Quote:
Originally Posted by LakeCleElum
More than a few have died of job related cancer at an early age.
It's only the 2nd profession where one gets paid to sleep.
For this, most in my area make over 100K a yr. with a little overtime.
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The cancer thing is a pisser and statistically significant. I wonder if the stats will change since the profession has 'evolved' and the concept of going in without the mask is not the 'tough' thing to do any more.
Maybe some halls don't get night calls, but I know the night work took a toll on my dad. Every third night, he would rarely get more than a couple hours sleep in a row and if there was an actual fire... you're out for hours. If you get back to the hall, its not like you can easily relax and sleep after being that wired.
As for the 'big money', I think that was the exception. My dad retired as a district chief (large metro area), in charge of 15 halls or so. I suspect that his salary was less than 70k. He has good medical benefits as a retiree, but his pension is in the 40k range.
Moses, your neighbor is a douchbag. Guys like that usually catch a lot of flak from the non-douchbag guys in the hall if they are not pulling their weight. I think the firefighter union sticker is usually a given. My dad was sortof a 'hippie type' and having the afl-cio sticker was usually counteracted by him driving the vw bus... southern cops didn't like hippie types.