7 Reasons You Should NOT Become A Firefighter

being a firefighter is like being the golden child of all of public safety everybody loves you everybody comes to bring you food and snacks and station visits and all of that stuff and police have their own issues and ems is usually forgotten about nobody even thinks about the dispatchers which is unfortunate because the dispatchers are that's a tough job but in this video i wanted to go over seven reasons that firefighting might not be a good fit for you when i first got into firefighting i didn't know anybody i didn't have any family connections i didn't have any friends that were in the fire service i knew nothing about it and some of these things are things that i've learned over the years and some of these things that are things that people just don't really think about when they think about the fire service so as always if you like this video if you find it helpful click the like button below subscribe to the channel and i hope you find this content useful so we'll get right into it the first thing is firefighting might not be for you if you are in it for the money and i don't mean that in the way that most people say that there's this old school mentality where if you're here for the money you're here for the wrong reasons and you shouldn't get into the fire service at all that's not what i'm saying what i am saying is why whatever reason you choose to to join the fire service maybe the department in your area it's a very stable job you know you'll never lose your job and you make a good income and that's for you great and that's your only reason for doing it do it right doesn't mean you're going to be a bad firefighter i'm saying it might not be for you if you're in it for the money in the sense that you want to make a lot of money salaries can vary greatly across the country i mean salaries can even vary greatly within the same area depending on department um and and i know everybody's seen the stories of california firemen i think i saw one of some firemen in nevada that made hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year but those guys had to have pretty much lived at the station to do that and that is that is tough that sucks that would get old very fast and most people might think like oh yeah that wouldn't bother me it would bother you to be locked in that building for as many hours as those guys were to earn that kind of money so that's that's an outlier so if you're in this for the money this is probably not for you number two it's terrible for your health and up until recently nobody really talked about this few reasons it's bad for your health number one you don't really sleep at night that's something a lot of people don't realize and don't really talk about you are up constantly at night you're up on one call two calls three calls four calls it's a really bad night when they get spaced out perfectly so every time as soon as you get back to the station you're going right back out some nights you don't sleep at all other nights you might hit the jackpot and you sleep all the way through the night like nothing even happened but that is very very rare and while an all-nighter here or there might not be the end of the world stack that on top of each other for 10 20 30 years that's really bad for your health in the long run so there's that also poor nutrition is a chronic problem in the fire service you might not realize this but the biggest killer of firemen on the fire ground is heart attack not burns not structure collapse nothing like that it's because so many firemen are out of shape and don't take care of themselves properly that that is the biggest killer i know when i first heard that that was shocking to me maybe it's shocking to you i don't know so the fires being a firefighter as a career generally is not good for your health number three you're not a people person now that doesn't mean that there aren't times that you don't get annoyed with people anybody who spent any time working in public safety knows that dealing with the public at large every single day constantly day in and day out in in a fireman's case in the middle of the night when you get woken up can get it can get very stressful what that means is you're unable to carry on a basic conversation with with people as a firefighter you are you're a leader in the community whether you like it or not whether you think of yourself as one or not you're going to be looked to as a leader in the community so if you can't even just have a basic conversation with people basic social skills this is probably not going to be for you because you're not going to represent your guys and your girls and you're not going to represent your department well also as being a people person you need to have a certain base level of sympathy and empathy for people you're going to see some tough stuff on this job um and when you do that you need to i mean you don't want to be a robot you you want to be able to feel for people feel with people um so yeah i'll just i'll just leave it there there's a certain level of empathy and sympathy that you have to have and the ability to to speak to people in just a basic way number four this might not be for you if you can't work in a group whether you like it or not you are going to be locked into it well you're not going to be locked but you're going to be living in a building in tight quarters with maybe 3 4 5 10 12 different men and women for 24 hours at least at a time that can get very very old very quick especially if you're on a crew with people that you don't really like or you don't really see eye to eye with them it can get pretty draining so if you are unable to work well in a group and just fit into a group and i'm actually going to make a video on that that's in in my list of things to do is how to fit into a group when you're a new guy this is going to be a tough job for you it's going to be really really tough to live essentially with these people all the time number five you don't do well with authority so there's a few things about this um answering to others if you're if you're someone that that that just feels like you know the right way to do things all the time and nobody else is as smart as you don't join the fire service you are going to be such a problem for everyone um but also if you're not able to do well with answering to people simply because they're senior to you so there's this old idea in the fire service that seniority a lot of time a lot of times equates to competence and i strongly disagree with that and i think anybody who's worked in the fire service for a time knows that person on their department that's been there for a long time that is treated as though they know more than everybody else and that is not the case at all that is something you're probably going to have to deal with in a fire department seniority does not equal competence now it does usually equal more knowledge and that's something you especially as a new person will need so that doesn't mean disregard everybody but this there's like i said the fire service is very very seniority based and if that's something you would have a hard time with this might not be the job for you number six you like reinventing the wheel if that's you if you're the person that's always looking for new ideas and to implement things quickly and and and readily and easily you're going to struggle the fire service is like a cruise ship it moves very very slowly over the last several years they've made they've made a lot of progress in things like firefighter health different firefighting tactics whether you agree with them disagree with them but there's been some good progress made but regardless the fire service is still a very slow moving thing so if you come in and you think just because you have a fire science degree or you have some sort of background that you're going to just change things like that you're going to be in for a rude awakening so if that's you this might not be the job for you and then finally number seven is you really struggle with or you can't handle tragedy now i didn't realize to the extent when i first got started in the fire service how much stuff you see and by that i mean the the beauty of public safety is you deal you see everything you see the highest of the highs and the lows of the lows the richest the poorest uh i'm talking economically i'm talking i'm talking everything you you see some really awesome things and you see some just horribly tragic things and it's the hardest part to watch isn't necessarily the actual tragic event it's at least for me and a lot of other people i've talked to the hardest thing to watch is the reactions of the fans the friends and family member of whoever whatever the event was that happened and that gets really tough to deal with now fortunately as the fire service progresses there's more and more resources out there for those types of things but just know this is if this is the career path that you choose that you're going to have to deal with some pretty tough stuff you're going to see some very tragic things dealing with with children dealing with suicide dealing with drugs dealing with the entire cross-section of humanity so if you're the type of person that is that is very how do i say maybe just emotionally fragile and that's something you might not be able to deal with on a day in and day out basis this might not be the career choice for you so i hope you found this video helpful if there's any other things that you've heard of or you know of put them in the comments below i'm interested to hear more about what people are nervous about maybe not looking forward to things that uh they just don't know what to expect throw them in the comments below i i read every comment i try to answer as many as many of them as i can as always if you like this this video and you find it helpful give it a quick thumbs up and subscribe to the channel and i'll see you guys in the next video

Channel: Mike Pertz

Views: 619,697

Keywords: Firefighting, Firefighters, First Responders, firefighter interview

Id: vHGkRyvhTzY

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020