Imagine working at a job where you’re assigned a specific number and letter identifier during each shift, and it’s often a different number and letter. If you had trouble remembering the letter and number for your shift, what would you do?

In this story, one paramedic is in this situation, and he has not come up with a solution to this problem. In the mean time, his supervisor is getting really annoyed at him.

Let’s read the whole story.

Supervisor demands I do something very specific, then gets upset when I do.

So, this story takes a little bit of background to make sense. I work as a paramedic in a tiered EMS system, where ALS (Advanced life support, paramedics) is separate from BLS (Basic life support, EMTs) ambulances, and response is in non-transport chase vehicles.

We have multiple platoons, each with an alphabetical designation, A, B, C, etc. During a shift, each medic unit is supposed to use their call signs followed by their platoon identifier, as in “Medic 1A, Medic 1B, etc.” This is really only important around shift change when you might have two medic units of any given number in service at the same time due to late calls, etc.

Additionally, we have two paramedics assigned to every unit. When we transport a noncritical patient, usually only one paramedic treats the patient, and the other one goes to the hospital in the medic truck, but becomes available as a single medic responder, identified via their assigned number, such as “Paramedic 123,” which is unique and is never used by anyone else, even on another shift.

Now, onto the incident…

This incident happened to me several years ago, when I was still fairly new and had only been at the agency for a few years.

I was working a TON of overtime at the time, averaging over 80 hrs per week, and I was also a relief person on my platoon, which meant that I was a fill-in for callouts or people on vacation, so I was constantly working different units.

This meant that I was also constantly forgetting which unit or shift I was on and would often get it wrong (I.e. working Medic 1A but say Medic 1D on the radio).

And often, I would have to pause to make sure I got the unit number right as well, so my transmission might go something like “Medic…(pause while my brain tries to catch up) 1 (pause again) A arrival.” Hence, I would often just use the numeric identifier and leave off the alphabetic one since I tripped up over it or got it wrong a lot of the time.

The supervisor didn’t like OP too much.

This caused some frustration for a new supervisor who was assigned to our shift, and for some reason seemed to really not like me

The supervision was making a big push to have people use the alphabetic identifier on their transmissions, and he took it next level.

One day, we’re out running our butts off, and I get a message from him in all capital letters, “YOU MUST USE YOUR PLATOON IDENTIFIER ON ALL RADIO TRANSMISSIONS!”

So, on our next call, my partner takes a patient to the hospital, and I went “Paramedic 123…B available.”

His supervisor was furious.

Once I arrived at the ER, the other crews were all had a good laugh and then told me I had to call the supervisor’s phone.

He yelled at me to meet him at the fueling station, so after transferring patient care and restocking, we headed over there. We pull up to the fuel pumps, and my partner starts fueling the truck while I start walking across the parking lot to his truck.

He jumps out and hurls a wad of trash at me before going on a rant about me being a “smart alec on the radio” etc etc. He’s carrying on like the third monkey on the gangplank to Noah’s ark and going on about only using the alphabetic identifier when I’m transmitting my full unit number, not my single responder number, and things like “don’t make a pause between your unit number and your letter, because it sounds like you’re being disrespectful” etc etc.

Some things are easier said than doen.

I wait until I can get a word in edgewise and then explain the situation of my OT and changing units every day.

And his response was just “well get it right the first time.”

So I asked if I should correct it if I make a mistake, and he responded with the same statement.

He then jumped in his truck and left.

At least his partner found it funny.

I turned around and headed back to our truck (after I picked up his trash and discarded it properly) to find my partner doubled over laughing. He says “You’re the only person I know who can ruin a supervisor’s whole day with one letter of the alphabet, and do it with class.”

We’ve had a lot of laughs about it since then.

And just for fairness’ sake, the supervisor did actually get a lot better and became a pretty decent guy. We got along well by the time he was transferred to another platoon a few years later.

I can understand the supervisor’s frustration. OP needs to come up with a way to remember the letter and number during each shift, maybe by writing down somewhere or something.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Throwing trash really was crazy!

This person loved one particular line.

Another person has the same problem.

You’d think this would be much easier.

Being forgetful is not the same as being disrespectful.