Boyzoid's Blog & Stuff

I've been pretty busy recently, and have not had a chance to make my weekly EMS Stuff posts.  I decided that this week I will mix things up a bit.  Most of my stories so far have been about the patients I have cared for.  This week, I turn the tabes and tell one of my favorite storied from my side of the fence.

I spent a short period of time as the Operations Manager of a large mobile health system.  There were about 300 EMS workers under me.  One of the unfortunate aspects of the job was that I pretty much became the disciplinarian.  Everytime one of our employees did somethng dumb, I usually had to hand out the written warnings, suspsensions and sometimes terminations.  This is the story of one of those times.

One of the services we offered was Non-Emergency Basic Life Support.  In a nutshell, 2 Emergncy Medical Technicians moving people back and forth between a nursing home and the hospital.  This story takes place shortly after we started a new contract with a local hospital.  The contract called for 2 ambulances to be on-duty from 8:00AM to 6:00PM.  The crews were usually kept pretty busy, but one day, it was dead, there was nothing for the crews to do.

Having spent 12 years as a staff paramedic, I know there are plenty of things that you can do to keep yourself busy (and probably in trouble) on a slow shift, but what these guys did was unvelievable.

The went to the local movie theater.  They asked for, and received, not only free admission, but free soda and popcorn form the concession stand.  And apparently stayed for the full feature (sorry, I can;t remember the movie).  In their defense, they did not miss any calls, nor did anyone suffer any ill effects from their indiscretion.

After an investigation (I was tipped off by another employee who saw them at the movie theater), I had to bring them in for their terminations.  Yes, we fired all 4 of them. One of the practices in the company was that all discipline can be 'appealed', and for a termination, it is encouraged.

All four appealed their terminations, and all four said exactly the same thing in their defense: 'There is no policy forbidding it'.

I cannot verify this, but it is rumored that after hearing the same argument for the fourth time in about an hour, the manager (not me) responded with, 'Well, there is no policy forbidding you from calling me an asshole, but be rest assured, if you did, you would be fired for that as well.'

You can't make this stuff up.