Years ago when I was working in Dallas, the management had a way of playing favorites and promoting their own.  A certain amount of this happens at any company.  But the frustrating thing about this was the fact that there was some sort of inverse law that dealt with screwing up and lenience.  It seemed that the more one went out of his way to screw up, the more management took him under their wing.

This seemed at odds with the political affiliations of the management staff. They were all very conservative, and voted Republican.  If you mentioned any sort of social programs to assist the poor they would instantly become of fountain of right wing rhetoric.  Many of them were even openly mean to beggars and homeless people.  A few of them would occasionally ask for a job application at McDonald’s or Burger King.  They would make a few copies of these and keep them in their cars.  When they encountered a beggar working a street corner with a cardboard sign, they would pull up and roll down their window as if they were going to give him some money.  Then they would hand him a job application and yell, “Get a job, motherfucker!”  They were bursting with pride over the stories they would tell about humiliating anyone asking for a handout.

Oddly enough, this outlook did not translate to people employed by the organization.  It seemed like the more shifts you missed, and the more in trouble you got, the more they were apt to try and give you a leg up.

Case in point: Jock Itch.

Jock Itch obtained his nickname one day when someone proclaimed that this employee was just like jock itch, he never goes away.  He had been fired and re-hired twice when he first acquired the name.  He would in fact survive a third termination before disappearing completely.  This is unfortunate, because I am convinced that if he had come back one more time, they would have promoted him to supervisor.

Jock Itch was an EMT straight out of school.  His job history before that was sketchy at best.  For the first few years of his life out of high school he had left a wake of abandoned restaurant and construction jobs.  This was the first time he had attempted anything of any permanence.

He was tall and slender.  Not bad looking really.  Some of the girls seemed to like his dark complexion and the way he was able to wear glasses but still look athletic.  But to be completely honest, he had this trashy streak.

He was prone to having violent conversations on the cell phone with a girlfriend who was living with him.  These conversations were histrionic.  One conversation would be all hearts and flowers.  The next had him pacing outside while yelling profanities into his cell phone.  His mood could be manic as well.  At first it was just chalked up to being young and inexperienced.  He was new and everyone tried to give him some space.

Then dispatch got a call late one night.  They played me the tape.

“______________ Ambulance, this is John speaking, do you have an emergency.”

“Hey John, it’s me man.  Hey I need an ambulance to come out here.  Ambulances are free to employees right?”

“Yes, that is correct.  What’s going on.”

“Well, my girlfriend and I…well…we got into it.  You know.  And now she’s not moving.  I’m really worried that I did something bad.”  Jock Itch started to cry for a second but seemed to regain his composure.

“Look man, we would really like to help you, but that sounds serious.  We don’t run 911 in that town and the closest unit is miles away.  If she isn’t moving I am going to roll this over to the local fire department and the authorities.”

“No, no, no!” yelled Jock Itch, “We gotta keep this quiet man!  No fire.  No cops.  Can you just come get her?  I’m begging you man!”

John kept him on the line while another dispatcher sent cops and fire to his apartment.  Later on during the call he said that he had “choked her a little” and that is when she passed out.

As you could imagine, this was termination number one.  But he bounced back.  A couple of weeks later he met with our director begging for forgiveness.  His girlfriend wasn’t pressing charges, and he had started attending anger management classes.

Would you have let him come back to work?  I don’t know about you, but for me the whole choking his girlfriend unconscious thing was leaving a bad taste in my mouth.  However, our director took pity on him and the next week he was back in uniform.  I even worked with him a couple of times.  Oddly enough, he was a pretty good partner.

Then he disappeared again.  Rumor had it that he was a relapsed alcoholic, and had become a raging, violent, snot slinging drunk in the space of one weekend.  But one of our supervisors came to his rescue.  Bobby-Don was one of my favorite supervisors, but he was part of the screw up support system.  He got Jock-Itch back into AA, and made sure he attended the meetings.  Bobby was also very religious, and Jock Itch apparently needed religion.  So when he sobered up he was allowed to come back to work.

The next few days were a bit on the creepy side.  And I am sketchy on the details as this was years ago.  But if I remember correctly, Jock Itch was already in a bit of hot water over the whole choking the girlfriend thing.  He apparently got into trouble over his drinking too.  It may have been public intoxication.  It may have been a DUI.  I will never know.  But something happened to his cert.  He wasn’t allowed to practice.  So did we get rid of him?  No.  We installed him on the wheelchair van.  Jock Itch was back, and in force.  He used to go to lunch with Bobby and they would have these little bible study sessions.  The whole thing was just weird and uncomfortable.

So now he was working completely unattended with the elderly, attempting to take them to doctor’s appointments and such.  Then disaster struck again.  Jock Itch wrecked the wheel chair van during a transport.  He called for an ambulance to help transport the injured patient.  I heard the tale through the grapevine.  As the story goes, he was transporting a woman with bilateral amputations.  The wheelchair was locked into the floor, but she was not fastened very well into the wheelchair.  When the wreck occurred she was launched out of the chair and smashed face first into the deck.  I could only imagine the scene of chaos and horror.  A legless woman with a bloodied face, pulling herself along on the floor of the wheel chair van while Jock Itch freaked out.

Many conversations were had.  There were meetings.  There was anger.  There was begging and pleading.  But in the end Jock Itch finally disappeared.  After beating his girlfriend unconscious and trying to get the company to help him cover it up, and then going on a bender and losing his cert, and then finally wrecking our only wheelchair van and injuring a helpless old lady with no legs, we finally decided to let him go.  I had suggested more than once that we probably should have called it quits after the choking incident.  I was accused of being intolerant.  I tried to defend myself against the intolerance charge by offering up as evidence that I didn’t taunt homeless people with fast food job applications.  But that didn’t go over well.  So I suggested that if we wanted to replace Jock Itch that we copy some of our own job applications and hand those out to random homeless people.  Perhaps one of them would be more sober and less violent.  Then I was accused of being an instigator.  I was also warned about my attitude and told to ‘get with the program’ or ‘suffer the consequences.’  I then asked what were the consequences of being really good at my job and not wanting to work with violent drunk people?  The consequences were that I was never promoted.

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