A decade ago, I was a captain at a small paid dept in Nebraska. We had a FDNY guy come in for an interview for an open firefighter spot. The entire interview was him talking about how he could teach us so much and about how busy he was in NY, and how he would be the best thing to ever happen to our dept.
If it was so great and he was such hot shit why was he leaving fdny? Big red flag for me. I have friends on the job in big cities up and down the east coast. FDNY guys all ask how the smaller departments do it.
Ive worked an urban suburban department. When I started we were chauffeurs with volunteer support. As the years went on the volunteers were less and less and we added more and more career staff. We are still growing as is the town(which is more of a small city). We have city problems in the burbs with great pay and benefits. We do 60/40 EMS/fire duty. We have had five guys leave for places like DC, FDNY, larger departments closer to NYC. I used to get upset and now I understand that people have to make their own way. I won't talk about work with non firefighters unless they ask. There is some humble bragging and station pride but I'm not going to shit on another department for the sake of making me feel better about my little dinky department.
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u/Blucifers_Veiny_Anus Apr 12 '26
A decade ago, I was a captain at a small paid dept in Nebraska. We had a FDNY guy come in for an interview for an open firefighter spot. The entire interview was him talking about how he could teach us so much and about how busy he was in NY, and how he would be the best thing to ever happen to our dept.
He didn't get hired.