Just a little respect?

[Just Plain Ruff]

I still humbly suggest trying to do your job to the best of your abilities as your main priority. If you know in your heart that you are doing your job well, then all you have to is say so to this guy. Try the rational and professional approach. Its not popular but it does work. Especially against knuckledraggers. Take the high road. Its fun to watch them furrow their brow in attempts to comprehend the situation.

Yeah, its even more fun to watch them try to figure out how to get further under your skin. If you keep acting professional and do the job you were trained to do then they will eventually go away to find someone else who they find weak and easily attackable.

You know why knuckledraggers have flat foreheads and hunched shoulders?

Because when you ask em an easy question they shrug their shoulders and when you tell them the answer that even a 3rd grader would know, they slap their foreheads. (works better with visuals though)

When in doubt, just kill em with kindness and if that doesn't work, put their hand through the bars of the polar bear cage at the local zoo.

[Richard B the EMT]

, they slap their foreheads. (works better with visuals though)

Ah, yes..."Palm-to-Forehead" syndrome!

[Siffaliss]

For anyone, males or females, respect is as previously stated earned and should never be expected or demanded. EMS is an industry where we eat our young which in some cases is unfortunate. Not sure how that works in the fire world as I'm not fire. I've only been in the field for 6 years but what I've learned is this ... you need to learn how to adapt, like FAST. Don't go in anywhere expecting everyone to change to fit your ideal of a perfect job or workplace. As much as it can pain some people, sometimes the new dog coming in is the one that needs to do the changing, hence learning to adapt quickly. Take what he says with a grain of salt. Sounds like he's trying to get a rise out of you, so if you've got thick skin then show him. If not, get thick skin. If you can't, perhaps you should look at another career. But quit letting them take advantage of you and quit doing their work as well as yours. If they're refusing to go on calls, I would think that's negligence on their part.

I dunno who will agree and who will disagree with me on this point, but here it is ... as a newb whether it be the industry or just a particular service, probably not a good idea to start running to management with complaints right from the start. But that's just me. Whenever I've entered into a new service during my short time in EMS so far, it's always eyes and ears open with mouth shut. Harsh yeah, but the truth in a lot of situations.

For the record, I am also a female.

[Just Plain Ruff]

When I first started out in EMS I was working in a hospital based system. We had multiple multiple open shifts. We worked 12 hour shifts.

I was a overtime HO who would snatch up any overtime shifts or offer to work for a co-worker if they wanted some time off.

some weeks I would work 72 hours or even 84 hours with on call time between those shifts which would sometimes bring my total hours for the week to over 100 hours.

The hospital paid willingly to do this.

I would be the first that they would call to work if someoen called in sick.

I did that until my crash. 96 hours for 4 weeks straight and I got sick. The doctor told me that if I kept working like I was and didn't get a good 8 hours of sleep a day that I was going to have a heart attack(at age 26) or fall asleep while driving or taking care of a patient.

I spent several days recuperating from my illness and then took a 24 day vacation to Australia where I had a lot of time to think and realized that I wasn't going to work that much any more.

I came back a happier healthier man and put my foot down on the overtime. This forced the hospital to hire more medics and overall our work life balance came back into balance. I don't take all the credit on the hiring of new people because that would be arrogant but when EMS has to work short shifted with only one active crew on duty instead of 2 crews it makes the management nervous.

I was doing the amount of work that 2 medics would do and it was affecting my personally and medically. I lost out on quite a bit of pay but the benefits of having days off without having to worry about who would run the next ambulance call made it all worthwhile.

So stop being a doorstep, stop being the one who thinks that you have to run every call because if you don't do it then the world will stop. If you stop responding to calls the world will not end, patients will still get cared for and you won't have the "guilt" that you have now when you think that you have to cover for all the worthless sit on the couch fat asses in your service who won't get off their worthless fat asses and respond. Try it for a week, work your shifts but don't cover for those who won't get with the program, you will see a change I'll bet.

If you don't see a change then you need to think about either applying for a management position to give a quick kick in the pants to those who are lazy or you need to find a service who's employees/volunteers take pride in what they do and actually respond to calls.

This is the reason why I won't live in an area not covered by a career fire department. Too many times I've seen a home turned into the newest in ground swimming pool in the neighborhood because the volunteer fire department couldn't find enough people to start the fire truck let alone put the house fire out. I've also worked in an area where they couldn't reliably find a first responder or volunteer ambulance crew to respond to a medical emergency. I refuse to risk my family and home to a community who can't afford or refuses to fund a paid fire department. The risk is just too great.