Gotta Get A Jab For A Job?

I attended a job interview yesterday for a FF/EMT position at another department for better pay, shorter hours, and good benefits. I will stay on and pick up extra shifts where I am now if the new employment conditions will allow. The interview was done as a three man oral board which is typical in the fire service. I have sat through several over the years and if you are ill-prepared it will not only be intimidating, but will absolutely crush you. For example, when I took the state certification board for my Fire Officer II class it went like this; you walk in and there are three stone faced Chief officers from departments around the state with about 110 combined years of service. You pick up a random unlabeled manila folder from about 30 laid out on a table. This will be your scenario. You hand it to the board members, and based on the contents, they each flip open a giant 3-ring binder and select random pages of questions keyed to your scenario. No two boards are ever the same. The Chiefs then begin asking you the questions. You look towards the one asking the question, look them in the eye, and answer the question to the best of your ability in a steady confident manner. There can be no hesitation or wandering in your head searching for an answer. This goes on back and forth between the Chiefs until they conclude the board. I know someone that has been in the fire service for 40 years; he's a smart guy, but has blown the Fire Officer I board twice and never certified because he gets totally intimidated and blows it.

So yesterday was similar, but the three individuals had written out their own three questions each. I had no problem answering their questions fully, drawing on my own 30 years of experience. I think it went quite well. At the end, they asked me if I had any questions. I had one. "Is a COVID vaccine mandatory for employment?" The guy who was filling in for the HR rep said he didn't know. The senior FF said they were all vaccinated and was pretty sure they had to. The HR stand-in said he would find out and get back to me. He asked if I would be willing to get one for employment, and I said "Absolutely not. If the vaccine had been developed 10 or 15 years ago and gone through the normal safety testing, I would consider it, but not for something that is still experimental. It would be a deal breaker for me." The interview ended, we exchanged pleasantries, and I returned to duty at my firehouse.

A couple of hours later, I got a voicemail on my cell phone from the HR stand-in. He told me it is only a recommendation, not a mandatory requirement. I thanked him via text message and he acknowledged back. Had they said it was a mandatory requirement, I would have officially withdrawn my application immediately.

Today I get a voicemail from a blocked unknown number. It is the guy that stood in for HR. As I am listening to his message the station landline rings and is answered by the Lieutenant. The HR guy called the station looking for me. When I get on the line, he tells me they have one final question that they were supposed to ask me yesterday, and the other two guys were on the call as well. It was on the back side of the sheet of questions and they missed it. They wanted to know how I would handle conflicting orders from two different officers on an emergency scene. Again, drawing on my vast knowledge, I told them if the conflicting orders were going to cause a life safety issue for a victim of a fire or accident, a medical patient, civilian, or fellow firefighter, I would not carry it out and notify the officer. If it was simply a task conflict, I would handle it the same way we handle what's called "Freelancing" on the fire ground. Freelancing happens when a firefighter does something because they feel like it (like randomly smashing out the windows of a house), or as they were headed to do an assigned task, get grabbed to do another task by another officer, never completing the original task. Your supposed to tell that second officer you already have an assignment and who the officer was that gave it to you. In a unified command structure those two officers need to be on the same page, so they can discuss which task you are going to accomplish. They seemed satisfied with my answer and now I just wait to hear if I get an offer.