certain that Logs were probably not being maintained in proper archival security anyways. Of that I have absolutely no doubt. I asked her if she was aware if ANY station records had EVER been sent for archiving and she said she didn’t know. None that she could remember.

So the upshot is she is sending me three boxes and labels. I am going to continue to badger her to take the three boxes and because now it has become less of a mission of caring for continuity of records-keeping and more a mission to see how ridiculous this can get. Lol

FYI – Captains logs are kept in perpetui in this alleged Archiving place. One year’s of Captain’s Logs are to be kept at the station. Watch Office logs go away after a year. I am not even going to tell you how THAT disastrous process works. I had to write it down and look at it and came to the conclusion that civilizations were rendered obsolete with less evil planning than goes into getting approval to destroy a 1984 Watch Office Log.  

KP"

Ye Shall Know the Righteous Because...

...They Will Adorn Themselves with Pajamas After 10pm.

Tonight has been all things full moon/payday inspired. The fine denizens of the area have taken it upon themselves to imbibe and let their hair hang out and then take it out on each other. At no time during their dumbass altercations did it occur to them to rub two brain cells together, "I coulda gotten 'em if I hadn't had these shoes on!" but when HFD and HPD arrive they are suddenly masters and mistresses of hair-splitting the nuances of property and ownership, misunderstandings of warrants, and how drunk is too drunk.

No good comes out of people milling around after midnight. One of the guys in the back said that if you go to withdraw lots of money after 1AM a grandmother-type figure should pop out of the ATM and lecture on how nothing good is going to come out of you spending that money this late at night and you should be ashamed and the odds are great right at this moment you do not have clean underwear on and no girl/guy is going to want someone too dumb to know when to come in out of the rain.

However, the calls we did run that had people respectibly clothed in pegnoirs, flannel pants, and night bonnets though not much brighter than the average 5 watt bulb were at least sincere and genuinely concerned and at no time did I feel their footwear was the thing standing between them moving around in drunken brawl weight classes or at any moment did I feel they were going to start throwing their furniture on the lawn and make the police launch into them in a flying tackle.

Get some PJs. Put them on.

I Do Not Always Go To The Gym...

....but when I do I tell Facebook.

I went for nearly a week without checking my email or FB. I spent time making sure my kid did her homework, ran errands, made dinner on time, and plotted the calendar. What I found out was that I missed two important emails that inadvertantly were rectified before they became important. This happened merely by being engaged in the people around me on a face to face basis. On FB I missed nothing.

Over the past few years I found myself reading the comments on news articles mainly as an extension to reading the editorials. What I found myself feeling was anxiety and despair. Certainly not crippling but it would make me irritated. Then I realized Letters to the Editor went through a filter of checking for spelling, checking for outright ignorance, and a hate filter. News comments are open to anyone that can peck out whatever thought flits through their head.

FB seems to echo this, though tempered by the fact people's real names are on it. People post the most hateful of things ANYWAYS. So my new mantra is if you post anything hateful, willfully ignorant, or persist on being asinne I will Unfriend you. I am not on FB to be held victim to your political views, read your re-posted mentally pre-masticated 'thoughts' or hear how you think the dissolution of the country/religion/education would be better if we all had guns/regular beatings of our kids/God Bless Whatever and Whoever on the dollar, coin, or pledge. I am sure this will cause heartbreak the world over but as the famous quote goes, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

Test post

I am doing 43 things.

I Want a Tablet But I Want My Life More...

...I watched the other day. I had a fairly hefty to-do list that included shooping, acquiring, and then actual hands on modifications with said acquisitions. So I did my errands and then watched.

I see people sit in front of the TV, the computer, their phones all day. Some do one thing all day. Are they sequencing DNA for the eradication of cancer? Maybe they are on the phone negotiating peace (or even launching a war) between two factions who have been rivaling since the beginning of time. Or the TV has a special on how to fix cars, budget better, get fit.

It happens at home. It happens at the station. I do not see people anymore work with their hands. I do not see them apply basic concepts of follow-through based on effort. I do not even see someone look up instructions on how to fix a doomiflatcher and then go fix it. I see them fed information and never DO anything with it unless it is to send an email or update it on their Facebook. It boils down to I never see them THINK.

I heard someone the other day state that he was deeply frustrated, depressed, and ADD. I asked him how much time he spent DOING something. Reading, getting out, cleaning his house, playing golf, anything? He watches TV, visits his head-cracker and updates his frankly boring and miserable existence on FB so we can all see it. I asked him if his shrink ever asks him how much time he spends on FB, slumped on the couch, boring the rest of us. He says no. I said you don't think it is odd that he can spend hours doing FB and doodling on the computer but if compelled to do a work task he cries his ADD makes it so hard? He did ask if the medications he was on would preclude him from riding an apparatus. I was forced to tell him his medications wouldn't... but his lack of drive and inability to BE IN EXISTENCE would keep him off my crew.