This is a response to a suggestion that Fire Fighters get merit based pay.
I am a Firefighter.
I play ping pong, cook a lot, play dominoes, basketball, croquet, repair computers, clean guns (well, not anymore), get our fishing boats ready, dress deer, clean fish, watch TV and movies, play a lot of Halo, and throw washers at work. I tell stories, make up lies, and gossip a lot. I read books. We get paid for all of this. I get paid for sleeping, too. I worked a shift of overtime two weeks ago and got paid about $1000.00 for the shift and I was asleep for seven hours of it. I make over $80,000 a year. By this fall, my Captain will make over $100,000 a year. I have no mortgage, car payment, credit card bill, outstanding loan. I am out of debt. I don't make a single apology for any of this.
The Second Alarm is below the fold.
I have continuing education every shift. I have every street in your neighborhood memorized. I know where your house is. I work out every shift. I service and grease hundreds of fire hydrants a year so they work when they are in front of your house and you need lots of water right now. I go teach your kids about fire safety. I teach CPR, merit badge classes. I coach basketball, baseball, I teach Sunday School, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts. I have a high school education and a college degree.
I also run into burning buildings when others are running out. I do CPR on you wife of 40 years. I do CPR on your baby of six weeks. I do CPR on your mother in law of 90 years. I do CPR on people of every race without asking for a green card. I do CPR on your 4 month old baby that wasn't breathing when you got off of the bus in front of the hospital to take her to heart surgery.
I pick up illegal aliens off the interstate that get paralyzed in wrecks. I also pick up drunken US citizens of the freeway when they park in the middle lane of the interstate and turn their lights off so their most beloved and most drunk cousin can take a leak but instead gets killed by another drunk driver. I cut your daughters car apart after she was talking on a cell phone and ran a red light and now has a broken leg and a concussion. I hear the wife of 40 years cry in the emergency room after we brought her and her husband in from a car wreck and the doctor had to tell her that her husband was dead while he was still on the gurney on the other side of the curtain. I do CPR on people in church, the grocery store, the mall, conventions, hotel rooms, bathrooms, bedrooms, strip clubs, nursing homes, alleys, out in the homeless camps, etc. Half of them vomit on you and most of them die. But not all. After 22 years I got to meet one that survived, and she said thank you.
I pull baby fingers out of door jambs and fountain faucets, I give kids teddy bears after their house burns down and their dog dies. I cut out pieces 2x4's that have a construction worker's hand nail gunned to it. I have bag ladies flip me a double eagle when we drive by in the fire engine and give her a pleasant wave back. I clean up old people's stuff when they don't quite make it to the toilet. I pull people out of the back window of their upside down car after I unhooked them from hanging upside down by their seat belts and stabilize their radius and ulna that are broken apart and their wrist is hanging down. I drag people out of ravines full of poison ivy that are drunk and that have broken ankles and then refuse to be transported to the hospital, so they get arrested instead. I help teenagers and fugitives climb out of storm drains.
I have put out fires in freezing weather, 105 degree weather, rain, sleet, snow, wind, day, night, breakfast, lunch, dinner, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mothers day, Fathers day, 4th of July and my birthday. I have gone to the same woman's apartment (x at least 10 people, men and women), time after time after time and tucked the paraplegic into bed, adjusted the quadriplegics pillow and tongue managed controller, picked up the 300 pounder, the 400 pounder, the 500 pounder, and the 600 pounder, helped the people that hadn't been out of the house in five years because they couldn't walk and had no wheelchair or anyone that cared. I have been to countless nursing homes.
I have been to the rich house where they just burnt the beans at the party. I have been to the poor house where they just burnt the oatmeal. I have been to the house that didn't have any beans, where we took them beans, presents, and Christmas dinner. I gave my badge number to a woman that didn't want to move her car from a fire zone until she finished shopping. I have been to the homeless camp where even though everyone there had a job, they had no home and no health insurance and the Maître‘d was dead because he'd choked on his vomit from pneumonia the night before and was still in his sleeping bag.
I have been to suicide by gun, by pill, by head in the oven, by jumping. I have been to death by fire, overdose, car wreck, murder, by sexual fetish gone bad, knife, drowning, miscarriage. I saw the miracle of a gang member shot three times in the back of the head by his blood in the same gang and sit up and talk to the cops, confessing that the two of them were on the way to kill a third member of the same gang. I have helped a few births, helped your lying, thieving, drug addict of a son or daughter stay alive when they didn't want to live. I have heard many more of them try to talk their way out of trouble. I help the dominatrix and submissives that can't get untied; I help people with all kind of deviant fetishes, the hoarders, and the obsessive-compulsive. I've cut handcuffs of little boys that found them in the park. I have helped the mentally ill of every stripe. I helped the boy out of the tree at the state school. I have been to the blind school, the deaf school, the state mental hospital. I even have helped people that went to that other University across the state. I have helped many business owners save their carpet from water damage, helped home owners and renters with backed up sewers, tried to save $1000.00's of dollars of food and inventory after the fire. I have helped save a woman from a flooded creek, did CPR and her and found out she had track marks and hepatitis c and I had to take prophylactic drugs to thank me for it. She didn't thank me. She died anyway.
I have been to the funerals of my brothers and sisters who died in the line of duty. They died putting out a fire in a McDonald's that was already evacuated. I saw my brothers and sisters save people that worked for the IRS out of the building on fire that had a plane in it, and not one of them refused to help people because they worked for the IRS. I watched 343 of my brothers not come out of the Trade Center, and still I help Muslim families out when they call me and need help. I help Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, Jews, Fundamentalists, Buddhists, Hindis, Wiccans, and Atheists. I help the straight, the gay, the lesbian, the transvestite, the prostitute, the Neo-Nazi, the White Aryan Nation, the Blood, the Zeta, and the little lost boy and girl.
I could go on but this is now tedious.
Every one of these people I helped was your son, daughter, father, mother, husband, wife, and you yourself.
The fire service in the United States is a government run monopoly, run in a quasi-military fashion, it might even be described as a socialist program, and we all pay for it, me, we, and us, even if you never have had a car wreck or a fire..... But you never know when.....
I want to thank the public for paying me generously. Thank you for the great health care my family and I get, and for the stability of my job in these hard times.
Let us have merit pay. How about only paying me for 21 hours a shift, because 3 hours should be off for meals, unless we have a run? How about no pay for the eight hours a night when I might be sleeping, but not next to my wife, and not in the house with my son, unless I get up five times a night and end up with 45 minutes of sleep?
How about we change the way the fire service is paid for? How about pay for service? No taxes for the fire service, but when you need us, pay up front or we roast marshmallows. How about a subscription service? You call 911 when you car is on fire, but you didn't sign up so you could save a buck, so now it is tough luck.
Let us compare this to merit pay for teachers. Teachers serve the public as do firefighters. They could tell you many stories as well. My wife, the former university professor and school teacher, should she have not got her merit pay when one of her students stabbed his ex-girlfriend fourteen times? They failed. Should she be penalized for that? Is there no merit in staying up for 24 hours stright grading papers in order to meet the report card deadline? Merit pay for teachers is equal an idea as merit pay for Fire Fighters.
Now take out every "I" in this story and replace it with a WE, man and woman, every religion, race, language, and color.
Pay us our merit pay.
We are Fire Fighters. We will never stop. We are legion.