Who Still Has Beds?

[Percy]

@StandPipe Our ‘new’ Chief oversaw the reversal of the nonsense policy that was created by lunatics nearly 10 years ago where you could ‘rest’ but this has to be in a chair.

it was all to do with previous Chiefs being more concerned with image than practicality and safety.

The ludicrously expensive reclining chairs that were brought in were uncomfortable and caused injury to some, so many (nearly everyone) eventually brought in some form of horizontal ‘resting’ platform to use instead.

This promoted hit squads of officers with zero integrity to perform clandestine ‘raids’ to catch people out using them and discipline them… so basically the service engineered a totally unnecessary situation that caused huge division and disharmony.

Our new Chief reversed this at the strike of a pen but in the time frame beteeen the lunatics and DR the practicalities of reintroducing beds has proven massively problematic.

Dorms were repurposed as ‘Community Rooms’ in many stations and more recently built Fire Stations didn’t have them at all - Wigan simply cannot comfortably accommodate beds without them impacting on other rooms and it isn’t on its own.

[CaptainFlack]

And new stations are going to be built with separate rooms/dorms for crews - see below and click on the floor plan.

New Stockport Fire Station

Props to the chief and understanding how rest impacts health and wellbeing.

** One for the saddos like me - new stations are also having poles installed as well 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻 - eliminating the health and safety argument nonsense 

[Rory-495]

I wish we could have proper facilities in our service. People sleeping in all manner of rooms. Even worse if you get a 2am cover move!

[Guest]

Ah the old night time raids in GMFRS.

I woke up one night bleary eyed to a watch manager from headquarters (working single rate overtime) who had burst into the room I was sleeping in.

"WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR? WHERE IS EVERYONE ELSE? YOU BETTER TELL ME WHERE EVERYONE IS OR ILL PUT YOU ON A CHARGE"

I stood up in my undercrackers and silently ushered him out the door by his elbow, closed it and went back to bed.

Never heard anything more about it.

They were some very strange times.

[Cass]

@PB86 I can very much imagine that nonsense of night raids went on. If you told someone outside of the job, they wouldn't believe you... 😂

[Guest]

The most tragic thing was how many middle managers and training staff embraced his ideology and went along with it/kissed his arse. It's a perfect example of how it only takes one bad apple at the top to turn a whole firm into an absolute farce.

There's a lesson in there for us all...

[Healdav]

Long, long ago, I was told that the reason for allowing fire service personnel to have beds and sleep was that they had to keep adrenaline and energy levels up. They had to be able to react at ten minutes before the end of a shift with the same energy etc as the did when ten minutes into the shift. That always sounded reasonable to me.

[Jet]

Couple that with the (seemingly irreconcilable) fact that there is very little productive work we can do at night time apart from attend emergencies. I mean its not like most firefighters all around the globe sleep on nights is it 🙄

[Percy]

On 04/08/2023 at 10:42, PB86 said:

The most tragic thing was how many middle managers and training staff embraced his ideology and went along with it/kissed his arse. It's a perfect example of how it only takes one bad apple at the top to turn a whole firm into an absolute farce.

There's a lesson in there for us all...

Because they have zero integrity and will do anything to ‘look good’ for further promotions… but they reap what they sow.