Jarrod Sergi's Blog (45)

Lately I have heard a lot of negativity toward the use of the word aggressive in our fire service vocabulary. Whether in casual conversations, seminars or online learning outlets I have heard a sense of dismay for the use of this word. I heard one fire service member say that it should be removed from our dictionary because it is going to get someone hurt; that is a macho term that has no place in our profession. Some tend to associate this word with being reckless or careless on the…

Lately I have started to notice an increase of the word “employee” when describing a firefighter. I have heard it in casual conversations about evaluations, physical assessments, management etc. Why do we use this term? I know we are all employees of an organization in the eyes of council members and politicians, but shouldn’t we be more than just employees? If we refer to Merriam-Webster we see that an employee is defined as: “a person who works for another person or for a company for wages…

As another promotional process creeps up on the horizon I am reminded of something. On the last day of a recruit class I recently taught I had a recruit ask me: How can I prepare to become an officer in this dept.? My first thought was, how about finish probation first!! I didn’t say that to him, but it really made me think about something.

Every couple years we have a promotional process in our department. You are all aware of them. That time of year when productivity seems…

How many times have you heard someone follow up a sentence with: but he is a nice guy, or she is nice person? How many times have you heard people make excuses for other Firefighters? I completely understand that we have all sorts of nice people in the Fire Service, but the Fire Service needs Firefighters more than it needs nice people.

He is a horrible EMS provider, but he is a nice guy.

She can’t perform her job, but she is really nice.

He shouldn’t be in this…

This past week I found myself being very stressed out with my work. Not so much the duties I perform everyday but the recent frustrations I have with the way things are being done, or not done. We all have our pet peeves. We all have the things we are passionate about. Most of mine are very simple and just to name a few; pride in uniform appearance, training, accountability and passion for the profession we spend months or years trying to get into. At the end of this frustrating week for me…