A Erranding We Shall Go

"Everybody does it," my wife said last night as we were chatting.

And, no, she wasn't talking about licking ecstacy pills out of a 20-year-old girl's innie on the floor of a nightclub. She was talking about erranding at work.

My wife is an intinerant speech-langugage pathologist. She goes traipsing about to children's homes and store-front daycare facilities and, if you think she can resist the temptation to hit up a fabric store in between appointments, well, then you just crazy, girl.

"One of my coworkers came into the office from seeing clients yesterday carrying bags from Pathmark, which she then put in the work refrigerator until she was ready to go home."

I guess we do all do it. Efficiency experts and corporate Hitlers call this practice "Time-Theft." There was a funny "The Office" episode about it, and it involved stopwatches, fornication, immunity, peeing in soda bottles, and Outback Steakhouse gift certificates. Obviously, it was an episode of the American "The Office."

I steal from my company all the time, and I don't feel bad about it, because my company steals from me. What does it steal? My time. Oh, and my soul, my will to live and procreate, my good nature and countenance, and the best years of my life. So, bearing that in mind, would I feel even the slightest bit guilty about, say, blogging from work?

No.

Why?

Because I work in an office for eight, sometimes nine-and-a-half hours straight without any proper, prescribed lunch break. Is that legal? I don't think so. But I am expected to work through my lunch, with my boss constantly yammering into my ear until I develop tinnitus or aural herpes, mindlessly shoving forkfuls of salad into my mouth while I manage spreadsheets or attendance lists or compose worthless emails.

So, I blog from work-- and IDGAS.

Totes.

I can remember, though, the first time I did a personal errand on work time, and I was practically shitting myself.

Greg and I were working the ambulance together on one sunny June day back in 2005. Greg was a huge black man with puffy, scruffy facial hair that looked phony, but wasn't. He spoke in a gruff voice, but he was actually very kind. He taught me how to drive an ambulance, even though I was supposed to have learned, you know, in a class. He really taught me. Greg had two cellphones clipped to his belt-- one for "family" and one for "bi'niss." Sometimes, while I'd be in the back of the truck tending to a patient, Greg would simultaneously conduct family affairs on one phone, bi'niss relations on his other phone, and handle the EMS radio, all at the same time. It was like watching a circus act, or a symphony conductor at work. Amazing. One of Greg's daughters had become Muslim ("I don't get it-- but if she happy, who cares?") and he would gruffly answer the phone when she called, "BAGEERA?! SALAM ALEKEM!"

Anyway, on this warm June day, Greg decided that he needed a new swimsuit, and he drove the ambulance to the parking lot of JOMAR, a huge discount clothing store for peeps in the hood. I needed a new dress shirt, but I was petrified about going in. I mean, after all, I was on the clock.

"Should we tell dispatch where we are?"

"Man! Are you crazy? Naw!" he said to me, his eyes bugging out of his head, "Everybody does this-- this is the way it is."

And then it hit me: this is how they can get away with paying us $11.00-an-hour for busting our asses schlepping 400-pound comatose bastards around Philly-- because they know that, during downtime, we're picking up our laundry or mailing our letters or going food shopping. As long as we're not in another county or time-zone and as long as we can be reached on the radio, I guessed that it was anything goes.

And so I bought two dress shirts and a tie. For $11.00. One hour's work, and thank you very much.

Two of my other partners on the squad, however, had slightly different ideas about on-the-clock errands.

Tom was a paramedic in his early forties. Coming to work to start his shift on time was like a disease to him, and he avoided it in the way that a germaphobe touches doorknobs with Kleenex and sprays Chloraseptic onto cabinet handles. I only worked three shifts with Tom in my time at this company, and, during each of these shifts some sort of errand or personal recreation was included.

Shift 1: On suspicion that his wife was cheating on him, Tom drove me, in our ambulance, 28 miles away to a hospital in Delaware (where his wife worked) to stalk his wife and see if he could get a look at her suspected lover's vehicle. Tom was driven to this action by his son's statement, "Mommy's boyfriend drives a Mazda Tribute." We saw two Mazda Tributes in this hospital's parking lot.

Shift 2: While not really an "errand," Tom hopped into our truck half-an-hour late for the start of his shift and threw a basketball, a towel, and a change-of-clothes into the ambulance. Ever play "P-I-G?" he asked me. It sounded to me like a game Laura Ingalls Wilder would have invented. "No," I said. He drove us to a basketball court. We played. I lost. Pig.

Shift 3: "We've got to go to Camden," Tom said as he put the ambulance into gear. "Why?" I asked. Tom looked at me and his face twitched everso slightly. "Traffic court." Tom parked the ambulance near the municipal building in Camden. This was a place where you not only kept the windows up and the doors locked, but you prayed in several different tongues that you would go home with no unnatural holes in your face.

"Be right back," Tom said to me. He took the keys to the truck, and the radio. He came back an hour-and-a-half later. His hair was all fucked up, he was covered in sweat, and his pupils were the size of pinheads. He smelled like a German Olympic team's locker room.

"We've got a call," he said, hitting the lights and the siren. He must have driven 80 miles an hour the entire way back to Philly-- illegally, I might add. I was sure I was going to die, and was almost disappointed when I didn't.

"I'm not working with that guy anymore," I said to my supervisor the next morning, "ever again."

"Don't worry about it," the supervisor replied. Two days later, Tom was fired for stealing over $8,000 worth of gas on the company Sunoco card.

For all of Tom's peculiar erranding, my partner Mitch, though, takes the cake and pawns it. Mitch was always being threatened with litigation, termination, extermination-- anything that ended in "ation" really. Consequently, he was always in need of a buck. As a medic, he made double what I made, but half his money went to child support, so we took home the same amount each week, which was sad for both of us. One day, in need of some fast cash, Mitch, 300 pounds and resembling a shaven yeti, turned to me and said,

"We gotta go to my place and take care of something."

He always wore mirror-tinted sunglasses and not seeing his eyes scared the bejompers out of me.

He told me to back the ambulance up to his front door, "so no one will see what we're doin'." It was 6:30 in the morning. As I put the ambulance in reverse, the "BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!" warning signal that alerts playing schoolchildren that an ambulance is about to run them over rang out into the chilly morning air.

"TURN THAT MOTHERFUCKIN' COCK OFF!" he roared at me. And I did.

I sat in the driver's seat of the truck for maybe fifteen minutes. I heard his front door shut and I looked in the side mirror and saw him carrying two very long objects, wrapped in blankets. I distinctly saw a muzzle sticking out from one of the blankets. Oh, good, I thought, so this is how my life is going to end. At least I know. It was almost comforting.

"Get out of the driver's seat," he told me. And I gladly did.

"I need some fuckin' money-- the landlord's after me, so I'm selling some of my guns."

Some?

"Rifle and a shotgun-- should get me some decent cash."

And he drove us to a pawnshop and he went in through the back door. Mitch was a back-door kind of guy. 10 minutes later, he came out with a wad of cash in his ground-chuck fist. He lunged into the truck and shut the door.

"Three-hunnert," he said to me in his trademark Cro-English, "not fuckin' bad, eh, bitch?"

When it came time for me to get Mitch fired, I read up on Pennsylvania law and EMS statutes. Who would have thought it was a felony to transport firearms inside of an ambulance?

Time-theft, though, ain't even a misdemeanor. Bitch.

Just Take a Shower

Apparently, this isn't just advice given to horny teenagers who have watched too many episodes in a row of "Dollhouse" on Hulu. Now, paramedics are giving the advice, to mothers of sick children, and people are dying.

On February 10th, paramedics responded to a home in Washington, D.C. The 5 a.m. call came in as a report of a child having difficulty breathing. The paramedic advised the child's mother to "run a hot shower" and have the child stand in it, to "clear out her lungs." Then, the ambulance left.

Eight hours later, another call went out from the same house. Difficulty breathing. Medics showed up again, and this time they transported the child, who died.

The female paramedic, who responded to the first call and gave her fatal advice to the family never filled out any paperwork concerning the first response, and she did not transport the child. Not only that, she did not have the adults present even fill out and sign a Refusal of Transport form, which is standard operating procedure in all emergency responses. Don't want to go to the hospital? If you're of sound mind and body, that's fine, but the law states that you have to be clearly informed of the risks of not seeking hospital care, and you must obtain a signature on that form, which will absolve you of responsibility when the patient up and dies ten minutes later.

Maybe it's because I'm gearing up for a return to the streets as an EMT, maybe it's because I'm working towards becoming a father, but I have nothing in my heart but disdain, disgust, and outright hatred for the behavior of this supposedly veteran paramedic who, to my unpleasant understanding also serves as a preceptor-- an instructor and mentor for newly-minted paramedics. Not only should she be stripped of her credentials-- she should be stabbed repeatedly with the badge pin. Here's a newsflash:

Everybody. Goes. To. The. Hospital.

Always. Transport.

Always.

It's not just a suggestion-- it's policy. When someone calls 911, and you show up, they go. If they don't want to go, and they're not whackier than an opium-laced Ritz cracker, they must sign the form-- otherwise, it's transport time. This EMS disaster happened for one reason and one reason only: laziness. This bitch didn't feel like schlepping this kid to the hospital. She was cocky and arrogant and, above all else, goddamn lazy. She just didn't feel like transporting, which, by the way, is just about the sum total of her fucking job that she shouldn't even be allowed to have anymore.

It's your job, sister. Don't like it? There's probably a UPS truck somewhere out there with your name on it. And you'll never have to worry about the boxes dying on you.

I understand apathy. I understand sometimes not giving a shit. I understand being overworked and being underpaid and incompetent supervisors riding your ass about bullshit-- poorly maintained equipment and trucks are all scratched and dented up and smell like old mustard. I understand stupid partners, and irrational dispatchers, and working outside in the goddamn wind and the rain and the blazing heat-- lifting Big Ass Bertha up three goddamn flights of stairs, or down. I know. It's a pain. But, if you wake up one morning and find that you just don't care enough to do even the bare minimum of your job-- throw the kid in the back of the truck and put two liters of oxygen on her and drive her to a fucking hospital that's probably less than ten minutes away, and then fill out some paperwork after you hand her over to the nurses-- well, then you're just nothing but a stinky old piece of shit.

EMS is a little too important to be left to the dregs of society, the people who can look into the eyes of the parents of a two-year-old little girl and tell them to run a hot shower because you'd rather go out and get coffee or talk on the cellphone inside your truck. It's a little too important. And maybe that's the savior in me talking-- maybe that's part of the reason I'm going back. Because I may not take the most accurate blood pressures in the world, and I'm not totally up-to-date on all my medical abbreviations, but I'm pretty sure that my ethics and my logic are still largely intact.

Everybody goes to the hospital.

Everybody.

Sti(cke)r Crazy

Bumper-stickers always kind of got on my nerves, and so I never thought, growing up, that I would become the kind of person who'd want to put any on my own car.

Turns out, I was wrong about that.

Not only do I have several bumper-stickers on my car, I actually had one custom-made, just for me, and I'm pretty convinced that, because it was an original creation, I'm the only person in the world who drives a PT Cruiser with a bumper-sticker that says:

"WARNING: Gilbert & Sullivan Freak Behind Wheel"

After all, I think it's only fair to alert other unsuspecting motorists in the immediate vicinity that the vehicle rolling near them is being operated by a less-than-sane Anglophile who might, at that very moment, be singing the patter song, "My Name is John Wellington Wells" at the top of his lungs and rolling his "Rrrr's" while driving.

It's probably more dangerous than texting, though I don't think enough empirical research has yet been done.

I have another sticker on the back of my car, and it is the Pennsylvania Department of Health seal, which only certified Emergency Medical Technicians are permitted to display. While I no longer work on an ambulance, I am still certified by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as an EMT until 2011, at such time I will either have to renew my certification or, I guess, peel that sticker off my car.

There are lots of reasons why I keep that sticker on my car, even though I quit my ambulance gig back in 2007. First of all, it lets people know that the PT Cruiser with the blue dashboard light flashing that stops at the scene of a fresh car accident is supposed to have that light, and is supposed to be there, and contains someone useful who can be of service. It says that if you've been hit by a car or you've been shot in the back or you've just had a stroke, that this is a car you can stumble over to and ask the driver for help-- and I'll give you whatever help I can remember how to give. I've got an emergency EMS bag in the back with some tools of the trade-- not many, though.

More than any of this, I display the sticker because I'm proud of the work I put in to become an EMT. In my class of thirteen, only two of us hung around long enough to get to the State Certification test, and I was the only one who passed. I worked for seventeen months for crap pay, got a bullshit performance evaluation that resulted in a disgraceful 33-cent-an-hour raise, suffered through an endless stream of incompetent, irrational, psychotic, delusional, violent, unpleasant, odoriferous partners and patients and only crashed one truck and, damnit, if I'm entitled to slap a sticker on my car's ass, well, I'm going to.

The other sticker on my car is from a non-profit organization that I support, financially and through my writing. It's the Officer Down Memorial Page (www.odmp.org) and it was started by a young man named Chris Cosgriff, approximately my own age-- a civilian who, like me, found himself deeply moved at a very young age over the tragedies of law enforcement fatalities in this country. On opposite ends of the country, he and I share a lot in common, and, in our twenties, we both decided to do something about it. I wrote a book, Chris created a non-profit. The ODMP features a small profile of every single police officer who has ever died in the line of duty (either of natural or felonious causes) since the first recorded police fatality in 1791. There have been over 16,000 since then, and the ODMP honors every one of them. They have also been very kind to me, keeping the ever-flagging, modest sales of my book on life-support by stocking my book on their online giftshop.

A lot of people probably think I keep the www.odmp.org bumper-sticker on the back of my car so I don't get stopped by the police, so they know I'm a friend-- but I don't give a shit about what people think. Besides, it doesn't work anyway. I got banged for speeding just this year, and the fine was as steep as Mt. Olympus.

The three bumper-stickers on the back of the car that used to be owned by my wife tell the stories of three very different, very important parts of my life, and I like all three of them very much. I'm very interested by the things people choose to slap on the back of their own cars, these little tidbits of information that tell us things about the driver.

"Keep Honking, I'm Reloading."

"Like My Driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT."

"YES, WE CAN!"

"Vote for Ron Paul"

"Abortion Stops a Beating Heart"

"Visualize World Peace"

"I <3 Jesus"

I wonder what Jesus thinks of "I <3 Jesus" bumper-stickers. No doubt he appreciates that there are deities out there who could benefit from publicity more than he. Even I know who he is. I say his name every time I hurt my knuckle on a doorway while carrying the laundry basket.