Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Working Tonight....

I have to go in for 6:00PM in Goffstown, so this will be a bit abbreviated, I suspect. I was going to write yesterday, but it was a strange day in the city. We'd have these periods of total nothing followed by doing 3 and 4 back-to-back calls. I actually got out a little late because of this; one of the things that seems to happen whenever I work a 24-hour city shift is that bunches of calls all happen at once. The other thing that happens, especially since Vegas has gone to the new system of dispatching, is that one truck will get hammered by multiple calls. That was us, both yesterday morning at shift change and again last night at shift change. H-Pot, my partner on Sunday PM/Monday AM, needed to get out on time to get to an 8:00AM class. We got hit by two calls in a row, and then a third came up as we were on our way back to quarters. We stopped at quarters as the tone went out, and she went in to find the relief crew. I was planning on staying in the truck to do the call, but the crew came out and the medic, RK, got in my face and started yelling at me, "why didn't you hit the responding button?" I told him I wasn't going to do it until someone came out to the truck; he didn't give me a chance to tell him I was planning to take the call, but he snatched my radio and nearly pulled me out of the truck. He was still yelling, so I yelled back and told him to get going.

We had a discussion when they got back - we managed to get things resolved but I have reason to believe he's figured that I have very little respect for him. He's done similar things before to me, and I have no problem getting in his face as much as he seems to have no problem getting in mine. We managed to stay away from each other during the day, and I was happy with that.

I worked during the day yesterday with Josh, my first partner when I started working for the Rock in 2005. He's a great guy and a really good EMT; he works full-time for the Bedford Fire Department, and he and his wife are expecting their second child any day now. Plus I got back together with Mike, my Paramedic student. It was a good day in that respect. We did get a little busy, though, as far as the calls we got. At the end of the shift, however, we went through the same thing that I went through in the morning as far as calls at the end of the shift. Could have been worse; I got out only a half-hour late.

Anyway, since I have to get ready for work I have to stop here. To my CCEMT-P classmates, if any of you are reading this, I miss you all....


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a lot of clashing of the egos takes place in your profession. I wouldn't last 5 minutes with someone pushing me around like that. I'd end up smacking someone and losing my job. JT

Pete said...

It's the true professionals like yourself that maintain an even keel and treat their colleagues with, at minimum, a modicum of respect. Frankly, there's no room for the barking pantload in this business. I hope your post call discussion was frank and to the point.

Unknown said...

It could have been worse. The medic in question has a habit of being a jackass and he is not terribly well-liked by most of the folks that work there. I found out later that a bunch of the folks on shift cleared out in anticipation of a wild west showdown....