OK Sisyphus, let's roll it up again

Occasionally you must return to a once difficult battle and re-wage that part of your campaign which you thought was won and complete.  Hence the Sisyphus reference.  Quite possibly it is not as futile a battle as that of Sisyphus but spending a department's time and funds twice is opportunity cost at its worst.

OK, so we do things a little different here than anywhere else.  We're a little different too.  What the heck it all works out in the end right?  Apparently not.

Every new guy, every guy that comes here from another station, tells us we're wrong and their way works better.  Why don't you do it this way?  This thing works better.  Why doesn't anyone answer my questions?  Well we were one upped this time.  The big cheese got a four page letter indicating everything that was being done is generally suspect and we are nothing but a bunch of lazy, uncaring, louts.  OK, so they got the uncaring part right.  We don't care about complainers.

We are a show piece for the county.  We know that, our fearless leader knows that, and the rest of the stations begrudgingly understand that too.  We get stuff because we make calls.  When a unit has to be replaced do you replace the ten year old one with 20K miles and hours or the five year old one with 90K miles and hours?  One that makes 300 calls or 1400?

We suck up on every call.  We are presentable.  We greet everyone we see.  We invite them all in to walk around.  We make a point to talk to the guys with the purse strings and mini sales pitch at every opportunity.

Station of the year, Firefighter of the year, EMS provider of the year, highest % billable, best PM program, least complaints?  Yeah, all here last year.

"The morale is low.  No one knows what is going on.  No one cares.  You better do something about this."  Or what?  You're going to cry?  You've been here a grand total of two seconds on the overall scale of things.  The service has been here 140 years.  Some of us over 25 years.  You know what's dragging down morale?  Your candy ass whining all the time.  SHUT UP!  Pay attention to what we do.  We've been doing it well since before any of us were here.  And I expect that it will be done equally as well even after we are all gone.

Become part of the structure here.  You are the new guy, possibly for years.  Get used to it.  Absorb what we have to offer.  What you take for granted other stations or departments would kill for.  Learn the nuances of the job before you try and change something that truly works, and no we don't do stuff here just because we have always done it that way.  Hell, a large minority of us are actually sought after instructors.  We see the good bad and ugly everywhere.  We learn, we adjust, we adapt.  Do the same.