When it rains it pours :^(

[Gary D.]

Tough news Gary, its always tough to lose a valued member of the team, I think we need to trade members every six months or so, we lose people to inactivity, you lose them to over activity. Not to mention the ones that join up and never make it to call outs. But thats what you get with a volunteer team.

Hi Greg;

Not a bad idea about swapping every 6 months but with the dedication my guys have they couldn’t sit still for 6 months if they knew there were calls they weren’t responding to.

When we see someone start to stress out we try and isolate them from a few call outs. I drop a note to dispatch to eliminate their pager from the team call out for a couple of calls. The excuse that the pager didn’t go off still works for now. Someone will catch on some day and I’ll get yelled at. Then we will go have a brew and get over it.

I got my plug pulled a couple of years ago. I know it was for my own good and when I look back I’m glad they did it. I was just pissed when I found out what happened but it was a good thing. It let the gray matter regroup.

The one we lost was my #3 on the team. In the shock of the moment I forgot about my #2 who has threatened to quit in the past but not for good reasons. He gets PMS once in a while and I DO talk him out of it. Not the PMS but quitting.

I’m sitting here going over the equipment issue lists. Besides mine I’m looking at 5. This sucks. I’ll either be retired or ready to go by the time we get the team back up to strength and everyone trained.

Gary D.