'Nobody tells you that the job is maybe 5% fire and 95% this...'
I'm a Southern California-based writer on the Lifestyle team who likes to try and rank viral foods and read and recommend awesome books. Recently, firefighters of the Reddit community shared what about the job that surprised them the most, and there's a whole lot more to being athan one might think.
Here are some shocking, interesting, and insightful aspects about the job that people might not know:"The number of homeowners who have no idea where their electrical panel is, or how to shut off the water to their own house." "The sheer number of penises I'd end up handling in some way or another. It isn't a problem — a patient is a patient and anatomy is anatomy, but man, it seems like I'm always getting the shaft. Also, a common phrase during a shift is 'How do people this dumb get this rich?' Most of humanity is unfathomably dumb." "I can't believe how many firefighters actually don't have much empathy. I've witnessed some serious mistreatment of patients, and at times, blatant racism. All of it was treated like it's normal. I guess burnout leads to a lack of empathy, but it seems like a lot of these guys really couldn't care less about the people they're paid to help. More interestingly, this doesn't seem to be a one-department issue." "The number of people who ask, 'Do we have to pay for this?' after an incident. No, sir, we don't do that here." "The number of people with ZERO mechanical skills. They own $750,000 homes but have no idea how anything in them works. 'My outlet is smoking.' 'Did you shut the breaker off?' 'What's that? Where is it? What does that do to the outlet?' They don't know where the water shutoff is, and half don't know where the breakers even are. Plus, sometimes the breakers aren't even labeled. People don't know how to shut off the gas to appliances or the heating system, nor do they know the difference between the alarm and the low battery sounds on their smoke and CO detectors. They've never even checked the expiration date on their detectors. And what's worse is that they have no idea who to call when something goes wrong. So, they call us." "The abuse of 911. People call for everything but an emergency. It's absolutely shocking, and it's a massive amount of wasted resources.""Bingo. Just the call volume in general for my hall. Really stands out why this isn't a career station once you're seeing it from the inside. We had 350 'events' last year, including calls, training, volunteer requests , and whatever else we get involved in. While yeah, that'll average out to almost one a day, it's not that at all. We rarely get a weekend call, but if we do, we get six. We get fewer than 20 'fires' per year, and that'll be anything — from a home to a trash can in a park and everything in between." "The amount of gossip about other houses and people. I cringe when we run out of worthwhile conversation material because it inevitably falls into trash-talking people or just flat-out gossiping about people who aren't there. Related, how often those words and rumors turn out to be totally unfounded. I've heard how much an idiot or asshole so-and-so is countless times, only to meet them and find the opposite. I never realized how happy grown adults are to constantly gossip." "I would say that the most surprising thing was realizing that there is a huge group of people who live in absolute misery. Alcoholism, dementia, and depression create awful living conditions. This is often problematic when there is a structural fire or an EMS call in unsanitary environments. A LOT of debris catches fire." "The amount of time I spend standing still. I thought I would get in the best shape of my life by just doing firefighter things, but the amount of time I spend waiting, or just holding someone, is quite impressive." "Nobody tells you that the job is maybe 5% fire and 95% medical calls, mental health crises, and cat-in-tree situations. But the surprising part is that the mundane calls are often where you make the biggest difference in someone's actual day. That quiet impact stays with you longer than the big ones." "How much hatred I would get for automatic alarms. I know they are really important and save a lot of lives, but damn." "The emotional toll regarding human suffering and the wild amount of violence. People are incredibly cruel. Dealing with the innocent and seeing their suffering and horror wears you down. I didn't expect hand-to-hand combat, fighting for control over guns and knives, and the idiocy and cruelty of humans in general. Most soldiers never see hand-to-hand combat, period, let alone on a regular basis. I caught a bad case of combat PTSD, along with the regular PTSD that first responders typically deal with. I've been totally asocial for over 20 years and under a psychiatrist's care. I can't identify with humans at all anymore. I worked in a very violent city, and medical calls were high. I thought being a firefighter-paramedic would be way different from what it turned out to be.""It broke me, mentally and physically . I should have become an artist or deep-sea welder. You lose your innocence and naivete in horrible ways, and you can never go back." "The number of people who pass out. I went 20+ years, never passing out and never seeing anyone pass out or lose consciousness. I became a firefighter, and we run calls all the time for people just randomly passing out." Lastly:"The lack of US fire service standardization. I assumed when I got hired that the only real variation between departments would be funding based on population . But I quickly learned that there was no standard; there could be huge variations in the same quality and quantity of what career departments were capable of, even within the same county, and certainly within the same state. Granted, I started my career decades ago. Now, in 2026, there are well-established national standards. Surprise! A large fraction of US fire departments ignore them. We still hear stories about firefighters dying because they didn't wear their seatbelts on a response, or because there was no accountability or coordination at a fire scene, or because they ignored the risks of PTSD."If you're a firefighter, what surprised you the most about the job? What are some aspects about it that most people would be shocked to learn? Let us know in the comments, or you can anonymously submit your thoughts using the form below!
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