In my mind there are two types of people in the fire service—there are firefighters and there are people who work for the fire department.

Firefighters are people of all races, religions, walks of life—male and female—who live their lives for the fire service. They are the people who dreamed their whole lives about becoming firefighters or have been introduced to the lifestyle and fell in love with it. Firefighters are the ones who take the extra initiative to produce and conduct training, constantly learn new things about the fire service, and make suggestions on how to make the job safer and more efficient. Firefighters are the ones who worry about brotherhood and watching out for their fellow firefighters at all costs. Firefighters are the ones you want beside you when it hits the fan deep inside a building, when you are searching for the small child or elderly person and the smoke, heat, and fire are banked down so low it feels like your body is going to melt. Firefighters will be there with you until the end.

Firefighters, when deciding to advance up the career ladder, will study promotional materials during every spare moment. They prepare for the tests, and most do well. But if they don’t, they blame no one but themselves, knowing that even though they may not be good test takers, they should have prepared more and studied harder. And by doing this, the next time they will do better.

Even as chiefs or company officers, it shows if your heart is in the fire service. Chiefs and company officers whose first love is the fire service are the ones who know the fire department is unlike any other department in the city. The fire department doesn’t bring in as much revenue as the police department or parks, but it is a necessity.

On the other hand, you have the people who work for the fire department. These are people who saw the ad in the paper for the fire department agility test and decided maybe working for city government would be better than working at a fast food restaurant. Fire department employees are also people of all races, religions, and walks of life—male and female. These are the employees who arrive at work at the last minute, abuse sick time, and never read or study to better themselves. They are the ones who do just enough to get by. They can usually quote verbatim the policies and procedures because they often use them to their advantage to see what they can get away with doing or not doing.

When you meet people in the fire service, you can talk to them for about 10 minutes and tell if you are talking to firefighters or people who work for the fire department. You can tell if they are genuinely interested in taking the promotion to better themselves along with hopes of bettering the department or if they are just interested in the status and the pay raise that come with the promotion. Are you a firefighter or just someone who works for the fire department?

Imagine working for a department with all firefighters. Very few disciplinary procedures would be needed. If there were discipline, it would be for a minor infraction such as broken glass at the station from friendly horseplay. Everyone on the fire scene would know what they are supposed to do without being told, and they would know how to do it.

We would promote based on validated test scores, time in service, work ethics, past appraisals, and coworker recommendations. Promotions would not be based on a friend taking a good friend to the top. In return, once people realize how promotions work in the department of firefighters, and if they wanted to be promoted, they would step up and produce all year, not just around promotion time. This is the reason we need to join together and express our desires to hire and promote individuals who are not only good employees but who are great firefighters or who are the type of officers we want to work for or strive to be like. Let’s never hire or promote employees and continue hiring people who genuinely want to be firefighters.

Are you a firefighter, or do you just work for the fire department?