streetstoriesems

The career archive of a NYC paramedic

Category: pranks

music, toy, wind

The Kazoo

August 20, 2020 /

One of the worst parts of being a supervisor is being forced to answer an incessantly ringing phone. If you are a prank phone call enthusiast this fact allows for many opportunities to unite with your coworkers in a creative team-building activity that helps with morale. As someone who took part in so many of these exercises to improve station spirit, I knew one day when I took the promotion to lieutenant that I would eventually have to be at the receiving end at some point. So I accepted my inevitable pranking with professionalism.

At first I was disappointed in the lack of effort, then at the poorly thought out themes. I allowed for the fact the younger generations were more familiar with texting than calling but the fact that they still tried every once in a while should have caused them to come up with a better game plan. But eventually a formidable pranker rose to the fore.

The first round of calls involved someone trying to sell all of us chained to our desks a blender popular on the infomercial circuit. He called repeatedly causing most of my coworkers massive headaches as they were required to pick up the phone shortly after slamming down the receiver moments before. But I enjoyed engaging with him, acting immensely interested in buying a blender and asking for an extended sales pitch. My pranker was able to think spontaneously and keep up with my demands. My partner watched me during one phone call and started screaming at me to hang up. “It’s a scam!” she screamed. “A scam!” I completely ignored her as I prepared to give up my phony credit card number.

It was a nice change but just a step above amateur. But then one of my crews got the fantastic idea to hand their phones over to drunk patients after calling me. It led to some fun conversations. They eventually figured out the best person to give their phones to was a homeless man named Jorge.

Jorge used to ask me philosophical questions and answer me with completely unrelated topics.

“Hello, lieutenant.” he used to say. “Why do we need one million different kinds of wine? Do you think if someone was blindfolded they could really tell the difference? I call bullshit on that. Do you like vodka better? I do. Vodka makers don’t play the same kind of stupid games.”

“There’s like a million different brands of vodka.” I’d say.

“My doctor says I don’t get enough fiber.”

“Maybe they should put fiber in vodka. Vitamins too. Fortify it.”

“It’s been a long time since I had a smoke. I sure miss it.”

My crews would give me updates on Jorge from time to time since I never seemed to run into him on the nights I was on the road. I learned when he had broken a leg, when birthdays occurred, how many of the homeless women he was interested in and his luck with dating them. He was definitely one of the better regulars. One of my crews liked him so much they gifted him a kazoo.

For many nights thereafter I was serenaded on the phone by kazoo. Though I missed our intellectual discussions, I enjoyed the musical performances more. He really put his heart into them. My crews told me how much he loved learning to play new songs and give performances to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately one night, during a long drunken binge, he lost his kazoo. Or perhaps it was stolen by someone who did not appreciate his instrumental abilities. Either way, it made Jorge extremely sad.

When I found out about the missing kazoo I decided that it had to be replaced. Not only was I missing out on new Jorge material, I was sure the other lieutenants who worked the desk lamented the loss of our local talent. When I finally found one I carried it around with me and asked my crews to help me find Jorge so I could give it to him personally when I was on the road.

My crews called me the next night I was out and I met up with them. I got to meet my instrumentalist in person. He seemed like a friendly, happy man and I could see why so many homeless women found him to be a catch. Presented with my gift, he cried tears of happiness.

“The nurses,” he told me, “will be so relieved I can play again. The other patients in the hospital too. You helped so many to enjoy my songs again.”

I was grateful to share the gift of music with others.

After testing it out he took out his government-issued cell phone. It was a huge chunk of a phone, the kind most of us thought was a technological upgrade from the flip phone back when cell phones were just novelties. I watched him as he turned it on and went to his directory. I looked at his “recent calls” log and I saw the list:

911

911

911

(my station)

911

I discovered that he had called me on his own, not just when someone gave him their phone. It warmed my heart how my crews had set up perpetual calls for me. They were true professionals and I felt the torch had been successfully passed.

hands, heart, couple

An Attempt at Matchmaking

August 9, 2020 /

It’s an interesting day when a rare opportunity presents itself that, with one small intervention, could change lives forever. I found myself in such a situation one day doing overtime in the daylight hours when a random observation combined with the kind of inspiration sleep deprivation brings had me believing that I could perhaps bring two lonely people together.

I had dropped off my patient at the hospital and walked down to the station that was nearby in order to use a clean restroom. It was mid-morning when stations are at their busiest. The day shift is when deliveries arrive, medical waste gets hauled away, the cleaning people take care of the facility and there are just so many more people working. When I walked in I noticed a large delivery of supplies was being dropped off by the person in charge of our stockpile management, a humorless man I’ll call Joe. I had never interacted with him personally but he was a dispatcher for a time whose voice only seemed to show any sign of happiness when he was giving out a late assignment. I knew my favorite lieutenants, who dealt with him more often, seemed to think his brusque demeanor had something to do with a lack of sexual activity.

His serious persona probably served him well as he made a lateral move to the less hectic world of supply distribution. It was unusual to see him personally unpacking as he had moved himself up to being the manager and had more of a desk position doing the ordering and scheduling. His chubby middle-aged body seemed very unaccustomed to the bursts of heavy labor suddenly being thrust upon it. He frequently wiped his brow of sweat and his limited supply of gray hair was in disarray. I wondered where the people who usually do the delivering were and how Joe came to be the one unloading boxes of gauze and medical tape.

As I continued through the station I came across Lt. Susan who must have also been suckered into doing daytime OT. She worked either evenings or the overnights and was a rare sight in the daytime as well. Lt. Susan was a lonely soul who had dedicated much of her life to this job and felt that it couldn’t run without her input. Despite doing everything that she thought they wanted she never got promoted but she she felt that this meant she was essential to the position she had. She persevered, doubling down on her efforts to correct perceived wrongs and strictly enforcing disciplinary rules. There were some who felt that Lt. Susan’s issues had their roots in sexual frustration as well.

A dedication to ones civil service job meant there was no time for personal maintenance or upkeep that went beyond a basic shower. She was a large woman with greasy hair of no discernible cut or style. Her ill fitting uniform pants were hemmed too short and she walked with an odd kind of limp.

As I exited the ladies locker room, Lt. Susan ‘caught me’ using the bathroom. She inquired if I was on a 10-100, the official designation for using facilities. I was not. She gave me a little lecture about proper signalling. Her speech implied that thought she was well within her rights to write me up she was going to let me go. This time. I considered myself warned.

Part of me felt mildly sympathetic towards this person who had nothing else in her life. She, sadly, had few outside interests other than her volunteer fire department, which was just more of the same.

Joe passed by with a box and Lt. Susan paid him no mind. As she walked back to her office it struck me how they both seemed to be lonely and unpopular with quickly diminishing prospects. When I got back to my partner I let him know I saw Lt. Susan, someone he despised with great passion thanks to her penchant for writing frivolous Command Disciplines against him. I mentioned seeing Joe as well and speculated that perhaps pairing them up might solve two problems. He agreed and we got to work.

It’s a slight advantage for people who work during the day to have stores that are open so you can get your matchmaking materials immediately and not have to wait for a day off or make a special trip. We went to the dollar store and purchased a dollar store version of a ‘Thinking of You’ greeting card. There was also a sale on granny panties.

We put some effort into making one of the panties look slightly used. We stretched out the elastic and washed them a few times to wear out the material a little. We decided not to go with the easy/obvious brown stain that less creative types may have been drawn to and instead concentrated on believable looking food stains that implied the garments usefulness as fine dining apparel.

When we were finally satisfied with the result we placed them in an interoffice envelope along with the card and it’s simple message:

“Dear Joe,

Thanks for the extra supplies. Next time stay for coffee!”

xo Sue xo

I imagined the face Joe would make when he stretched his arms to hold up the granny panties. Surprise? Flattery? Would he consider a romantic encounter with the eccentric spinster? Who is to say what his preferences were? We would always wonder about the outcome. Perhaps he would be disgusted by such a forward act of animal lust. But if it had led to the unlikely scenario that he considered setting up a romantic date night and in the even more unlikely scenario that Susan would agree to go out with him I would not have been disappointed.

Some supervisors are tyrants.

Administrative Terrorism

July 16, 2020 /

When I came on the job as an inexperienced, naive EMT I had little idea how things worked in the real world. I was lucky to be partnered with a person who was already a legend throughout the service. He wasn’t only good at being an EMT, he knew how the job worked, how the city operated and he had a diverse skill set that was often invaluable. He taught me many, many things but one of the most satisfying was something he liked to call “administrative terrorism”.

It was unfortunate, but I came to find out that some of our supervisors lacked many of the important verbal communication skills needed to motivate poorly-paid civil service subordinates. The reward structure that traditional jobs rely on to motivate their employees (bonuses, raises, and other benefits) doesn’t exist for us and rather than get creative many chose the route of bullying and berating; negative reinforcement at its worst. Administrative terrorism was born as a creative way to handle uncreative supervisors, turning a negative situation into something entertaining. It also broke up the day if you were bored. I was privileged to learn from the master.

One of our lieutenants that used all the tactics in the negative reinforcement playbook was someone I’ll call Lt. Pat. Lt. Pat was obviously taunted as a child and used his new position of authority to make up for the wrongs inflicted upon him in the past. He was wildly incompetent and somewhat comical for us, even without the encouragement our karmic acts of rebellion brought out. Lt Pat desperately sought the approval of those higher up which made him an easy target for my partner whose many talents included being able to imitate the chief in charge’s voice over the telephone.

One day, chosen completely at random my partner asked me to hang around the front of the office and report back to him later what occurred. I didn’t know it at the time but my partner had surreptitiously unplugged the fax machine a little while earlier. Mr. Pat was at the desk and due to hearing difficulty he kept the phone volume up to a level where I, and anyone within a 2 mile radius, could hear. The phone rang, Lt Pat answered in his authoritative manner.

“Hello. Lt. Pat? It’s Chief McAllen,” I could hear my partner say in his best Chief McAllen voice. ” I’ll be sending over a report through the fax machine. I’ll need you to answer a few questions at the end of it and fax it right back”.

“No problem, Chief,” Lt Pat answered confidently. “I’ll take care of it right away.” He continued with whatever he had been doing at his desk for a little while until another call came through.

“Pat?” my partner said. “I’m waiting on that report.”

“I’m sorry, Chief but nothing’s come over.” He answered.

“Ok. I’ll send it again.”

More time went by. Nothing came over the machine, of course. Another phone call was made.

“Pat. I don’t know if I stressed this enough to you but this is somewhat urgent. I need your answered questionnaire pronto.”

“I’m sorry Chief, but still, nothing has come over the fax machine. Perhaps you better send it again.” Lt. Pat sounded contrite.

“Ok Pat”, he said. “But make sure this thing gets done. Drop anything else and send it over right away.”

At this point Lt. Pat stopped everything he was doing and watched the machine. As someone who liked to limit the movement of his considerable girth he chose to not to get up and check out the machine directly, but he stared at it. He also looked at the clock somewhat nervously but of course, no paper, no sound came from the fax machine.

“Lt. Pat,” came the next call. “I sent this report out to 5 supervisors and I have 4 questionnaires sitting on my desk right now. Guess which one I’m missing?” He sounded exactly the right level of angry you could expect from Chief McAllen. “I’ve sent this time over about 5 times. Are you telling me you haven’t received even ONE?”

“But I haven’t!” said Lt. Pat. He sounded like a little schoolboy at this point. A nervous little schoolboy.

“Pat,” the chief voice replied. “You checked the machine, didn’t you? Nothing’s jammed? Receiver not off the hook?”

Lt. Pat finally made it over to the machine, phone in hand. The unplugged cord was situated in a very obvious way on the side of the table it was on which did not face the lieutenant desk. Lt Pat picked up the cord and dejectedly reported that he had found the problem.

“Was it turned off?” He said, in a rather condescending tone.

“It wasn’t plugged in…” At least he was honest. I have learned on this job that honesty is not the virtue that it is elsewhere. They pretend that it’s important but it’s rarely rewarded.

An exasperated ‘Chief McAllen’ hung up. As Lt. Pat scrambled to plug in the machine my partner strolled in with a piece of paper.

“Hey there, Lt Pat,” he said cheerfully. “Would it be OK if I fax”ed this dental form in to the union office? I’m having a root canal–” he was immediately cut off.

“NO!” Lt. Pat screamed. “NO! STAY AWAY FROM THE FAX MACHINE! I’m waiting for something! No one goes near the machine! No one!”

My partner flashed me a smirky grin with his back to Lt. Pat.

“Wait until he calls back the division to speak to the chief again.” He told me later. “No one will have any idea what he’s talking about. Whatever statistical anomaly they’re focused on right now will be put on the back burner for at least a week.”

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