[quote=RichardJamesEsquire]Who else in this world gets paid to sleep and guaranteed overtime?
My boss would be beating on my motel room door at 2am screaming “What are you still doing here. Get up and get the @ out of here. I’m not paying overtime to sleep.
Send them home after 8-10 hours and make them work shifts like cops and the rest of the world. Give them a shower and a locker.
You want a fast response time, make them sit in the truck at key intersection between calls.
Ever since 9/11 we’ve brought our heros compensation way up. From “I’d do that if it payed a little better and wasn’t so boring most of the time” to “why the @ didn’t I do that”.
Next time I see 2 trucks full of taxpayer gas roll up to the mall for lunch and them walking in slow as molasses I’m gana freak out.
just blame drought
“sorry your wasting to much water washing the trucks and we can’t find anything else around here for you to do except linseed the axe handles and workout in the air conditioned gym. Doctors are concerned about the high rate of disability from repetitive motion injury among retirees so we’re closing the gym too”.[/quote]
NOBODY is “guaranteed” overtime. The reason police and firefighters work O/T is because — unlike desk jockeys in the corporate world — they are 100% necessary, 100% of the time — one person’s absence can greatly affect the response times and and job performance of the remaining employees. Cities have done numerous studies that show it’s actually cheaper to have O/T employees than it would be to hire additional “stand-by” staff to cover the shifts.
They are paid to sleep, only because they need to respond to calls 24 hours a day. If you think having your sleep interrupted every hour or two (or not getting any sleep at all) is “being paid to sleep,” again, I suggest you join up.
If they only worked 8-10 hours, how does that work when they are required to work for a week or more during wildfire season? It’s more efficient to have 24-hour shifts because there are fewer administrative costs, and fewer problems with people calling in for sick or vacation time (only once per day instead of two or three shift changes per day). You have NO IDEA what it takes to operate these departments.
