It’s a fine job, just part time at Better Agency. Two 16s a week. I have negotiated my schedule at Current Agency to where I only work 8 days a month and never longer than a 24, so two 16s would be about the same number of days a month. 72 hours is horrid. I can’t do more than 33 anymore and even that is pushing it. I spent the last 24 hours in the land of Nursing Home Ridiculousness and it was so bad my boss just called me and offered tomorrow off if I wanted it(one of the few perks where I work; they will bend over backwards to get you time off especially if you’ve had a couple busy/rough shifts). I took it. I spoke to the assistant GM who now is like the HR person shouldn’t have offered part time before speaking to the general manager. They don’t have a part time spot open but are willing to keep my application on file and call when they do. This agency just has so little turnover—but maybe it will be offered at just the right time for me to take it. In happy good news, the county we live in now just approved DS12 for all kinds of services that I’ve been fighting for for the last eight years. I just met his new worker/skill builder/service provider and, oh my goodness, she loves Yu-Gi-Oh and knows how to play the card game. All he wanted for Christmas was someone to play Yu-Gi-Oh with and I tried but couldn’t find one. We’ve been praying for months and he just randomly gets assigned to this woman who knows about autism and loves so much of the same things he does. It just adds to my sense that no matter what I want in a job I cannot uproot us to move to right now.

I know it took my sister’s accommodations paperwork about a month to be approved. I’d have never considered hearing aids To be an issue either. I’ve had my glasses examined at a proctored exam once though.

So. I counter offered with the part time option, the #3 guy who I’m good friends with said that would be fine because they’d rather have me part time than nothing, but would have to run it by the GM and now—crickets. Nothing in five or six days. I am quite sure they don’t need any part timers and maybe that stalled it. I also found out that the supervisor offer was contingent on moving within 20 miles of the station within a year which just isn’t possible. I knew that was usually their contingency but thought it was waived; apparently the GM didn’t waive it, just HR did, but it needed his final approval which I did not know. So crickets. I had a truly awful shift yesterday. My partner yesterday has been a paramedic half the time or less than I and has been with the company longer but was promoted above me two years ago and loves to lord that over people. It was an awful shift, we were busy and she was nothing but rude, condenscending and insulting(it’s her norm) towards me and everyone else. It was miserable and I cried afterward. Ugh. What I want is to figure out how to make my master’s degree work for me, but I haven’t figure out to work any job with that and afford the after school care/summer care/holiday care that I’d need unless I just take advantage of my in-laws kindness and they have the kids all the time DH and I are working. I’m just discouraged. I need like one thing in my life to work out for my benefit.

I have a child who probably wouldn’t be ready for medical school at 13 but I strongly suspect she will be ready for dual enrollment around that time. I did early college, though I was 16 not 13, and even then(granted I was a sort of sheltered homeschooled) the maturity and socio-emotional differences were stark. We’ve gone more down the enrichment vs early college route because of that(right now; things could change).

I hate detours, but I am really glad to discover I am not the only one who’s husband responds to a fire call with my dinner and I have to go to the scene to pick it up. That is all.

We have two homeless centers(really one is a converted house and one is a church that has built a homeless shelter) and neither one requires that you leave during the day. Also, anyone in this county who wants housing can get it, even if the shelters are full. If you go to catholic charities and request housing they’ll get you a cheap motel room if the shelters are full. Some people live there for months. You don’t have to leave during the day. And there’s still a large homeless problem. I can’t take my kids to the wonderful big library because there are continually fights inside and outside, we’ve found needles in the bathrooms, drunk people sleeping in the chairs. Since the homeless and addicted population tend to use the 911 system for medical care, I’ve had the opportunity to ask why people don’t go to the homeless shelters. The bottom line almost always is there is a strict no alcohol or drug policy and you have to be actively seeking a job or working while there unless you’re disabled, and then the expectation is that you’ll be making plans for subsidized housing for disabled people. It’s easy for me to think well, yeah, homeless shelters aren’t permanent and of course you should be seeking sobriety—but truthfully there are people who don’t necessarily want to be housed, do not want rehab or sobriety, are not interested really in getting clean, do not want a job even if they are able to work, probably because you cannot be high or drunk at most jobs. I may not understand it, but that’s reality. I don’t live someplace where tents would be appropriate(it’s 98 degrees today; in six months it will be 5 degrees), but frankly the motels don’t want people using drugs in their rooms and neither do the homeless shelters. Harm reduction programs are great and I’m familiar with one close by, but honestly the usage still isn’t fantastic and homelessness and public drug use, as well as overdoses, is a major issue despite having a safe place to get clean needles and shoot up. I don’t have the answers, but it’s a problem I see almost daily. And I don’t live in a very urban area.

At the end of the day, the only person you can save is yourself.

The one real drawback with Job Offer is that they do post and I’ve gotten used to stations. On the other hand, I did 17 patient transports in 24 hours yesterday so I didn’t see the station anyway. They also try hard to make sure that you get a dedicated half hour to check your rig and ease into the shift. Of course that doesn’t always happen, but they have a crew coming on and going off every hour from 0600-1500 or so, so there’s enough crews available usually to allow your incoming crew to check their rig and catch up on the day’s news while still allowing your offgoing crew to make sure paperwork is done. Another thing I really like is that if a crew has been super busy or ran a bad call, the on duty supervisor and a member of management(all medics) will go out in an ambulance and relieve them for half an hour or so. Make sure they’ve eaten and have time and space to rest and decompress without being pulled for another call or nursing home transfer. That says a lot to me and is probably why they have less than 10 open spots a year. There’s a reason they are able to recruit the best paramedics in the surrounding areas. My current top two bosses probably haven’t touched a patient in fifteen years.

Job Offer has a system in place that generally cuts down on late calls, but obviously it does and can happen(they pull you off the road 60 minutes before your off going time in order to complete paperwork and restock, and you’re last due for that hour. So possible but not often.) They have a good reputation for being pretty decent to their part timers. I think at two 16s a week I’d be pretty happy there and the offer to go full time Will always be on the table. The 2 on/2 off, with needing to spend the night two nights a week, really comes out to 80 hours away from home a week(leave at, say, 0630 on Monday and not return home until 9:30 on Tuesday night, then redo it Friday and Saturday.) That’s a lot of time away and what is holding me up from just taking the job. I did drive it back and forth when I worked there pre-kids and lived 15-20 minutes closer, and ended up leaving after a year because of the commute. In all honesty, I fell asleep on my way home and landed my car in a ditch. And that was when I was much younger than I am now, before I was married and had kids. I asked what the part time rate would be and it would be $10 an hour more than what I’m currently making now. Along with the raise DH is getting, the budget numbers are good with me just working part time. The company is willing to let me work the 16s back to back on day shift, so I’d drive up Tuesday morning and come back Wednesday night and be done for the week. I’m not considering part time at my current job, but going part time at the new system/company for a few years instead of full time. I will always have the option to go to full time if I needed or wanted. I am convinced bosses don’t really care how good you are or what else you do, as long as you have a pulse and a valid paramedic card. i am also factoring in that DS7 has frequent appointments two hours away and homeschooling him next year is still on the table, dependent on whether or not I can get him working at grade level before September.

I haven’t been able to move past the schedule.. 2 on/2 off when I’m starting an 8 day a month schedule at my current job soon. But then it occurred to me—I want appreciation but I don’t really care about promotions right now. The company offers part timers more per hour than full timers, and I would likely be able to negotiate two 16 hour shifts a week. That would be part time but I don’t need the benefits and with the increase in hourly pay, I’d have no need to work full time. This would still leave me home with my kids five days a week and give me more control over what days I work. Its an option that just occurred to me, but my kids are 12, 10 and 7. There’s nothing to stop me from going full time for advancement in five or six years when they’re older, if I still wanted; or just work 32 hours a week/2 days a week until I’m ready to retire. This is an option I’m really considering.

No, it’s honestly more rural than here, though closer to the large cities. He’s formed very close relationships with teachers at his school and I think disrupting that at this point would be a bad idea. DH thinks the new job won’t really be Functionally more time away from the kids. Work is so busy now that I am up the entire 24 hour shift and come home and sleep most of the next day. So even if I was gone one day, spent the night, gone the next and then came home to sleep and be home for two days, his argument is my waking time with the kids would be the same or more since I’m sleeping enough at nights.

My old job would take me back in a heartbeat. That wouldn’t be an issue. The commute isn’t daily or I wouldn’t consider it. Drive up twice a week and drive back twice a week. I am not a supervisor and won’t be here. The training director position will actually be a $12 an hour raise from what I’m making now. I start out at an $8 raise from what I make now($26.25 now and they’re offering $34 to start). The company is willing to pay mileage from my house.

I’d like to just quit. It’s not financially an option right now. It may be a few years down the road. We own our home. I worked at this company a long time ago when I was first starting out. It really is as good as it seems, they just aren’t as flexible as where I work now.

I forgot to add-we aren’t able to move or consider moving until my oldest is out of school. The new location doesn't have the appropriate therapeutic school for him and he’s doing so fantastic in the school he’s at that I won’t disrupt it. Job B will hire my husband at any time, and he’d take the job, but we won’t be able to move until oldest is graduated.

I’ve been offered a supervisor position at Job B and can’t figure out what to do. Job A: Current job, I’ve been there ten years this week actually. Toxic environment and I’m miserable. Pay is better than the other two places in driving distance but that’s only because they pay under industry standard. Call volume is insane; we are running 18,000 calls a year with about 5 crews. I worked a 33 hour shift last week and ran 22 calls during it. There’s very little downtime. There’s a lot of mismanagement; it’s a mom and pop organization that’s been passed down through the family and they promote based on friendship and not skill for the most part. I haven’t been promoted and won’t be at this point. People don’t want to work 24 hour shifts anymore and our call volume per crew is greater than anywhere else in a few hour radius, so we have a lot of trouble hiring and retaining, and management is clear that they care only about having bodies in seats and not about whether you’re actually good at what you do. The pros though is that I just negotiated a fantastic schedule where I work Sunday/Thursday one week and Tuesday/Friday the next. I’ve never missed a Christmas, a ball game, a kids’ birthday or a school concert, because management will bend over backwards to get you the time off for those things. Time off is incredible; six weeks of PTO, one week of sick leave, and basically unlimited unpaid time off if you ask ahead of time. I can leave with two minutes notice if something happens with my kids and I am only five or ten minutes away. Those are things that are really important to me. Job B: Probably the best place to work within a three hour drive radius. They have such a good reputation that people never leave and they are usually swamped with applications so they can pick and choose who they want. Basically: they are able to recruit the best paramedics in the area and do so. They reached out with a recruitment offer of day shift supervisor, moving into training director when the current one leaves in January. It will be an $8 an hour pay raise. There will be further advancement opportunities as well. It’s a very solid and healthy work atmosphere, management is reasonable, and the turnover rate is very low. The call volume is much lower at 10,000 a year spread over 8-9 crews. The schedule for supervisors is 2 on/2 off; 12 hour day shifts. I attached a visual representation of the schedule because I had a hard time figuring it out. I could sleep every night lol. I have close friends that work there, and my direct boss is a friend of over twelve of years. However. It’s a 75 minute drive. Because they recruit the top medics and some people come from a long way, they have a block of rooms at a local motel that employees can rent cheap over the summer months and the company pays for them in the winter, so you don’t have to drive back and forth. So I could work 12, sleep 12 in the motel, work another 12 and then drive home for the night and two days. They are not as flexible with time off for things like birthdays and getting parents Christmas morning off. I’d definitely miss some baseball games. I wouldn’t be close by while working if something happened. DH and I would lose our four day weekend twice a month together, and we like to do things with the kids. (He thinks we should consider a seasonal camping site close to the new work though and he and the kids would just come up April-October). I don’t know. There’s no really good option and neither is really bad either. I am miserable and unhappy at work, like sometimes I want to drive my car into a tree on the way there. I miss working with friends. But I will also be unhappy commuting and feeling like I am not with my kids as often. ugh. I need advice.

I mean, I guess I am?? But even if I kept these till winter they’d probably just disappear again. 😂

So, my primary doesn’t think it’s POTS, my B12 is really low and some other bloodwork is funky. They’re doing more tests but I feel better overall. His summer program is going great. The other kids annoy him while he’s trying to work, but that’s any classroom for him. He loves going.

I wrote all the beautiful Christmas cards for the 2021 WTM forum Christmas card exchange, and then the entire box of addressed and stamped cards mysteriously disappeared from my desk last November. I rewrote them but it took forever and I suspect two or three people probably got left out accidentally. In any case, the box of Christmas cards magically reappeared this morning under my seven year old’s bed, along with several candy wrappers, a softball, his brother’s prized Harry Potter wand from Universal, a bag of chips, the disappearing tooth his sister put on the table to put in an envelope for the Tooth Fairy last March, and most of the 80 missing single socks that I thought our dryer had eaten. In any case, the little thief hoarder(who says he definitely knows nothing about how anything got under his bed and it was probably the cat) not withstanding, I am going to mail those cards tomorrow instead of tossing them. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas in July.

My dad graduated from RIT in the dark ages and has been an extremely successful engineer. Obviously his education was a long time ago, but for the last 25 years he’s had engineering co-op students from RIT as well as employees who graduated from there and is continually very impressed with their knowledge and education.

I’m not sure it’s “risky” as much as that it’s not showing the benefits that it used to. ” Pfizer earlier this month halted a large trial of the drug in standard risk COVID-19 patients because it was failing to show statistically significant protection against death or hospitalization.” https://www.science.org/content/article/bad-news-paxlovid-coronavirus-can-find-multiple-ways-evade-covid-19-drug

Many providers here no longer prescribe paxlovid unless you’re high risk. The general belief is that the risk vs benefit just isn’t there for most people. I’d check and see if providers are prescribing it in your local area.

I think that particular TikToker has really meant a lot of people. She gives mama advice to people who don’t have good relationships with their parents and interacts frequently in the comments with encouragement and love. People probably truly do feel a connection with her and that’s why. I don’t even send money to people I know, much less strangers.

I messaged you the screen shot. Hopefully it helps.

I think the producer posted something on the Facebook site. You could contact her and discuss it. I am not very private, but I do have siblings who are and I completely respect that(I don’t post pictures of their kids on my Facebook or IG( things like that). Your wishes should be respected.

I married later than most of my friends, and found that once they were in serious relationships I kind of got left by the wayside. I had a really good core group of friends in my early 20s but once they started getting engaged and married that all kind of ended. I’ve never really found close friends since because people naturally do prioritize their marriage and family over friendship. I don’t know how old she is, but finding adult friends is hard, especially if you’re single and your peers are getting married.