Latest / Firefighter Nation Podcast / Firehouse Culture, Crew Relationships, and Professional Growth
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- FFN 20261103 The Quick Knock: DreamSeat service ready recliners, beds, and furniture are built tough for hardworking firefighters. Visit firehousefurniture.com and upgrade your station today. Do their job, Nat. Nat, welcome to today's episode of Mansplaining with Chris Scott. 20 minute show takes an hour to record because you're never ready. Because I wasn't ready I wasn't ready for this. I wasn't ready for this. Natalie, I had other responsibilities. I had other I had to get your I had to get your articles that you decided to not read at all. That's what I was doing. So I didn't have time for this also. I was also building backgrounds, which I thought was really funny. That was good yeah. So yeah. So you weren't being responsible. We got it. my god. Welcome to the Quick Knock, everybody. I am your host, Stephanie White. This is my co host, Chris Scott. His his faith in my capabilities are as thick as his hair, hence the reason he always has a hat on. I just No, I just f Go ahead. No, just it's it's amazing. This is a twenty minute episode, but it takes an hour to record because we just have to listen to you being all a nervous Nelly about topics and all that kind of stuff before. We have to hold your hand before the episode. So thank you for still being here. We appreciate it. I've tried to quit. We're on episode eight. I've tried to quit for the neck the last four episodes and you refuse to Let me go. Once again, editorial standards, they don't exist, with Firefighter Nation. So anyway, yes, I am Chris Scott. I am the unapproved therapist for Stephanie White. And for anybody that was wondering, no, she's making absolutely zero improvement. But we're still working on it. Is that in the clinical notes? That is yes. I use AI for but you are making absolutely no progress. You might be regressing, but we'll We'll continue that discussion later. listen, the prescription that you've given me of watching all the reels that you sent me, turns out that that might not be very scientific. I want to deep dive on that so bad. But that's not c it's not a clinical standard. Sorry. I'm not well, you don't read anything. You don't read any like fa well I look, let's say let's go into it right quick right quick. Just real quick. Anyone that sends Stephanie anything at all, and you're thinking like Steph's ignoring me, she doesn't like me. I'm letting you know Steph ignores everyone. Everyone across the board, she does not read text messages, she doesn't care what you send her. you could send her a reel. This may or may not be an exactly true story. If you send her something, she will not read it and then send you the exact same thing right behind it because she didn't read the thing that you just sent her. That may or may not be an exactly true story. It's only happened once. This would be Yeah, called BS. Anyway. Yeah, what you got? Listen. All right. Show's called the quick knock. We each have a quick knock. here is my quick knock. I was listening to somebody, I was in a meeting, listening to somebody talk about their interest in firehouse designs and how it can affect your mental health. And what they meant was the tones going off, lighting, stuff like that in newer firehouses. And it really hit me that firehouses do Do affect the actual building does affect your mental health and not at all in the way he's talking about. I swear to God, there is a difference between walking into these brand new builds that are millennial gray, sterile. The day room is attached to the kitchen, but in a weird way, and it's just basically a sofa and a TV. And there's not room if you've got a bigger crew, there's not room for the whole crew to watch. TV or to hang out and yell at each other. they've taken couches out of the bay, I understand why, but they they have done away with the comfort and gather spots. And if you walk into one of these newer firehouses, it's got a very different sterile, cold feel. So here's my quick knock. If you are working in a wood paneled firehouse, as long as there's as long as the toilets don't back up into the drains in the bay and there aren't a ton of mice and cockroaches, you are living the good old days. And there's just such a difference in the atmosphere when you walk into that. That is never coming back. And you're aware that they're never gonna put up a brand new three million dollar fire station. They're like, you what, let's wood panel this thing up because it's gonna look great. I'm gonna I'm gonna start a start a charity where we get money to to donate wood paneling to go nail to the to the new concrete walls. A three million dollar station that is going to be retrofit to look like it's from the nineteen eighties. That's yes. Good luck. If anybody's listening to this, I would like to see what that might look like. Tell me I'm not wrong though. It's just No, it look it looks it looks super cool. I'll give you one quick example. We just got back from Pis P the Pacific Northwest fire conference. That's always a mouthful to say it's difficult. but we were at station fourteen rescue one. That was just such old school vibes. You know, they got the couches and the bays, and it's just it's legitimately super old school and it looks awesome. It feels right. It is it the newest, best, baddest, the whole no, of course not. But it just feels good. And yeah, you lose some of the charm when you go into the sterile office style environments that are being built right now. It it doesn't have the charm. Quick knock. There's a there's there's a difference between a firehouse and a fire station, and we are building fire stations. Yeah, hopefully over time. You know what though? Let me let me add this to the let me add this caveat. That it took it takes several decades to make that that you know, let me ask you this. That wood panel station probably felt very new and sterile when it started. And it took twenty years, thirty years of adding stuff to the walls and the core and beat up couches to get it into that comfortable spot that it ended up being. So what if you're looking at it this new sterile fire station and as like, this is a horrible but what about in thirty years they may be able to turn it into that same feel that you're looking for on the old school stuff. Would that be fair? Yeah. Yeah. Beating up the concrete walls. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So no it's I say well beating up the concrete walls, like you have to decorate a little bit. I understand it's sterile and it's And every yeah, like I said, walls are clean and all that. But I just let it let it grow some character, but it might take let it marinate for the next twenty years. Let it marinate it, but it might take twenty years. That's the problem. It might take twenty years. So there was a brand new firehouse that was being built either my probio year or when I was in the academy. And I will say no, twenty one years has not done anything to that firehouse to make it feel any homier. Yeah. Maybe so. Well o okay, ready for I'm gonna hit you with another one. What if it's the crew that's there? If the crew just doesn't care about the old school homely look and that's just then yeah, it's not gonna change. But if you've got the right crew and they're allowed to I don't wanna call it interior decorate, but that's kind of what they're doing, that they can make it they can make it feel more like an old school house. 'Cause I'm I'm going from a personal example, you are correct. There are firehouses that were built it built in probably the early two thousands. That haven't really changed much at all. They're pretty much identical. But we have one that got built several years ago that that was clean and sterile, and they've added so much stuff to it that they have made it feel more homely. more more like a fire station, more like a firehouse. Yeah, the right crew, I mean, it doesn't matter. You could be running calls out of a mud feel on a 7 Eleven, right? It the right crew can make anything fun and and feel amazing. But My my point was it's just funny how those who are focusing on the mental health aspect of firehouse building I I think we're focusing on on the wrong things. I think we're forgetting firehouse. It's a firehouse. It's not a fire station. Okay. I am going to go with your department. I do all of the episodes that I do have some variant of this, but your department is not responsible for making you a good fireman. Clearly. You had that set up in your head for this entire time. You were waiting on that. No, I didn't. I didn't, but you talk so slowly that it it gives me the time to come up with something. But continue. I hate yeah, I hate you so much. So moving on from Nat scoreboard. Yeah, no, you can't just give arbitrary points. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. You don't get arbitrary points. Nat Nat's the ref, so Nat gets to decide that score. But you told her to do the points. You're you're refinging your own game. You can't do that. Time out. That's it's the mob tactics. All right, moving on. your department, yeah. Your department is not responsible for making you a good firefighter. They can only offer you so much. You need to and this is goes back to getting outside the bubble of your department. I say it all the time: go to a conference, read, listen to podcasts, go f get outside of the bubble and find a network where you can talk to other people that work for different departments that operate differently to give you a different idea of what you normally do. you're DJ Stone I think has a perfect example of this. He he says it all the time as an analogy. He said learning only from what I can teach you is like eating cereal every day. Will you s will I sustain you off what can you sustain yourself off of just cereal? Yes, you will continue to live All the nutrients are there. You've got the fats and the proteins and everything to keep you alive, the carbs. But will you be healthy? Will you be healthy? No, that's not a healthy diet. I can keep you alive, but I cannot give you all of the stuff you would need to be quote unquote healthy. That's what it's like within your own fire department. They can give you enough to sustain you to do the job. But if you want to be really good at everything, No department for the most part, mo no department can give you everything to be good at everything. So you can have to go out. Hopefully your department will send you out. Hopefully they'll bring people from the outside in. But ultimately you may have to take it upon yourself to get outside on your own, spend a little money, spend a little time, and go experience something that is not your department to be a more well rounded firefighter. And hopefully at some point, good good is very arbitrary, it's very subjective, but you're not gonna get much better by learning the same thing. From the same people that you've always learned it from. And that is regardless of department. I was gonna say it's funny because you and I come from two different sized places. And that's not a smaller fire department thing. That's a larger fire department thing as well. Because I think the misconception is we have enough people and personalities coming through that d will have different teaching styles and different things. The problem is if you have A bunch of different people coming through, but this is the only department they've ever known. Guess what? Even though we have different people, different teaching styles, they're still regurgitating and teaching the same thing over and over, regardless of how many different people cycle through as instructors and proctors. And it's yeah, you eat the same cereal every day. You're gonna end up with Ricket. Yeah, there there's a name. I think it was Justin McWilliams that I heard had had said it, but it it still holds true. It's institutionally inbred. So once again, it doesn't matter how many training officers you run through, if they all learn from the previous training officers, then there's no new information that's going. So if you over like and this, there's a thousand examples of this. If you've only ever learned to do a boot search, well, if that's it, if that's all anybody's ever learned, then people are going to repeat that information over and over. If you've only ever learned, don't search without a hose line. You can't, you know, you can't search off the line. You need to have a hose line in place. If you've only ever learned That it just gets regurgitated of VES is bad and dangerous. Well, if that's once again, if it's all you've ever heard, this becomes a problem. It becomes a problem. They're just and they're not repeating, they're not lying. They're just only repeating with the thing that they knew. Well they know. That within itself is a problem. You need to get outside of your department. You have to. Not everything outside is good. Let me make that clarification. Just because you go to a conference, that doesn't mean the thing that you're hearing, like if you hear Stephanie White teach, that doesn't mean it's good. But you should at least get out and listen to see if it could apply. But it wouldn't with Stephanie's class. But anyway. And there are so many different size conferences now popping up all over the US that you can now financially schedule timing distance. It's become a lot easier. Question for you though. You drop a lot of quotes from people you've interviewed on your other podcast, Dragon's Den on this show. So does that mean you drop a lot of Stephanie White quotes on that show? Not a single my god, I can't the easy easy answer. Never. It's just there's not a single episode where you don't drop There's n you have given me Stephanie, you have given me nothing of value. You dropped like ten different names. No ten different names. Each episode. So I just No, I can say without a doubt, I don't think I've ever you can go back and fact check, send it through AI. I don't ever think I've ever said, Stephanie White said this great thing that I'm gonna use in this moment. No, that has never hap I've the quite the opposite. I've used you as a poor example, I think more than anything else. But no, I have zero Stephanie White quotes. Sorry. It's I'm just saying it's it's an unfair standard, but This episode's been kind of mellow up to this point. I don't know if it's a Friday, any more coffee, whatever it is, but let's get a little spicy. This is what you were all nervous about. This is what you were. This episode is gonna be a different. Normally we go through news stories and we have a little bit of fun and talk about some serious things going on in the fire service or some completely goofy things. This episode is going to air on election day, which For those who were raised in the part of the the nation I was raised in, right outside the DC Capitol, obviously politics are part of our personality, so that isn't necessarily the rest of the nation. But I think that I saw politics really being brought up a lot more in firehouses and causing arguments and dissension more so. In the last half of my career than I did the first part of my career. And I wanted to kick that around a little bit because it is election day. is this just me? Is this something that's happening nationwide? And how do we fix that? Because politicians aren't gonna be backing us up on a hose line. It's just it's one of those arguments that never ever belongs in a firehouse because. It has nothing to do with the call we're about to run. I'm sorry. It's just Okay. Yeah, sure. We'll go into that. there needs to be a a separate disclaimer about when you talk about don't be involved with politics, it depends on what type of politics. The politics that you should probably be involved in is that the politics that are within your fire s within your fire department. How to how to lobby for things that are good for the firemen. So your unions. But so I wanna I wanna separate that because there are there I've heard entire classes built around or or people have said, I wish I could remember who it was, but it was somebody at at Lyft, the Lyft conference that has said one thing that he wished he would have done more is be involved in the politics. He wanted to stay separate from the politics. And I was like, Ooh, that doesn't sound like good idea. But he didn't mean that you know, he didn't mean politics politics. He meant like like I said, lobbying for things that we like new trucks or better, better work conditions, whether it be union or non union stuff, make our work life better. That type of politicking. Politicking to like win your district chief or your assistant chief on your side in order to get something for the the men and women who that type of politics is what he was talking about. And I agree with that. We should be playing the game in order to further and further our cause and benefit us. What you're talking about is exactly what everybody's probably thinking about, which is the other politics, the national level. National level. Yeah, the national level politics and even state level, but state like the governmental politics. Look, me and you are gonna line up pretty hard on this, unfortunately. I wish we didn't so I could argue with you. But that it is politics are a bane of a fire station. I have very strong political views. I keep my ear to the ground, I listen, I pay attention. None of it really belongs in the fire station. I will I will summarize this to say one of the best things I heard was from Mike Galliano. Once again at Lyft, he did a whole class called This House Rocks with Paul Combs. The whole thing was about culture built. Fantastic class, by the way. I really enjoy I really enjoy the way Galliano speaks and his delivery style. But at the very end, you know what his take-home message was? The very last thing he said during that class, he said, Guys, I am begging you, please, please stop talking about politics at the fire station. He said, I ruined so many relationships because I was hard headed about my views and I burned bridges that ultimately never mattered within what was happening within my fire station and my firehouse. And he said, That was one of the He said that was one of the largest mistakes that I made. And I don't want to I don't want to misquote him. So I but I'm almost positive that's what he said. And it came down to if you think if you start to get into these heated arguments on politics, if you think that you're gonna go yell at so and so and say, you know, my candidate's right and yours yours is wrong, then at no point, he said at no point during any of those conversations. Did it ever end up where the other person was like, Yes, you were right about the thing that you were changed my mind. You changed my mind. And he never said, You know what? Now that I've listened to your side, I think you're right. It always ended it always ended poorly and it did absolutely nothing for the culture inside of the firehouse. Now this gets super, super tricky because if you were in deeply seated certain demographics of your station. Then you're you're inside of a little bubble. So people are going to be very free to, if you think you've got four, five, six guys, they all believe the same thing you believe, then pot then you get that stuck in that that bubble of we're, you know, the other side is wrong, our side is right, and we can all freely say it because we all agree, right? Mm-hmm. Here's the trouble that you're gonna run into. What happens when the overtime person comes in? Or What happens when there's somebody that's pretending to be somebody else and they're only agreeing through due to peer pressure, but you're actually but they don't really believe what you're saying, and you are slowly poisoning their view of you. You get the young fireman that's just kind of peer pressured into believing whatever you're saying, but they don't, and you think you're good, you think you're in that safe space of we're gonna hate on, you know, the other side, but in reality, you're you're really poisoning. That trust and you're hurting that inside relationship because you don't know that that person actually doesn't believe those things. And they only, once again, they're lightly agreeing with you because they don't want to be ostracized. Why ostra why put yourself in that position in the first place? Just don't bring it up. It's not helpful. It's helpful to no one. So I had somebody that I worked with for years. We came in at the same time, did our academies side by side in in different classes and just knew him very well. was right next to me when I got some really bad family news, just close friends for years. And I remember we had a fight over politics that and the funny thing is we had been assigned for a while. I left to move to my last assignment and I I came back to work overtime because I completely switched. I went from B shift to C shift. I came back to work overtime on B shift or a trade and And we got into it about politics. And it was crazy how mad and how divided we got so quickly, despite years of closeness. Politics have a way of finding the crack. No matter how tight and tiny that crack might be, they're gonna find a way to weasel their way in, no matter how close you can be with somebody. And it can get so heated so quickly. something that really ticked me off in my last assignment is we would often have the squad or the truck have to come fill when another unit was out of place at my house, because it was the middle of Route One, and one of the units would always come in and they would turn on national news, a network that we wouldn't normally have. My shift mostly aligned. Funny, we didn't talk about politics, but we we mostly aligned. With our politics and our values, and they would turn something on, and we would walk back into the house, our own house, from a call, and it just created this level of annoyance. We actually never had national news on. We always had HG TV, Discovery Channel, or local news most of the time. So we would come back in, and something that we didn't want on the TV that we didn't put the opposite equivalent on the TV, you had just put on our TV. And it was funny to see how it always caused a little bit of tension. Should it be that way? No. I absolutely hate that it's become that way in this nation. Huge problem. That's for a different podcast at a different time. But it is that way right now. And there needs to be a level of respect for that, of simply sometimes it's okay to not talk about the elephant in the room. And we are A type of people that like to attack problems and attack them head on. Sometimes the outside of the firehouse problems don't need to be talked about inside the firehouse. And this is one of them. spent a fair amount of time doing union stuff. I actually did not join the union for the first 14 years of my professional career because of. The way I politically felt and the union often picked candidates that were opposite of that. Now, I will say I learned a lot through that. You see a lot of people leaving the union now because of that. The union endorses people who have historically voted for us. I'm sorry, love that or hate that, but I really had to learn once I started seeing friends deal with cancer battles and other things. That hey, I'm not voting maybe for my children's future right here with pack money for the union. I'm voting for my buddy who shouldn't be having to prove every couple weeks that this lung cancer is on the job despite us having legislation. We need stronger legislation, so we need to support the candidates who are gonna get us there. It's it's this crappy thing of all right, you voting for your you might believe that that's opposite of your kids' future, but Coworker over here might need it. And that's a decision you need to realize exists. that's and that's a tough one as well for so many people, but When you're when you're yelling at your local union rep, just realize that's that's what's going on. If you believe that your candidate you want to vote for should be the one endorsed, then you go tell that candidate to freaking start backing firefighters. And if they're not, if they're voting against us, I'm sorry, you're not you're not getting pack money. It's just how it is. We have not developed, at least in certain parts of the country, a way That for things like that, hey, the union supports a candidate that I don't want or whatever the deal to put down our elephant brains, to turn our elephant brains off, as Nick Ladeen says. Once again, quote from Nick Ladine, nothing from Stephanie White. Shout out to Nick. He's he's in one of the group chats. Yeah. Well he he he is. He's been a victim. He's been a victim of the group chat. But anyway, so Yeah, we haven't figured out how to turn our elephant brains off and just listen and understand because we get so riled up about these particular things gets said all the time, right? What you want to what do you what should you not talk about? Religion and politics. I think that holds that should hold pretty damn true inside of a fire station. And I I mean, I really don't have a whole lot more to say on that. Other than that would be my takeaway. It would be the exact same thing that Mike Galeano said. Please stop talking about politics and the firehouse. Local news only. You are and and even then that can get dicey, but we don't find out about the naked guy stuck in the tree last night screaming, singing Disney songs at the top of his lungs. That's more important than the national thing. Do anything but that at the firehouse. You want to do a lighthearted story? I mean we've reached our our time and let's do real quick, real quick, lightning round. You ready? Yeah, this this episode just feels there's not enough conflict here and it's yeah my conflict tank has not been killed. We'll fight, I promise, we'll fight offline, I guarantee it. Listen, I don't know if you noticed. There's there's gotta be a circuit amount of No, nobody knows it's your hair. Nobody notices your hair, Steph. No, nobody notice Nobody has noticed your hair. Because it doesn't exist. That's yeah. All right, you ready? Fun one. They it they have a two milli there was a two million dollar budget surplus out of a certain city and they no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, they a certain news article asked their readers, that's what it was, if you had a two million dollar if you had a two million dollar surplus, what would you spend it on? And a lot of the answers were pretty logical, like you know, more staffing or all that kind of stuff. And some people said some people said, They wanted ice cream machines. They wanted they wanted uncrustables. They wanted pizza party. So I'd look quick. This is like my little quick knock thing, because I I need to add this one to my cards. If we were to dump a surplus into Stephanie White's former department or your your fictional department, two million dollars, what do you want to do with that two million in your fire department? Duh. You get a dang a callback? Look at you, a comedic genius doing a callback. And ice cream machines, shout out to Dr. Uncrustables, Megan Loutz, our registered dietitian who does a lot of stuff, the Fire Federation and FDIC, who has given us all permission to eat uncrustables on the go. She said she'd rather us eat that than 7 Eleven Ketos. So Yeah, there's nothing wrong. You got sugar, fats, and carbs. What like what I sugars are carbs, but uncrustibles, ice machine and and wood paneling. And asana. Wood paneling. Okay. All right. That's all I got. I just wanted to hear what your answer would be if we gave you two billion dollars. Asana. Now you're adding to the we gotta look at the budget. You what what are you not even gonna fight me on it now, which is Jesus. I just did. You're but you're going over budget. I'm the admin coming in. I'm the CFO and you you've already blown through your budget. You want a two million dollar thing? Well, first off, it shouldn't it shouldn't we're gonna start a construction company in our third act because it should not take two million dollars to build these modern fire houses. I got a lot of questions. How many bays? I mean, how many bays? Are we going full size generator? Are we gonna run the whole thing? Like, come on, you're not need a need a line to line. This is the problem. You were backsteped. You're back step for twenty years and you don't know nothing. You never been in nothing, no leadership. You ain't done a budget in your whole life. you don't know nothing. And that's really the issue with all this. And as a captain, as a captain, how to build a firehouse. No, I just know how to pretend like I know what I'm talking about. Were you part were you one of the workers on your last firehouse? I mean, how does that work? Louisiana? Yeah, I was on this I was on the spec out I was on the spec out unit for for firehouses, not just like talking trash. Were you one of the the crews that learned how to throw the logs in the swamp to build the firehouse over it or did you just catch did you catch the gators? Dang, that's crazy. Was that what you were in charge of? It's we're gonna we're gonna make South Louisiana jokes and I'm in a population that we had a hundred and twenty thousand people. It's concrete everywhere. Now if you drive fifteen minutes south, I'm not gonna joke I'm not lying to you. Fifteen minutes south. You can definitely catch some gators, but just not where I'm at. I went to lift last year. I'm just saying. I I left the gator shoes at home because I didn't want them to see it, smell it, get angry and come after me. If you come back to lift, I have no idea if you are or not. I told Kyle not to invite you, so hopefully you don't come back. But swamp boat tour, we can definitely make that happen. I will be back this year. Not through a company. My literal my literal brother in law can put you on his airboat to go do swamp boat tours. So there is some there's some cage in there for sure. Southern Yankee Derrier will be there, yes. god dang it. Really? Yeah. You guys un you guys unfortunately put on a really good conference down there. So I will say this. God, a compliment. I don't it's Friday. The fight has gone out of me, I I think. something I really enjoyed about the Lyft Conference was that because Louisiana is in the middle of nowhere, unlike a Vegas conference or something like that. You guys all stay at the hotel. You you do events afterwards. But that's really cool. I taught last year because as an instructor, I I feel like you don't often get to just be relaxed and not hurrying somewhere or tired after teaching a class or whatever. You don't get to be relaxed around the people who sat in your class. You and you get to have actually really great conversations. And that was very unique. So that's actually why we'll be coming back. Yeah. I was actually happy to go to lift and now I'm just discovering that you'll be there and I am s you have ruined the entire event for me. So Molly, your wonderful wife and I will be having the time of our lives, mostly at your expense making fun of you. But and listen, we'll make sure that there's a harness to tie you into the gator boat so that you can't jump out and claim I pushed you out because I I feel like that would be something that happened. Already plotting my demise. You know what? What I deserve it, I guess. You asked me to go on a gator boat. No, not with me, but with somebody else. That's somebody I'm not going on the gator boat. You're going on the gator boat. All right, you got anything else? We're way over time. No, ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned to the month of May when I'll I'll come in with my new gator jacket. Maybe so. We'll get you some we'll get you some alligator leather goods. We can manage that. No, I'm Pushed that gator myself. Okay. Well maybe so. We actually might be able to accommodate that too, believe it or not. So we'll video that. Thanks for listening. Appreciate y'all.