Regarding calls in the middle of the night:

“Didn’t your mom teach you not to call anyone after 9 o’clock at night?”

Somehow, someone didn’t know how to spell “school” and put it in the asphalt. This was outside 3 schools.

Wonder if s/he knew how to pronounce it.

And we get pissed at people who call 911 for stupid stuff…

If the sun was in your eyes, perhaps you shouldn’t have been driving 35 in a 25mph zone. You should be glad you only caused a family’s minivan to roll over onto its roof by clipping its tail instead of center-punching it where the restrained kids were sitting. And you should be ashamed of yourself for setting this kind of example for your teenage daughter who was in the car with you.

As the author wrote in the very interesting book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us), we really should get away from using the term “traffic accident,” since the word “accident” implies that the event was not predictable and not preventable, and thus no one is at fault , when in fact it is absolutely predictable that a driver not devoting his/her full attention to driving is more likely to wreck, and there almost always is someone at fault because of drugs, alcohol, speeding, phone calls, text messages, stupidity, driving like an asshole, etc.

Loving parents. Concerned siblings. Neat and tidy house. You even sound like an intelligent kid.

So why the fuck are you having an anxiety attack, little boy?

I think it’s interesting that some hospitals have such restrictive policies regarding the use of restraints. It’s also interesting that some ED staff members adopt such a naive and coddling approach toward people who should be in restraints. Even more interesting is their attitude toward us when we show up with someone in restraints, as if we just came from some bondage party.

“Well, he’s not on a psych hold.”

“Why is he in restraints?”

“Well, that’s inappropriate.”

“Combativeness is just a sign of a head injury. ”

“I know he’s cracked out of his mind, but you still can’t restrain him.”

Really?

Sorry, my security staff called in sick. The ten other people who usually work with me in the back of the ambulance are all on break. The cops left to go to different calls. Pardon me if I can’t subdue this 250-pound asshole felon on my own.

“Sir, are you going to cooperative with us?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You guys can let him out of those restraints.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, we’re sure.”

And then, of course, it always ends with, “SECURITY!” Followed by, “WE NEED ATIVAN STAT!”

“Oh, what’s that? You say something? You talking to us? Oh, you want us to help you restrain this guy now? Well, we already transferred care to you, and that just wouldn’t seem appropriate…”

If you’re not rich or in politics, Wall Street is not your friend. You would think this is obvious, but somehow people keep voting against their self-interest.

Wall Street does not have the best interests of the public and their employees in mind, and that should be obvious to anyone. I say “should,” because it apparently is not obvious to everyone.

And this is relevant because Wall Street’s obsession with profits in the private sector directly influences the way public sector employees are treated as well. For instance, if you think the ongoing war on public sector pensions, the continuous assault on collective bargaining rights, the coordinated blame game directed at rank-and-file employees and retirees, the phantom budget crises, the lies and errors and omissions and obfuscations being told by politicians and their media mouthpieces every hour of every day, etc. are anything but driven by the Fat Cats, you’re fucking high.

This is how Ellen Schultz’s book, Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers, starts:

In December 2010, General Electric held its Annual Outlook Investor Meeting at Rockefeller Center in New York City. At the meeting, chief executive Jeffrey Immelt stood on the Saturday Night Live stage and gave the gathered analysts and shareholders a rundown on the global conglomerate’s health. But in contrast to the iconic comedy show that is filmed at Rock Center each week, Immelt’s tone was solemn. Like many other CEOs at large companies, Immelt pointed out that his firm’s pension plan was an ongoing problem. The “pension has been a drag for a decade,” he said, and it would cause the company to lose thirteen cents per share the next year. Regretfully, to rein in costs, GE was going to close the pension plan to new employees.

The audience had every reason to believe him. An escalating chorus of bloggers, pundits, talk show hosts, and media stories bemoan the burgeoning pension-and-retirement crisis in America, and GE was just the latest of hundreds of companies, from IBM to Verizon, that have slashed pensions and medical benefits for millions of AMerican retirees. To justify these cuts, companies complain that they’re victims of a “perfect storm” of uncontrollable economic forces – and aging workforce, entitled retirees, a stock market debacle, and an outmoded pension system that cripples their chances of competing against pensionless competitors and companies overseas.

What Immelt didn’t mention was that, far from teing a burden, GE’s pension and retiree plans had contributed billions of dollars to the company’s bottom line over the past decade and a half, and were responsible for a chunk of the earnings that the execcutives had taken credit for. Nor were these retirement programs – even with GE’s 230,000 retirees – bleeding the company of cash. In fact, GE hadn’t contributed a cent to the workers’ pension plans since 1987 but still had enough money to cover all the current and future retirees.

And yet, despite all this, Immelt’s assessment wasn’t entirely inaccurate. The company did indeed have another pension plan that really was a burden: the one for GE executives. And unlike the pension plans for a quarter of a million workers and retirees, the executive pensions, with a $4.4 billion obligation, have always been a drag on earnings and have always drained cash from company coffers: more than $573 million over the past three years alone.

So a question remains: With its fully funded pension plan, why was GE closing its pensions?

This is one of the quetions this book seeks to answer. Retirement Heist explains what really happened to GE’s pensions as well as to the retirement benefits of millions of Americans at thousands of companies. No one disputes that there’s a retirement crisis, but the crisis was no demongraphic accident. It was manufactured by an alliance of two groups: top executives and their facilitators in the retirement industry – benefits consultants, insurance companies, and banks – all of who played a huge and hidden role in the death spiral of American pensions and benefits.

I don’t make that much money, but apparently I bled my employers dry.

Code 3 for the traffic accident.

As we approach, two vehicles with flashers are still moving slowly in the left lane of the freeway. By the time we reach them, they are stopped. The driver of the trailing vehicle gets out and says he’s fine. He says he “tapped” the other vehicle in heavy traffic. There is no visible damage to his vehicle. The driver of the lead vehicle is sitting in the driver seat, complaining of neck pain. There is absolutely no visible damage to his vehicle either.

We put on the dog and pony show and immobilize him to the longboard. After I suppress the urge to yell at him for being a friggin’ pussy and scamming insurance, that is. But then, before we pull him out, without being asked, he removes the vehicle key from his key ring and leaves it in the ignition. And he does not ask what’s going to happen to his vehicle.

Isn’t that suspicious or am I just being too sensitive?*

*For the readers who may not be familiar with this, in most cases, people involved in traffic incidents who are not staying at the scene have to be told to leave the key for the tow truck operators if their vehicles are inoperable. It is not something one naturally knows to do.

Code 3 for the fall.

“Elderly female fell in bathtub.”

“Now not breathing.”

We go in a neat apartment, make a few turns toward the back bathroom. I turn the corner into the bathroom and stop short. I stop the crew.

“Hold on.”

It’s a crime scene. The woman is in the tub and the tub is filled with water.

Later, I look at the call notes from the communications center, and the very first line – before “Elderly female fell in bathtub” and “Now not breathing” – said, “Possible drowning.”

Umm… I’m not one to run calls based solely on dispatch information, but, ahem, dispatcher person, did you not think that bit of description was at least semi-important? Did you not feel that there was a bit of a difference between just “not breathing in bathtub” and maybe a “drowning”?

Ms. Common Sense, meet Dr. Common Sense.

Code 3 for chest pain. At the urgent care clinic.

As you know, we respond to the urgent care clinic quite often, usually for some silliness that exceeds their capabilities, so it’s usually really just some transfer to the ED. The numbers out of this place are on par with your typical skilled nursing facility.

A woman in her 40s experienced some chest pain in Neighborhood A, where she lives. She called her doctor, who is clearly familiar with both this urgent care clinic and the ED, and asked if she should go to the ED, a few minutes away from her home. He said no, and directed her to the urgent care clinic, 15 minutes away in Neighborhood B.

So, she showed up at the urgent care clinic with chest pain, and – lo and behold – they put in a call to the ED, followed quickly by a call to 911. We leave our coffee – I don’t really remember but it sounds cool to type that – and drive from near her home and the ED all the way to the urgent care clinic, and drive her all the way back to the ED.

And now her car is stuck in the parking lot at the urgent care clinic.

“Who is your doctor? And why did you listen to him in the first place?”

I was at some talk, and at some point, it was said that there is no logical correlation between years of experience and confidence in skill. That roughly translated, in my head, to “cocky new people.”

To someone like me, it’s simply weird. Because the longer I work, sometimes, the less confident I feel, as I know more and more about what I don’t know.