B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
Effective Outcomes & Customer Service
This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison, and John Vance.
We push past acronyms and politics to center customer service as the fire service’s true north, linking training, staffing, and culture to outcomes for Mrs. Smith. We call out FINO departments, hazing, weak command presence, and political gamesmanship that erode trust and increase risk.
• customer service as the organizing principle for chiefs and unions
• training tied to standard problem-solving outcomes
• tactics anchored to life safety through fire control
• FINO departments and response time realities
• overtime, constant staffing, and budget politics
• using mayday and fatality data to defend night staffing
• on-scene education to convert angry customers to allies
• hazing, misconduct, and decisive leadership in crises
• NIOSH lessons, lawsuits, and predictable, preventable failures
• inside–outside culture alignment and whistleblower safety
• influence over control as a leadership stance
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This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Brunacini Command Training Center in Phoenix on December 4, 2025.
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Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast. Coming at you from the AVB C T C in Phoenix, Arizona, you've got John Vance, Terry Garrison, and Nick Brunacini today. How are you, gentlemen, doing?
SPEAKER_02:I thought you were gonna say you got J V T G and NB. You were going on those acronyms. We're on the precipice of the holidays. That's better than having JVD. Yes. Hey, do you do you remember when Bruno, I was at a meeting once, and there were these we were talking some special ops, and these guys were using acronyms. And Bruno said at the meeting, there's probably 20 people sitting around. He he goes, okay, no more TLAs. And they were like, TLAs? What is that? He goes, two letter acronyms and three-letter acronyms. No more. They don't want no more acronyms. Say the words. And he was frustrated by it because he even couldn't. Because especially the special ops people, they had a lot of acronyms. A lot of. So we're at the AVB, C T C. It's AM.
SPEAKER_00:Not the PM.
SPEAKER_02:Not PM. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We got our T L O.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That the feds are really good for that, especially taking any kind of federal class, and whether it's a NIMS 700 class or whatever it is. There's so many acronyms.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it bleeds over to us. We were just talking before this about the ODFM. And yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we have the TRT and 957. And you know, all of that meant something, and you would, I need the ODFM, DRT, bivwack, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02:But some of those guys, they don't even call them mom and dad. They call them M-O-M and D A D. Exactly. Really into the acronyms. Hey, he's my D A D.
SPEAKER_01:Well, remember when the Shetland pony was in charge of the TRT cash? I remember that guy. And sure guy with the big head. And they wanted to reassign him. But what he did is when they delivered all the TRT tools, he took all the manuals. And I mean, it was like three boxes of manuals to instructions on these highly technical tools they had. And so he refused to give the manuals back. And so he always was in that position. And he figured out the guy who owns the manuals owns the spot.
SPEAKER_02:The keeper of the manual.
SPEAKER_01:And he did. He made it like another two or three years from captain to chief because he owned the manuals. Nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It was the hoarding of information and power go together. Yeah, exactly. Now the kids can just Google it and the chat GPT is going to tell them how to run the fire department.
SPEAKER_02:But that's when you thought when you heard information, it was usually truthful. That's not so much.
SPEAKER_01:Like the time management position within the fire department. It's like the MOU had like who got vacation and how much and when they could take it. And then that all kind of cooked back to one person who had been a dispatcher, got cancer, got reassigned. They made a position for her, and she managed all the vacation leave for the fire department. So people would put in, there was a form you would put in at like in December for what vacation you wanted the next year. Right. I remember they were in blocks. Yeah. And there was like you could have this block, the like a number block and a letter block if you had more time, shit like that. So, and what she would do is she'd get all those, and then she would go in a computer program and lay out the vacation. Well, those were like the MOU vacation, and then anybody could get any open spot after that was set. So if you were friends with her, you would call up and say, Hey man, I need Christmas, Easter, my anniversary, this, that, and the other thing. And because you had been nice to this individual down the road, is you would get vacation then. So she had all the power and juice in the fire department. She was like Glenda, the bad good witch at the same time. Was that before telestaff? No, that was during telestaff. So she and you know, because now you're you're trying to manage the deployment system where you got like 550 people on duty just in your department, and then you got the surrounding ones. So there was there was the whole infrastructure just around daily staffing that went on, and then the leave that kind of took place behind it. So, like when we worked at South Deputy, is they did the morning staffing. So that's where you would call in to get your assignment for the day. And I mean, so you would have to figure out, you'd say, okay, I have I got this many openings and I got to fill them somehow. And then most of the time it was through overtime, but sometimes you'd have to like backfill things certain ways. And it was it, you had to basically interpret the MOU and then keep that.
SPEAKER_02:You had because there was people sitting out there, and if you if they thought you violated MOU, here's another acronym, a very important one. Is that oh yeah, man, you'd hear about it from your boss and everybody, and you're trying to do the best you can, but every once in a while you'd step on that a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, people knew it right away.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and then I mean it was like backfilling Ambos. So you're calling captains, ALS captains on an engine company and saying, hey, you CM, you're on the list to work overtime on Ambos. We're not constant staffing today, so you have to go to an Ambo for 24 hours. Well, man, you were gonna have a union meeting over that. And I mean, over half the time you tried to pull a captain off their regular engine, I'm not going. Well, you have to. You can't see him anymore. You can't do that to me. Uh you're gonna watch this and it's not gonna be pleasant. You have to do this today. That's what the rules say. All right, what's CM? Constant staffing. It's yeah, constant. It used to be constant manning. Oh my god, Joker. I'm still stuck with CMing, CMing. And see, there was a list. So people would put in in the like you had to put in before 10, I think. And so you'd sit down at the computer and you'd put everybody in, and then that would populate the list somehow in telestaffing of who's gonna work. Yeah. So by like five o'clock that night, they would print out the list. And that came out of the central shift commander's office.
SPEAKER_02:The next day.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So people would know, and it would say on the list, were this many short. If you're not on the list, we're going to be calling you. So they would know that there was some days you would constant staff 30, 40 people. I mean, that's that takes a while to get all that in place. And overtime. That's that's like a yeah. And they would do, you know, and that's kind of a city thing. So now you got the the city who's like, no, we're not gonna hire another class of firefighters. And you think, well, we got then you're gonna have to put another million bucks in the constant staffing budget. No, we can't do that. You're like, well, you made the MOU is you made it. You our bosses made this and said this is what we're gonna do. And now we're you you can't do that. That's it. Or we're gonna talk to your boss who's the union president. So, I mean, it's kind of a weird food chain when you look at all of it. Because the union president had more power than the fire chief in certain areas. They could because they they weren't beholding to the authority having jurisdiction. I mean, shit for 20 years they picked the authority having jurisdiction, at least in our department. Yeah. Yeah, the union had had the votes to pick the city council. Well, when my dad retired, the mayor was sleeping on the union president's couch. Who's I mean, you're the landlord of the fire chief's boss's boss. That's a comfortable couch.
SPEAKER_00:Well, he didn't want to move. Yeah, uh and there's a whole backstory to this, but that this this last week or so in Memphis, did you see the city council member that went after the fire department on their constant staffing and their raises? This council member, which when I watched the footage and I read the statement, I did not match the two up. I'll just say that. Last night, a Memphis city council member accused our firefighters of raping the city. And and this council member used the term rape, I counted at least five times. That's terrible. And it has to do with them getting their cost of living increase, and then they were trying to get parity or get up to like market standard. And Memphis is a pretty low-paid fire department, as far as I know. I mean, when you look at uh metro areas, but uh several times this council member used the term rape, but it's all stuff the council signed, like to your point, they they signed the contract to give them these raises, but then the council member is gonna come back and refer to them getting what they negotiated in the contract in good faith as a rape. You know, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:So that's the problem with government is it's run by politicians.
SPEAKER_02:And and politicians are they're they're politicians, so you don't have to describe them anymore than that. Yeah, I mean, so so that's what you mean by that. Because you couldn't think of a word that describes them better than politicians.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and see in st on the hat, here's the next hat for everybody, okay? I don't care what your politics are, here's what the hat ought to say. Do your job, right? Just do your job. That's what we want. That's the problem with politics, is we don't do our job, is we take care of ourselves and the the people that actually gave us money to be where we're at now. So it I mean, it doesn't matter what form of government or society you have. If the rich, it's the same everywhere. The rich make the rules. It's the golden rule, right? That whoever's got the gold does it.
SPEAKER_02:So the last city I worked in, a city city council member, she said that this whole overtime system is a scam that the firefighters had created. And it's like I can't tell you how many times we explained it to her that it's not a scam. You you have to feel the spots, hire more firefighters. And I was so frustrated with the city manager who would sit there and allow her to say that. So afterwards, I go to the city manager. It's like, hey, it's I'm not up there where I'm able to speak openly. I'm in the I'm in the audience. Why don't you challenge her on that? Why didn't you come back to her on that and and and have a conversation with her? Well, he wasn't gonna do that because the city council hires a city manager. But it's like you sit there, like that word rape, what's that movie where I don't think you understand what that word means? Inconceivable, right? Yeah, but it's like they just say whatever they say up there for drama and effect and all that, and it's like, no, man, there's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_01:They're being politic. They're trying to emit an emotional response from people to dodge accountability for what it is they're supposed to do. There's a councilman here, the fire department's meeting. This councilman's pissed off because the response times in his district are too high, and who's allowed this to happen? Well, when you really look at it, he did because the last seven votes to increase the budget for his district to give better standard of coverage, he voted against it. He voted against the the doing that. And your new fire station. Nothing. No, we will not pay for this. You have to just do it. And you're like, uh you are an idiot. Do you understand what your job is? Your job is to make for the people who elected you in your district. This is your district, and your response times are nine minutes now. That that's what you're getting. Because you voted against this. Well, the people from the fire department didn't tell them that because that would be seen as being confrontational. Yeah, and you're like, no, pal, uh, I'm gonna hold the mirror up. Here you go. You voted no on this day, this day, this day, this day for these. Yeah, you really need these resources. That's why your response times. So now, if somebody from the fire department shows up and tells them that, that works for the that's not under a union, let's say, they they will be dealt with however they want to deal with them. Well, look at the what happened in Los Angeles after the the fires, and then who's somebody's gotta be to blame, you know, because politicians have to have somebody to blame. This shouldn't have happened. Well, the weather's the reason it happened. There's you uh the city of New Orleans is sinking. So, like in 25 years, there's not gonna it's all gonna be a basement. Well, there's nothing to be until you can make a city rise, it's gonna sink. I mean, we don't know how to do that, we're still primitive that way.
SPEAKER_02:So Well, you know, that's why I I believe that the relationship between the fire chief and the union president has to be strong. Try not to get in an argument over pissy shit because you're gonna need each other. And what I always said to my the people that I worked, the union president that was my partner in crime is that I play defense. I'm trying to keep the resources we have so that they don't cut them anymore and go to three-person staffing or do something goofy. You guys are our offense. You need to go out because you have the political clout to go out and tell that city council member you keep it up. We're gonna get a whole lot of our buddies, we're gonna go through the neighborhood, and we're gonna put your opponent's name on a stick and put in the front yard of everybody we know, and we're gonna get you out of there, and you're not gonna be re-elected. That's the offensive plan.
SPEAKER_01:That sounds like a lot like what's going on today on the federal level. If you don't do what we're telling you, you we're coming after you.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, that's I I had a board member of my first chief's job in a public meeting, and I uh this is the guy I refer to as Sausage Fingers. Nick Nick's heard Sausage Finger's story before because he's a roly-pulley little fat-faced guy. And in in this in this board meeting, he got visceral.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, yeah. I have the image, and there's a snout on the end of it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yes, yeah. Yeah. Uh Roger Waters songs playing in the background describing it. Yeah. And and in a public meeting, he referred to us hiring new firefighters because we were getting it was a racket. Yeah. This is a racket. You guys are just getting your buddies into these cushy jobs. And at the time, I think the starting pay was like$38,000 a year. It's like, yeah, it's so cushy that they have to work a part-time job in order to work this full-time job. But uh luckily that guy got ran out because again, you know, sitting down with the firefighters and talking to them, like, we can't lose our temper, but this this guy is a bad actor. And he ended up, he ended up resigning his post and never worked a day in his life, probably. Yeah, telling his children that the fire station is where all the bad people are. He said that in his last meeting. Goes when when I drive by these fire stations, I tell my children this is where the bad people are.
SPEAKER_01:We had a police chief, and he said in a the podcast, well, it was talk radio before podcast. So that they had a talk radio show. And he said, he made the statement that the fire department is like a big, beautiful oak tree that is severely diseased on the inside. And I'm gonna I need to fix it and take it down. And he was coming after the fire department. I mean, there was a we did a silverback thing about this back in the day. And that guy ended up, he was very disruptive. He wasn't nice, it was all mean about him, and he ended up getting run out of town. Okay, it is the and what it was is the city council said, Who's going to protect us from you? And he was gone two weeks later. It was he thought I'm I'm finished.
SPEAKER_00:He was Joseph McCarthy.
SPEAKER_01:He was. He was a wretched, and he was constantly, constantly being litigated against by his union. And his his the union president pulled me over once driving, right? Just cut leaving my dad's house. I've I was like just graduated from high school. He pulls me over, he says, I know who your dad is. I said, Okay. I said, what did I do? He says, you know, your tags are only out of date by like three years. Sorry. I'm in high school. He says, son, you need to not have expired tags. You have no idea what you're flirting with. And he got back in his car and drove off. I told my dad, and he says, Yeah, the police, the the police chief is kind of after us. He says, Maybe you ought to get your tags done, son. Okay, dad. Our role is to support the entire community, not parts of it, but all of it. See, that's the way we view it. We have to. Like when people call 911 for the fire department, we don't ask them what political party are you affiliated with, or what's your favorite color, or what what's your religion, or or what what what's you what do you identify as a human being, or any of that? You with your gender. I we don't care. It's like, what's your problem and what's your address?
SPEAKER_02:Nick, I'm gonna tell you when I when I arrived in Houston, there was an event that I needed to go to, and I'd been there about three weeks, and I show up and I'm in a suit. And Mayor Anise Parker goes, What are you doing? I go, what do you mean? She goes, Well, where's your uniform? And I said, Well, I thought it the appropriate was to wear a suit. She goes, You're not here because you're Terry Gerson. You're here because you're the fire chief.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this ain't a date nap you're showing up to, buddy.
SPEAKER_02:And I said, Thank you. Because that's so every time we show up when we represent in that costume, right?
SPEAKER_01:Terry Wilde's never fired chief, is because I would have showed up next time wearing a t-shirt, brush pants, and black boots. Yeah, here's my uniform.
SPEAKER_02:I love the way she and she said it very nice. She says, You're not, you know, you Terry, you're you're probably a nice guy, but you're the fire chief. Show up in the fire chief so you're recognizable, people know you're here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And you're and you're gonna be like the fourth guy on the stage stand in the back, you're not gonna say anything. The police chief's gonna be standing right next to me, and then my prosecuting attorney. That's my my main team.
SPEAKER_02:Well, whenever she talked pensions, I she we had that deal, and I've said it here before, is I never sit next to her behind her. I said, I can't do it as long as you're talking pensions. She says, Okay, don't need you to then. Yeah, because I couldn't help her anyway.
SPEAKER_01:No, you're you need to the the there's another I told her I like pensions. I have a few of them. Oh, yeah, exactly. Well, uh, you know, I think all people, all working Americans should have a pension. I agree. Uh I I think we should. That's well, let's get to the topic of today. What is the topic, JV? What are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_00:We're talking about customer service, and one of the uh eight we could we call them functions of customer service is to attempt to execute a standard problem-solving outcome. And what does that mean to us as chiefs, as battalion chiefs, leaders, you know, just a generic leader within the fire service, getting that skillful, quick, all those outcomes that that are because we we can have the best intentions all day long, but uh if we pull up and we don't know what we're doing, we have poorly trained, poorly equipped personnel that really can't execute anything. We're we're we're dropping really one of the big promises when it comes to customer service. So let's let's talk about that today.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, so and we talked a little bit about this on our last podcast. We didn't talk a little bit, we talked a lot about who's run who's doing your training and and what is the focus of training, because the focus of training should be the curriculum. A training not based on whoever is in that training position, whatever is the their whim. Because you see that in the organization, you get a new training chief and they go off in this direction. So training is absolutely essential to good customer outcome, right? So every aspect of training ought to have some sort of customer-centered component to it. Where you talk about the customer, and I think Bruno said it, you always talk about this, Nick, is that Bruno said that he couldn't really make sense of the whole deal until he injected Mrs. Smith as leadership.
SPEAKER_01:He said, I never made any sense of leadership until I put a customer in. Yeah. And he says, then it gave you something. He says, before the fire was our customer. And he says, a natural occurring event can't be your customer. They don't they don't uh covet your service. It's the nature. It's the the we're humans. Come on. So he said, until I put the customer in, that the leadership meant nothing to me. I I struggled with figuring out what true North was with it, I guess, essentially.
SPEAKER_02:So I think that's where we got to start, right? So whenever we sometimes we start in the middle when it comes to customer service and service delivery, we start like on the street, right where the guy's delivering the service, our firefighters, which is absolutely very important. But I think we should always back up and say, okay, how's the organization look at that? And how do they treat that as a priority? And is the fire chief a part of that? Because there are some fire chiefs out there, and I don't want to beat up fire chiefs every time I sit here, but there's some fire chiefs out there who who don't see a part of their role as being the customer service advocate for the city. He he or she needs to have customer service on their mind 27, 20, 24-7, sorry. And a lot of times like, well, no, that's not my job. You guys worry about the customer, I'm gonna worry about the council, I'm gonna worry about the budget, I'm gonna worry about HR and legal and finance and all this. And really the fire chief needs to keep his focus on the customer at all time. And and all those other things tie back to the tie back to the customer. Whereas when you're talking to finance, you should have conversations with finance about how what they're funding in your organization supports the customer and supports the delivery system of the customer and supports the training system that really is about the customer. And the same thing with HR. Oh, yeah, we had an HR problem, but the HR problem did it impact the internal customer or the external customer. And that's how we get in trouble with HR, right? Does that make sense to you?
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:But I think a lot of fire chiefs, they don't look at that as one of their and Bruno was excellent at that because every meeting we talked, fire, fire safety, and customer service. So the customer was always one of the focal points of every bit of conversation that we had and how you deliver. So back up, think about the fire chiefs role. And we talked about the union president a few minutes ago, and a union president has to be married to that too. Because the union, the smartest union presidents will tell you that the way that their members, they call them their members, treat the customer has a direct reflection on the amount of benefits they're going to get at the end of the day. Right? So they're they're they need to be bought into that too. But it's all about the customers. I I wouldn't imagine a union. I remember going with the union president and a couple guys to uh Austin when I was in Houston to talk to some of the uh elected officials there. And I don't feel like we talked enough about our customers when we left. And we had conversations about that. We went in and we talked, you know, we met with like four or five representatives that day. And driving back to Houston, I'm thinking, you know, we talked a lot about the fire department, a lot about kind of some of the issues taking place. But if we would have made every one of those conversations focus on the customer also, at least include the customer, I think we would have had their ear a lot more.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I think the major disconnect in a lot of this is like fire departments are part of the infrastructure of the community. You're gonna have a fire department whether you want one or not, Mr. City Manager. It's just the way it works. Yeah. And it's so you can get rid of it, and then once a big chunk of the town burns down, you're gonna have to get it back. I mean, historically, that's why we exist. Now, within the last 40, 50 years, we've added a bunch of other service on top of that, EMS, especially. So there the fire department ain't going away. It's something people want. It delivers an essential service, the most essential service to the community. If you're done breathing and you want another shot at it, you got to call 911 and hope all the moons line up. And but that's what we're here for. So I think traditionally, a lot of our members, especially leaders, view us as a core almost. It is an essential core. And they don't see a customer service because it's the community, is I protect the community. And I think that's easier for them because they they once you like when you say prevent harm, survive and be nice, that is all-encompassing. And I think that it that kind of pushes against that concept that we're a a core, that that we're like a paramilitary organization that's more like the police than the healthcare system, let's say. Well, we're the emergency healthcare system. So I think when you that's where the customer comes in, is we focus on the individuals that make that community up. And some of the gaps that you see, like even tactically, the stuff we talk about all the time, you know, the fire attack versus search. Well, no, I got to search ahead. And you're like, well, why? Well, because you know, we have to save people. And you're like, that's yeah, we agree with you, but the the way to do that is you kill the fire, and then you know, you you kind of so, but that that concept of the core is it's like, no, I got to go in and kill the fire right now to protect the whole. Because if I don't put the the one house out, it's gonna become two, then three, then eight, then a block. So, and I've heard guys in my own department, like shift commanders, say, Well, I'll burn down three blocks to save one person. I thought, you're gonna burn down three blocks and kill 30 more people. No, that's not the way you do it. You put the fire out where you find it and then you search around it. I mean, that's the way they raised us. So we didn't have a big problem with that internally, I mean, in the thing. So I don't know, maybe it wasn't as big a jump for us when we had our lunatic fire chief say customer service and Mrs. Smith. And most of the arguments became, well, we already do that. And he says, Yeah, all I'm doing is I'm institutionalizing it. I'm gonna make be nice a regular thing. You're gonna be nice to everybody. It's just not the people that you agree with or you, you, you, you, you, you covet, or whatever it is. You're gonna this is what we do when we're on duty.
SPEAKER_02:You know, that that whole thing, I gotta jump in a little bit. So that the group of people who want to save the customer in a house fire. We all do. We don't want anybody. Yeah, thank you for thinking about the customer. You're exactly right. I'm agree 100% with you. How we do that, I think, is is different, right? Because there are some areas where the customer is already consumed by the fire. And putting the fire out is the right thing to do early on because fires grow. Yeah. And you put them out when they're as small as possible. You have a what Bruno used to say is you have that, you have a fire and it moves on a curve like this. And I think nowadays it kind of goes up this as it's almost flips back on itself. Yeah, and then you got a timeline down here, and somewhere within this timeline, we arrive. So, depending on your resources, you may arrive here, you may arrive here, you may arrive here. Do the work based on that, learn where you are on that line and where you arrived, and do the work based on that. So if you arrive up here and the people have already been consumed by the fire, put the fire out. If you arrive down here, put the fire out, it's smaller. You're gonna you're gonna help the people.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I you guys are talking about graduate level problems, but I I think there's a big part of this country, and I'm gonna drop a new acronym on you. They're FINOS, F-I-N-Os.
SPEAKER_02:What is that?
SPEAKER_00:Fire department and name only, that they don't actually have a fire department. You drive by a building that's not staffed and it's loaded with million-dollar fire apparatus, but when the tones drop, you might get two or three people back. Or there's been a bunch of examples I've worked alongside where fire engine pulls up three o'clock in the afternoon, and it did have four people on it. They put the truck into pump and they can't get water out of it. And the neighbors are out there with video, taking a video of this whole fire drill where they can't even execute a basic fire attack. And and they were using the community of 60,000 people using paid-on-call firefighters without full-time staffing, and the community doesn't know any different. And most of these communities, Mrs. Smith doesn't know whether it's full-time, part-time volunteer. They drive by a fire station and they get a warm, fuzzy feeling. Oh, they're the protectors of the community. They're gonna come save me, they're gonna come put the fire out. But when the tones actually drop, the the response times are actually, you know, very, very long. I have another community of 60,000 plus, 18 minutes in the middle of the night to get the first apparatus on the scene in an urban density community. Wow. And and again, the communities out there with their phones taking video of the whole thing, they're at the city council meeting the next week. Like, what do you mean we don't have 24 hour staffing? Because this city did have full-time firefighters, but they had a mayor and a fire chief who pounded on the dais and said, We will never pay a firefighter to sleep. That's our promise to you. 10 o'clock, everyone goes home. So when the fire pops at three o'clock in the morning, you're getting that very long response time. And and this particular community didn't even have good density for their fire stations. So I bring all that around. That's a very basic problem, but it's a big problem in this country right now because you're getting engine couples that are showing up, and you're getting people who aren't at all skilled or trained to even get water out of the fire truck.
SPEAKER_01:Vance, many of these organizations couldn't run an ambulance company. No. I mean, they just couldn't. I'll go you one better, though. And I read this within the last 30 days. In the state of Arizona, it's further from here. It's not urban, it's more in the wilderness. Two communities get together and they say, we're gonna join forces and we're gonna have our own police force, right? So they make their own police department. And it it's not that long that they're in force. It's I don't know, five, ten years, whatever. Last month they contacted the Arizona Highway Patrol, the Department of Public Safety, and said, We're calling you. We need you to come in and protect us from this police department that we have. They're holding our city hostage in eastern Arizona. So DPS. Now, there was like two articles over a week. You haven't heard a thing about it since. So who knows what's going on? But I mean, there's a case. See, again, I go back to the politicians. Well, uh I don't stand for this. We're not going to have this. Yeah, I think this is horrible that we have a paid-on-call fire department. So no, most of the everybody that shows up to that meeting, what maybe 2% of the the voting populace know what's going on. Well, that's the problem today, is nobody knows who's in charge of anything, and the people that are. It's it's not about doing their jobs, it's about maximizing the their return on their time and in those positions.
SPEAKER_00:And I don't want to paint a broad stroke on this. There's some great paid-on-call fire departments. There's very dedicated firefighters out there that that really give a lot of themselves to protect their community. I'm not sure better than we'll ever be.
SPEAKER_01:There's a huge range, the the greatest to the worst.
SPEAKER_00:But you get you get to a side, you know, and and these communities that might have 25 fire runs a year. I I don't even know what your your solution to having a fire department is. But, you know, I'm talking about well-developed urban communities still using paid-on-call firefighters and the community's expectation for something more when it comes to response time and effectiveness.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I don't know, maybe the country's hit a point where uh I don't know, man. You you start waiting into that swamp and it's the fire department's expected to have a response time to intervene in an emergency. That starts four to six minutes on the EMS side. That's what the benchmark is. So if you ain't got that, the there's a reason for it. And in some places in the wilderness, you ain't gonna have it because it's expensive. It's an exp. Only the government can do it. Yes. Yeah, I mean, see, it and I think that's one thing we're looking at is the government should do a certain thing, and then private business is a whole different thing. So I think we confuse the two sometimes, and politicians business people love that. It's confusion.
SPEAKER_00:You want to run it like a business.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. And that's what they're doing today. Is there's a bunch of trillionaires that are running things. I mean, that's where we've evolved. Whatever's gonna happen next, and whoever takes over takes over. But that's not a very efficient model. It is a government for the people versus a business running the government. That that's it's not doing well so far.
SPEAKER_02:So I the last job I had, the city manager, one of the things he wanted to do was uh cut the staffing at night. Hey, close stations down, yeah, close one company down, and then another company can cover that area is because of the call volume. And then if you go to three-person staffing on top of that, you know, we're gonna make our nut. Well, if he he wanted to focus on call volume during the night, and I said, okay, so I went back and I got all Don Abbott's information on Maydays and how Maydays increase at night, and then I went and got the information on how many people actually die at night and house fires, and that's more than during the day. And you it took a while to get all that information and go back to him, and he maybe didn't believe all of it, but at least I held my ground defensively, and we didn't do that because I wasn't gonna do that, right? So, but but that's just it. So, as a fire chief, in all these situations, there's somebody who's at the top of that organization who has they can only do what they can do with the resources they have and that circle of influence they have. Terry Shields used to always say, circle of influence. Well, I said, What does that mean? You know, the things that you can impact. What can you impact? So they have to have back to the customer service piece, they gotta have conversations about how what you are doing to us or taking away from us is impacting the customer service. And you gotta get you gotta be connected to the customer, and you can do all that great things and have the best response system and the greatest number of firefighters and all that. But if you're not solving the problem of the customer, being nice to them while they're doing that, right? We talked about that. That's the key. You got that's where it comes down to the management and then the task level is you got to solve their problems right there. Cause she's the one that Mrs. Smith is the one that she she gets to see how you act at two o'clock in the morning in her bedroom with her chubby-fingered husband who's having a heart attack in bed, and she's the one that's gonna make a decision down the road. So you you every one of those, I know I know they suck sometimes. I get it. Man, we're just watching the Super Bowl, and this call goes out, and you go and it's like, ah, that is an opportunity to treat somebody nice and to solve their problem. And I know it sounds so simple, and I garrison. You're you you it's you're naive if you believe that. Yeah, no, you can you can be nice right then, right there, and solve their problems and go back. And by the way, I love football, but the score's not going to change whether you're sitting in front of the TV or not, you're not impacting that. But you can make an impact on that customer when you go and the fire chief, if they don't make that a part of their marketing, internal marketing plan, and you you're really good with talking about marketing and how you get your message out. If and that's what Bruno was good at too. If you don't make that a part of every messaging, then it's a slippery soul because it's so easy for humans to be human.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And they're gonna do what's easy for them. Well, that's what we do.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the big issue, I think, is here, let me put my glasses back on. Those are cool glasses. Attempt to execute a standard problem solving outcome.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The issue comes when we respond on people who don't have a problem that we can solve. True. And that that's I don't know, some days that was like three-quarters of the people I rolled on when I was a task level worker bee. You know, we talked about it when like before 911, everything we went on was a true emergency. Most of it was because you had to dial seven numbers and really how do I you had the magnet on your refrigerator that gave you the phone number for Crime Stop and the fire department. And then it became 911, and then it was just easier to access us. And I think more and more people, yeah, cell phones, and everybody had access, and now so now we're we're here today. This is what it is. So we roll on things that there's really not a solution for them. I mean, we can't we can we can make it marginally better, maybe with the with like if we actually put our time and effort to it, we could make it two percent better. Where, like you're talking, they show up and they make it a hundred percent worse. Right. Well, for each of us being a member of that organization, we have a choice when we get on the scene. We can be helpful, we be patient, or we can be rude assholes. I mean, that's kind of the thing. And I and in today's world, most service is is left to computers, AI, and rude assholes that are people in another country that really are just kind of a stopgap. To not fix your problem, just to have something to somebody to talk to. I don't know. So um I don't know how that gets fixed in the outside world, but inside the fire department, when we go on the call, we should at least be nice to people. Don't just fly off the handle and tell them they're stupid and you're you you're endangering the community every time you call us. So that's that's not you're not going to endear yourself to anybody. So if you need something from the community in the back end, you're there, it's almost like They call up and say, no, protect us from the the people who show up here. That's a bad thing. That is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you're you're we we can educate to a certain degree, and some people aren't gonna get it. You're right. We can try to educate. Hey, you don't need to call us for but the second you They didn't call us though, a lot of times.
SPEAKER_01:It's just people driving by. It's in yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Jimmy's throwing rocks at us again. The moment you go from education to enforcement, and a firefighter becomes an enforcer of you're gonna do it my way, it gets you we we start having problems.
SPEAKER_01:That's where you get complaints and the thing starts getting and you think, you know, if you guys would have just shown up and said, you know, how can we help you? Here's a bottle of water, we're sorry, here just stay over here or whatever it is, whatever you need to diffuse that de-escalate. That's what we're good at is de-escalating things.
SPEAKER_00:I wonder where it's at on the bell curve, but you're you know, Bruno would talk about people are calling 911 on their worst day, and and they're they're expecting us to show up and make it better. And the people who don't abuse the system, that's maybe gonna be the only time in their life they call 911. So if we show up with this bad face and we're rude and and not really executing anything that's a successful outcome, that's what those people are gonna come away with. And and they're having a bad day. So they may not be so nice to us, and we have to be prepared for that. You know, they're they're having a bad day. And I the way I look at this is there's there's there's multiple flanks, right? Like if you want the fire chief to get staffing, we have to we have to educate the customer when when we talk about education on what our capabilities like it like if you get to a call, like I've been I've been to calls before where it's like it's taken us 15 minutes to show up. And the customer's angry. By by all accounts, they should be, right? They're paying taxes. And why did it take you 15 minutes? Because we only staff two companies and both are tied up right now. And and and you know, the if we had more, you know, I try to explain to them why the response time was the way that it was. Or, you know, I I was staffing a first aid booth at at a community event with part-time firefighters, and I have somebody from the community yelling at me because a new city hall's being built. So I went out and talked to the person. It's like, yeah, the old city hall had mold and it's built in 1978, and you know, gave them all the facts on City Hall. And I go, by the way, all these people with me right now, they they all work here part-time. We we all have other jobs that we do. So this is this is our part-time thing. We're just out here in case someone falls or has a heart attack, or oh, okay, you know, they get it when you know I I I love converting people over, you know. I that's one of the flanks. So we we have to have all these different flanks covered. And if you expect the fire chief to do this, the crews really should be aiming for the same goal, but but also treating customers in a way that is going to complement the ways that the fire chief's trying to get you the resources or back up your department or do whatever. You're you're smiling.
SPEAKER_02:I just I just think of the times that customer service has gone bad and how that stink lingers in an organization for like 10 years. And I hired in Glendale, they were still talking about an event where a firefighter punched a guy on a on a gurney and shouldn't have done it, wasn't managed very well by the fire chief, nice fire chief. He didn't manage it, good dude, didn't manage it. And good dude. And anyway, I'm not gonna beat him up, but that was his style. And I paid for that for the five years, six, seven years I was in Glendale. I heard about that one incident where you guys slugg these guys, mentally challenged guys on Gurney's. No, we don't. That guy did. That, and if I would have been the fire chief here, that guy wouldn't have had a chance to do that again, going through a process of education. Either he learned not to do that, or if he didn't learn not to do that, he was going to do something else other than be a firefighter. So I just think that, you know, if if we would realize uh at the company level that every call, man, you can you can send your department into a nosedive. And I think the unions that get that and and talk about that as part of their message at the union meetings, because people get pretty engaged with the union. They can say things of the union chief that they're not going to say the fire chief. Um there they it's just that whole rank type thing. But if the union gets the same message as the fire chief, you can you can eliminate all of that because we're responsible to each other, and you you see it all the time. I have people coming in and say, Did you hear what this fire department did in Oklahoma? You damn firefighters. I mean, it goes all the way across the country, poor in Hong Kong.
SPEAKER_00:Did you see what happened in Hong Kong?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm gonna go one deeper here.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, don't go deeper.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the I mean, recently there was a 19-year-old firefighter who was being hazed in a fire station. Oh, man, that's that's yeah, that's the big one. This this is before you know 911 gets called. This is your business within the walls of your firehouse. Uh-huh. And they they are hazing this kid to the point of they were waterboarding him. And when you talk about recovery from a negative press event, how long is it gonna take this fire department now? That's all the community's gonna think about when it comes. It's like these, you know, you want to talk about us screwing around inside the fire. We have so much discretionary time that we can waterboard each other and hang upside down in the hose tower.
SPEAKER_01:I gotta tell you, if you watch sodomy is always part of that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, if you watch that event and the press conference, it was the worst press conference I've ever seen for a fire chief because he's standing two steps back with a group of people in the city, and the police chief is standing up front saying, This will not gonna happen. I'm gonna get these guys, this shouldn't be allowed. And the police chief should not be the lead voice on that. And oh man, when I was watching that, I was I was having a shake.
SPEAKER_00:There's no way that's so what should what would you say if you were the fire chief?
SPEAKER_02:I would have said exactly what the police chief said as the fire chief. Like, no, we don't treat each other like this. This isn't gonna be a pro this isn't gonna happen again. Those people will be managed either in or out of the system. In this case, from what I learned, out of the system. You don't there's no second chance management when you stick something up somebody's backside, right? There's no second chance to that.
SPEAKER_01:There's not a whole lot of sodomy in the HR manual. No, yeah. It's frowned on. Yeah. We we we don't have uh like a an algorithm to overcome that.
SPEAKER_02:In fact, it's it's better when something comes out that is so egregious that you could just fire them right there. Because sometimes, well, we're gonna know if that's a good thing. No, but what I'm saying is for the fire chief, it's like a low-hanging fruit. I'm getting rid of those guys. And sometimes you got to go, well, they're gonna be on leave pending investigation because they did this and this and this. When they shove something up, somebody, now they're gone today. They no longer have a shirt that says this fire department.
SPEAKER_01:Well, but you said that there's a system. So like and the investigation may only take a day. I I don't know. But there's gonna there's process. Yeah. Whatever the process is, it it a lot of times we know within the first hour that no, this happened, this is bad, this has to be dealt with now. Yeah, and I think what that leads us to, which is dangerous, is just jumping right to it. Right. And because then you skip the invest. You know you need to investigate, but what the now I've investigated for 10 minutes and I know this happened, and this is what we're gonna do now.
SPEAKER_02:No, you can you're right. You don't you you say that, yeah. And then the worst case scenario and is they be they get released, and then it goes through a process. The worst case with them coming back, but on the front end, you did that's you did the right thing on the front end. So don't be afraid of, I mean, get get those people out of the front.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and that's the problem. If you shortcut the process of doing whatever you're gonna have to do, and then it gets overturned, they're resurrected now. And so you've got somebody who you wanted out of the organization, and they have a certain immunity now to future they won the last time. You don't want to put yourself in that position as the supervisor.
SPEAKER_02:But that's that's a bad one. Yeah, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00:And Bruno would say, you know, if if you're gonna if you want to know how an organization's gonna deal with something really bad, look at what they were doing two and a half weeks before it had. And I would say, even before someone calls 911, look at what the organization is doing before someone calls us. And if there's a lot of dysfunction going on inside your walls, and not just the hazing and and that kind of frat behavior, but also the dysfunctional behavior where people are out to get each other, you know, people are pitting each other, you know, all those bad things that happen. It becomes it's all political. And you're not gonna deliver good service, it's just it's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02:The chapter is inside outside customer service. That and we say that like inside outside, and you kind of just say that openly, but really think about that. The inside and the outside, they have to mirror each each other because if you're not being nice to each other on the inside, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work well on the outside vice for you.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I at least in the example we used, I don't think you want to be doing sodomy to the customers. No, I mean that's so like on the inside, if that's the way we're treating each other. I don't I don't know. That's gonna be hard to spill over. I mean, that there's then you're gonna have the police chief actually giving the press conference because treat people like they're not people on the inside, you're gonna treat people that you don't even know even worse. Yeah. And whatever you can get away with. Yeah, exactly. Whatever the accepted thing is within your organization. Well, Vance, but I'll go back even to what you made alluded to before. Even worse than that are these make-believe fire departments. That's like I got all these stations with all this apparatus, but there's nobody to drive it and get it on a call. So, or let alone a team of people that can show up and actually do something with my emergency. Uh I mean, that's so you're not even able to do a call. And I think the other thing uh what we're talking about here is that you have the the the force to do it, they're just misbehaving to the point that there's no adult supervision going on. And and those it's notorious in those systems. Uh I mean, every when they're talking about it in stations, about have you roved into station 20? Well, no, why? Well, you know, this is what they do to the recruits there. Oh, okay. Well, when that makes it it, it's gone through like the task level, the tactical level, the strategic level. Now it's getting to the executive level. See, because most fire departments are run by an executive level that doesn't do much with the strategic level, uh, especially bigger fire departments. Is that's okay, they do the operations here and we run the fire department here. So and that creates its own disconnect. Yeah, that's just it's like, no, I'm gonna, I'm the fire chief and I'm I'm whatever it is. And so you you're like, well, yeah, then you're gonna if you're the fire chief, you represent the people that call 911 and the workers that roll 911. I mean, they're that's your world. But you have to do that with the politicians because that's the way the world is shaped today. So that's always has been, I I suppose.
SPEAKER_00:And I think if these eight functions of customer service aren't coming together, you're you're not going to be able to either have that quick, skillful outcome that people are seeking, which is really we're letting them down on the first promise that we made by putting fire department on the side of our vehicles. Yeah, we're the prevention of harm. Yep, yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:See, again, we're responsible for preventing harm once it starts occurring. We have fire prevention divisions that are supposed to do it before to prevent harm truly from happening. So if you're reviewing the plans for a big building and there's a sprinkler system, if there's ever a fire in it, you've reduced harm because you saved all the property and people that were in the building.
SPEAKER_02:So I think that you should like you said, you start there and then what is and I man, I'm getting old. The word that is used in law when you I know the word is I don't too much, but I'm gonna tell you. Whistleblower.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yes.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. I got it. Okay, I'm not as old.
SPEAKER_00:I guess it's not your age, Norm Crosby, it's just you.
SPEAKER_02:It's a beer. So whistleblower. It is so, I guess, prevalent in American workforce that when you see something wrong and you tell somebody about it, they had to create a law to protect you as the person who told. That's a whistleblower, right? They created an entire uh law around this because out of fear for retribution, when you see something and say something. That needs to be a fundamental piece of the organizational culture is that if you see something and you don't say something, now we have a problem. You you you need to let your employees know, firefighters know, that if you see something, it's okay to say, you're gonna be protected not from the whistleblower, but from me as a fire chief, from the admin, from the executive level. Because, like you said, you made me think of it, Nick, because people know what's happening in fire stations. And it and and the chief may not know, but somebody within that organization knows. And we really need to be able to create a culture that we can talk to each other and say, hey, do you realize this is happening? And then that needs to be managed.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the further the fire chief gets away from knowing what's going on in stations, the further you are no longer controlling the fire department. Right. I mean, you're disconnected from the main part. You know, JV, you talked about the horseplay and this public thing with the and the effect it's gonna have on the fire department. The other piece of news that just is going through the transom is recently there was a jury award of$31 million in a line of duty case in Illinois. And those the I want to say there were two communities involved in that suit, and they had a total population of about 15,000 between those two communities that where that fire occurred. And so I don't know who ends up being responsible for that, but I'm gonna guess that those two communities combined do not spend that much money a year for the government. So essentially what happened is because they allowed with the death, that line of duty death, and the details of that, once that went into a court, a jury was three hours of deliberation and they came back with that award. So uh that that says something.
SPEAKER_02:Because you failed the families, that was the award, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you you basically it was just a notch. The way I interpret it is a notch below manslaughter, and then it was it's so egregious that this is what happened. See, and there's laws to protect fire departments against that, and they demonstrate it to the level that the jury says, no, we're skipping over that. This is unacceptable, and we're gonna make a point here. So, but that is I'm gonna say that's more egregious to those communities than that what happened with the fun and games. Neither one of them should happen. Don't get me wrong there, but that's the other side of it. They're like, well, so the chief may think I don't ever, I don't condone this, and I would never allow this, and I manage my department in a way where this kind of nonsense can't happen in the fire station. But a lot of those same places, this will happen over here. Is when you start looking at some of the details of that. I mean, there was no it was like the top five NIOSH deals. I mean, it was just glaring and flashing. And so, um, and that's what I mean, that's just kind of what happened. So that kind of becomes the barometer for the future. Well, many politicians are lawyers too, right? So now you have the lawyers who see okay, there is the latest payday right there. Well, do you think that's gonna become more prevalent or is it gonna die down, these kind of suits? There are gonna be more. In fact, I'm gonna say if you're one of the survivors of the last two or three years, and I've hear this, is they're starting to go back because of this. So it's gonna create uh its own industry moving forward that is going to be. I think it's gonna it may change the way you start doing business. We talked about this with like riding on tailboards and when that ended, and it was a court trial that put Firetruck Company out of business. And you don't ride the tailboard anymore. That was just what happened. Well, I think the more and more you see of this, it's gonna have a similar effect in the Nick.
SPEAKER_02:You made me think of something. So we have Nyosh who comes in and and they report on a line. We we did. We do knows what we got now. They come in and they report on a line of duty death, and they came up with these five reasons, the five most common reasons that are things that occur. There's gonna be in the future, be if these kind of goofy stuff shoving stuff up your rear end, there's gonna be a similar organization, and can you imagine that, that's gonna look at what failed within that organization to allow that to occur at that level. And there's gonna be five things, maybe eight, that they're gonna find out this culture is prevalent within your organization because of these eight things. And we just we have them on this card here, and they're maybe I think these are the eight things. Yeah, and the number one thing is that the fire chief doesn't manage just like the incident commander. If you're not looking out for the safety of everybody within that hazard zone, if the fire chief's not looking out for the welfare of everybody within that organization, you're gonna come up with these five things. So when you think about that, and the and the key to the five areas is that they're what what Gordon Graham say? Predictable and preventable. Same thing organizationally. If you just carry on the way and ignore the way people treat each other in your organization and ignore these predictable. If if you're not nice to the customer, if you get two or three, you're I'm a fire chief and I get one or two or three not nice things happening to the customer. I'm gonna go back and say, uh-oh, what's going on? Is this is this a cultural deal? Because it's more than just an appearance. Where are we dropping the ball? And we got to get a in front of that.
SPEAKER_01:So Well, I think like the system we grew up in, where you every year you had a an annual performance evaluation. Yeah. Well, that was just a bullshit thing. Yeah, it was a window dressing deal. And even the form, the like. Like the city, this the city HR people made the form up that we use. It's checking a box. And then we we then we we twisted it a little bit as the fire department, but even as chiefs, we got performance achievement. And so the like you're you would get a little bigger raise or a little less raise, depending. And I think a lot of organizational just stuff in the world, there's there's different ways. And I think one of the primary is I punch down and I kiss up. So if like you work for me, I'm gonna be a strong boss. One of my son-in-laws, if you will, used to work at a giant computer chip factory here. And and you would talk to him about his work, and it wasn't none of this. Zero. Is is their whole deal was whatever product they made. And if you if you did not support that 24 hours a day, well, they would ship you back to the country you came from, which is a whole nother thing going on in today's economic world. But he ended up quitting because he despised his bosses. They were clowns. And when you really talk to him about it, he says they don't know how to make chips right, let alone, and now they're dealing with people. He says it's it's like math professors teaching psychology. They can't do it. It's not working. So and you see the effect in the waste and all the other things. No, that's not the way business works. You have been clouded with what you do. And yeah, that's that's probably good.
SPEAKER_00:Then I'm gonna keep clouding. It's yeah, but there's a lot of private companies not owned by hedge funds that do treat people right. Oh, they're tremendous, yeah. Most of them aren't owned by hedge funds.
SPEAKER_02:That's why they treat people the way I work for one.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. Well, that's where we do, right?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, here. You're going like, where is Terry working? You got a part-time job in an office? Yeah, are you doing decking now? I think I'm okay. Well, yeah, but we're I don't know. This is this is a different thing altogether. We're shut. This doesn't feel like we're getting a paid. You know, see, but I'll speak to that. Is we're doing what we want to do. This is what I mean. We want to do this, don't be here. This is our I don't know. We've cooked this into our lives. It's the way we live and it's occupational. It's just I don't know. It's a round table. Yeah, goddammit. What the hell? All right. That's stealing walnuts. He's got a complicated.
SPEAKER_00:Bottom line is always attempt to execute a standard problem-solving outcome. That's what we need to do.
SPEAKER_01:We've pretty much we have, I think, danced all the way the round the table and never really stepped on the snake in the middle. Sandwich.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, goddammit. We'll be back though for that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, this is the fun of being us.
SPEAKER_00:Cut that. Hey, you want to do a uh Timeless Tactical Truth before we go? Yeah, right now. All right, let's do it. Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Bernicini. And these books are available for$10 at the Bee Shifter store. Go to b Shifter.com. And today's Timeless Tactical Truth. If you can't control yourself, there is a really good chance that you can't control anything or anybody else.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:I think we talked about that earlier about chili peppers and silliness around the station.
SPEAKER_02:Leadership is not about control. And I'm gonna get a lot of responses from people on this one.
SPEAKER_00:Let's go viral, baby.
SPEAKER_02:Leadership is not about control, it's about influence. And it the best way to influence somebody is to show them the correct way and support them and help them get that done. Not controlling them and beating them up. And and and usually that be that comes because for some reason in a person's life, I don't know, I'm probably gonna go deeper and I should. Somewhere along the way, that when these control freak people they did not have control of something that they wanted, and it stuck with them so bad that they say, if I ever get in a position of power, I'm gonna do it. You know, the the guy who wrote the book Buddy to Boss, right? Chase Sargent. Yeah, he ought to write another one called From Bully to Boss because those I've seen that where people don't change when they oh yeah, well, maybe when he promotes, he'll be a nicer person. No, he's gonna go from being worse, and he's gonna be your boss, and now he's a bully with positional power. He punches down and sideways and personal power. So yeah, I I really believe that bully the boss, buddy the boss is a really good thing because I was your friend, and now I can look you in the face and say, Don't do that. That's wrong, right?
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes I when I was a firefighter, I'd make comments without getting my ass kicked for I don't know how that happened, but I I had a captain and I and I said to him once I go, Who hurt you? Because he was just so angry. And and I get it, you know, he was a war veteran and everything. You know, they're different generation, but it's like toe blown up. Yeah, but it's like don't bring that to work. Yeah, don't bring it in the potatoes in the military.
SPEAKER_01:Come on, yeah, let's get over it. You know, I promoted to avoid being supervised by people I don't want to be supervised by. Right. Yeah. So I mean that's really kind of. That's what inspired me. I didn't do it so I could be in charge of people. In fact, that that was probably the that wasn't my strong suit being in charge of other people.
SPEAKER_02:But but I was yeah, but you did find the higher you went up in your organization, the more influence you had over more people. Yeah. Oh without a doubt.
SPEAKER_01:If you don't get that piece, then you've lost yeah, you can't. Well, and I and you could go in and talk to them as another B shifter, and and you could they they got it. I could connect, I connected in a way that I didn't have to be an asshole. I could in fact, I was really good at putting that right back on them. I said, I'm here because you made me be here. Yeah, well, you only come by when we're in trouble. It's it's because you're no, I a lot of times I don't come by and it keeps you out of trouble. I had to put on pants to come here today. Yeah, yeah, for the love of God. In fact, I'm not even wearing them now. Come out to the car.
SPEAKER_00:I always say I'd rather be here for pie and coffee than what I'm here about right now. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I mean, yeah, yeah, but but i it it went well. Yeah, and there was see, it was never terminal. You never wanted it to uh I'm not gonna well, a few times it was, but that was because of them. I thought you made bad decisions. That that's I'm gonna. In fact, there were a few times you protected the fire department. It's like, no, you should retire. There was a couple guys I told retire. If you retire, it's so much harder to take your pension away. And I said, right now the police are looking for you. So yeah, there's there's no anything. Oh relationships, relationships. And they would ask, they said, Well, God, he just retired. Well, but what happened? And I I don't know. I I wouldn't even take credit for it. And you know, the ranking guy would say, Well, thank God he's not here. We don't have to deal with that. Yeah, so yeah, he ain't gonna be in the newspaper, but yeah, and he's former.
SPEAKER_00:Taking care of problems on the lowest level possible, one hundred percent, man.
SPEAKER_02:And and keeping a good, strong relationship when possible. Because once that's broke, you're done. You go around making enemies, putting people on a list like some people do. Gosh dang. That's wrong. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh see, like we go back to the evaluation. You could change the evaluation, would be like something. Like the citizens' complaints. I always had a heart on for citizens' complaints. Because most of it was people calling in. They they went code three through the intersection, they got to the other side and they turned their lights off, and then they turned down a side street. Well, why is this a complaint to me? That they were going on a call. I could see the call they were going on, they got canceled, and then they made it through the intersection and turned around. Well, you just call the person back and tell them that. I said, No, no, no, no. Whoever answered the phone should have told them. It shouldn't take a month for me to call them back and let them know that. This is 40% of my citizens' complaints are this.
SPEAKER_02:I I actually stopped uh calling those complaints in one organization and say that's a citizen inquiry. Don't put that down because I look at all the citizen complaints. Those aren't complaints. No, they're they're asking a question that they they they think they have a complaint, but when you give them the answer, it's not a complaint, it's a valid something valid took place. That's an inquiry.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and that's where the union comes back and they say 90% of the citizens' complaints were exonerated on. And I said, that's because 50% of them are inquiries. I said, in fact, I'm gonna say 60 to 70 you're guilty of that are real complaints. They actually happened. So and they're like, well, hey, no, no, no, no, you can't do that because it's gonna screw the numbers up for us. He's like, Well, okay. It's a you're not doing your job anymore. We're we're making shit up as we go. Stop it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you guys, if we don't, we probably won't get back together again until the holidays. So happy holidays. Happy holidays.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for being here today.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, probably 2026 will be the next time we we we we well Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I hope we're all here again next year.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not going you want you go okay?
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, I'm talking about like the physically.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. I look at the camera every once when I see myself and think he's not gonna make it.
SPEAKER_00:That guy's on his way out. Well, he's got a goatee going, like uh like a colonel from the Civil War.
SPEAKER_02:I'm trying to hide my turkey neck, is what I'm trying to do.
SPEAKER_00:All right, before we go. I look like I should turtlenecks. Before we start making more faces, the camera. Thank you for listening to B Shifter. We'll talk to you later. Bye.