Do all the guys in your department just sit around the station and talk and take bets about the next call? ....does any one have any good stories about this or other things like this?
During the day if it is a weekday we are supposed to be doing something constructive between 8:00 and 4:00.
We can talk to train or do do anything except sleep or watch TV. Weekends and holidays are different.
We have various duties daily, ie. floor day, kitchen day, yard day, etc. We get those details taken care of and then we usually workout, play dominoes and recently started having tournaments with Call of Duty: World at War on XBOX 360. The house has gotten closer since starting this. We really have a good time when working.
cool. sounds fun---we have a structured maintenance night and people go over and do little things like wash trucks and stuff in spare time, so sometimes alot around the station gets done that way but only if a few of the guys dont show up disrupt the flow of progress because then its just bs-ing and stuff and you don't get anything done
I was at the station overnight once a week with 3 guys... to keep ourselves occupied we'd:
- make pancakes
- watch "Destroyed in Seconds," "Trauma-Life in the ER," or other medical shows
- bring comedies to watch, and of course, popcorn, ice cream, etc.
- drive the engine to Albertson's to get some groceries
- clean the bathrooms (can be fun it you get the whole crew into it... esp. when you end up trying to get soapy water on each other)
- take the axes and haligons out and have fun with the breaching wall
- look at youtube videos of crazy fires, car wrecks, and random other stuff
- play cards
- sleep
sounds like alot of fun! ---we could do more training etc. and videos and such but my dept. is kinde behind the times---we don;t have internet STILL( were workin on it). and our big screen tv crapped out about 2 months ago so no training vids or tv. it sux. but its life. we started a tv comittee so we should be gettin some neet stuff soon and we are workin on a training building because we dont have anythhing for hands on training like that at our station.
Good luck with all that! I've been lucky to find a volunteer dept. where the community really supports us. One of our 3 stations has a few bedrooms for overnights, TV with cable, internet, a kitchen, small exercise room, and a couple training buildings out back (we train once a week with the whole dept, engines, watertenders, everything... in general, we don't do extra training on our stay-over nights, but if someone is having trouble with a certain tool, ie. chainsaw, fan, or just wants to practice driving the engine, we'll definitely take some time out of our night to work on it).
yea we have a company meeting tonight we are supposed to be discussing computer issues, training issues, tv issues, getting a camera for calls and training, and still fightin back and forth with the whole internet thing..... its gonna be a long meeting!!! and nothing will probably get done again- most of this has been dragged out over about 2 years or so but its all gettin closer so we are hoping to get somewhere soon because most of oour guys are gettin to the point where they are gettin pissed off with it all and you know men=nothing gets done unless they are determined its gonna happen. so im keepin my fingers crossed for good news tonight.
IF...and that's a big "if"...all the work is done and all equipment is serviced...this is prime time for the practical jokes to surface....actually it can be a great morale booster....no-one, and I do mean no-one is exempt....true creativity comes to light....LOL Paul