The chief told me that 20 years ago, if I were giving a training session, all ears and eyes would have been glued to me, their job depended on it. Now the union makes it almost impossible to get rid of dead weight.
BTW, this isn't common to just "my area".
I have a grandson who is a firefighter. When he is not on firefighting duty, he runs the town ambulance. He told his father one day, that he hated working on the ambulance, "I just want to run into burning buildings!" That sure was no consolation to his family.
Every firefighter I have ever known in this state, even volunteer department personnel, had to go through the firefighter's academy. They graduate from there with a lot of respect for the job they are going to be assigned to. And for those that don't want to learn or listen, they get stuck with all the grunt work.
All firefighters in this state are on the civil service list. So even though they may have applied to go to the fire department in their town, they may end up at a station in a town about 25 miles away. The Chief of that town takes a look at the list and the scores of each graduate. He makes his pick. If that person turns down three assignments in the hope that an opening will come available where he wants to be, he is removed from the list. The same goes for the police here.
When my grandson got the call to go to the academy, he just had a brand new baby and had bought a house. It was his dream job. So the whole fam damily all pitched in for the six weeks he was away, and bought groceries, paid their mortgage payment, paid the utilities, etc. We kept his wife and new baby going. When they take the physical test in order to graduate, every would-be firefighter has to run into a smoke filled building, with flames in different areas, up a couple of flights of stairs and make a rescue. And they have to do this in FULL gear. My grandson graduated near the top of his class. For those at the bottom of the list, they get called by the small towns that pay the State minimum for civil servants. And most of these small towns have no union to fight for all of the firefighters.
BTW, my grandson just past his exam for promotion to Lt. He studied for two years for that exam.
And the proper name for all of them is "
Firefighter. Not firemen. Firemen take care of heating boilers, and other major plumbing problems relating to heating systems.
Firefighters fight fires and save lives. Even those of little kittens and puppies.