So today at work. First I go for a run, which was nice, I needed that, I actually find peace in a good run. Then, it was downtown-ish to the interagency fire office for the annual incident commander meeting. This lasted all day long.
Mostly doom and gloom. One of the big topics was the seasonal hiring, by mandate of way above us, like the Washington DC level, we are to hire more females, and favor hiring females over males inorder to increase diversity. Now, I'm not racist or sexist, and I believe that if you can do the job of being a firefighter, more power to you. All the females in fire I know are just as tough as I an everyone else on the crew. My big problem with this "mandate" is that if females don't apply how can we hire them. There have been various outreach programs that bring a lot of diverse new employees, but after 6 months they realize that its a back breaking job for little pay when they could have an easier job somewhere else making more money, and thus an 80% wash out rate. To me it seems more costly to hire 100 people, train them, pay them and have 80-90 of them quit after 6 months or less. But thats all my humble opinion, like I said, if you can do the job, I don't care if your male, female, both, black, white, yellow, purple, green, excetera.
At the end of the meeting, my engine got ordered to go cover one of the southern districts tomorrow. I was slated to go as the engine boss trainee, basically, I would run the engine and crew. Until I got home, when I got a phone call telling me that I was off MY engine and to stay back and mark trees for our thinning project. Then I just got a call, I'm back on the engine.
Thats one thing about this job, you dont know what your doing or where your going until 5 minutes after your already doing it. So in honor of me being the boss man tomorrow.
Mostly doom and gloom. One of the big topics was the seasonal hiring, by mandate of way above us, like the Washington DC level, we are to hire more females, and favor hiring females over males inorder to increase diversity. Now, I'm not racist or sexist, and I believe that if you can do the job of being a firefighter, more power to you. All the females in fire I know are just as tough as I an everyone else on the crew. My big problem with this "mandate" is that if females don't apply how can we hire them. There have been various outreach programs that bring a lot of diverse new employees, but after 6 months they realize that its a back breaking job for little pay when they could have an easier job somewhere else making more money, and thus an 80% wash out rate. To me it seems more costly to hire 100 people, train them, pay them and have 80-90 of them quit after 6 months or less. But thats all my humble opinion, like I said, if you can do the job, I don't care if your male, female, both, black, white, yellow, purple, green, excetera.
At the end of the meeting, my engine got ordered to go cover one of the southern districts tomorrow. I was slated to go as the engine boss trainee, basically, I would run the engine and crew. Until I got home, when I got a phone call telling me that I was off MY engine and to stay back and mark trees for our thinning project. Then I just got a call, I'm back on the engine.
Thats one thing about this job, you dont know what your doing or where your going until 5 minutes after your already doing it. So in honor of me being the boss man tomorrow.
nolongerhere:
I think the main problem isn't the mandate to hire more women, the problem is the shitty pay...
gordo07:
and the back breaking work, they do a great job of recruiting and outreaching, but when these new people see what its really like, they realize they can get a easier job for more pay. Plus its the fed govt, thus the low pay.