Are you at your forever department?

[u/iheartMGs]

EDIT: I really appreciate all the feedback from everyone! Pretty cool to hear all the different responses! Stay safe brothers/sisters and wish everyone the best of luck throughout your careers!

Title says it all. Curious how many members have found their forever depts and why you made it your home for the rest of your career. The culture at my department is simply amazing. The chiefs know every member by first name and your put into a leadership role pretty early on if you’ve earned the trust of the officers. They will send you to virtually any training, deploy you across the nation, etc. Let’s hear what you have.

[u/LiIWick]

I got on with my hometown department that I grew up around since my dad is close with the older guys & my brother eventually became a volunteer for them (he has since changed careers). I mean we had family events at the main firehouse, I went with my brother on calls in his POV, etc, and it all led to me wanting to follow those footsteps. I wanted to be an operator, and as an operator you’re full time + paid. You mean to tell me I can make my inner child happy getting to drive around & work pumps on fire engines & get paid to do it? Where do I sign haha.

So that’s what I did and I have no complaints. We don’t run EMS as our town’s PD takes care of that, so our call volume is generally lower than surrounding areas that do the whole gambit. Our substations are pretty tame as the only folks there most of the time are an apparatus’s operator & a bored volunteer or two. Sure it can be boring, but it’s peaceful. Plus being alone at the station & on the rig = no critiques over my music on the bluetooth speaker! So with all that being the case, I can’t see any reason to go anywhere else. I love my community, the guys I work with are awesome, the pay is great, and half of our stations are a stone’s throw away from home.

[u/iheartMGs → u/LiIWick]

That’s really cool. Ive always been intrigued by how some departments still have remnants of history left behind by the other generations that came before them along with following in the same footsteps. In regard to where do I sign, that is pretty funny. It doesn’t even feel like work either. I mean sure at times it has its moments, but hell what more could anyone ask for? PD runs the medical side? I would have never guessed that was even a thing, but pretty cool. Should give them something to do besides writing tickets. Do they run out of boxes or just their patrol units with med bags, etc? We have a few younger guys that like to crank up mumble rap 😆. Man I’m happy for you, it sounds like you e got a solid career and a solid place!

[u/LiIWick → u/iheartMGs]

There’s definitely a lot of sentiment even among the apparatus themselves. Going from being 4-5 years old at the firehouse with my dad, one of the operators (who is still here & trained me to operate) let me blow the air horn, now I get to work that same exact engine. That fires me up every time I look at it haha. You’re absolutely right too, it doesn’t feel like work a lot of times. Even in the lift assists or small trash fires, your average desk job doesn’t get the adrenaline going like that. Then again most desks don’t have a foot pedal to spool up that Q either 😅. I think the EMS has been under the PD for a while, long as I can remember anyway, while most other areas here are covered under their district’s hospital or FD. Guess our municipality wanted to be different. I wanna say most of em are either full time EMTs & either strictly do that or are reserve for the PD as well, but they have both dedicated ambulances & sprinter units so it works for them.

My music is all over the place, some days I’ll have old country on so I can hear my lovely serenading echo in the bay (probably why the guys don’t like my music, I’m always singing to it) and some days it’s hair metal or early 2000s nu metal, whatever gets the gets me going that shift haha. But yeah absolutely it’s a dream job, love getting to show the local kids & families around the rigs if they come by, maybe giving that same dream to another kid that I’ll be the one training someday.