If you are looking to be abused, overworked, underpaid, and unwelcome in your own workplace, RM is the place for you!
Pros
Getting your head kicked in every shift is one way to get experience in EMS. You have to become adaptable, because you never know when your ambulance will break down, or when critical supplies will be mysteriously "back ordered." If you do your job well, the only time you ever hear from management is when "you all aren't taking this seriously" in passive aggressive emails. This has been a great place to learn how to do everything wring as a manager, but still skate by because the workforce is dedicated to their calling, rather than actually leading the organization. Your next job will feel amazing when you finally get out!
Cons
The onboarding process is mostly focused on what the corporate office thinks you should do, which often has very little to do with your actual job. Training for new hires is getting thrown to the sharks. Work-life balance is a joke. Most employees have to work significant overtime to afford rent, get held over regularly, and even get mandatory callbacks because corporate has restricted the overtime algorithm so much that employees that want to work don't get awarded the shifts. Management loves to reinterpret the CBA to suit them, institute new policies, give out discipline for their own failed communications (last summer 150+ employees received discipline because management's email system loses emails constantly, and subsequently [literally] didn't get the memo about some BS training). Pay stinks, benefits get worse every year, and your first line supervisors are even more burned out and abused than the line staff, which means you get the fuzzy end of the lollipop constantly. There is no career ladder here, so don't plan on working up and out of the streets. Ever. Even promoting from EMT to medic means a pretend raise. I got a 3 cent raise when I made medic. Literally. Three pennies an hour more. So there's that, which is nice. A coworker wisely wrote this: "I show up to work. I clock in and read net scheduler and get threatened. Then I immediately catch attitude from dispatch about getting into service. My shift time is 8-20, at 0801 we get test pages and at 0810 they start hitting you up on the radio about your status. You get a post and you're on your way. Then you get dispatched. You arrive on scene to catch attitude from the engine crew about where you parked. You get the pt, and they hate you, then you get attitude from the radio nurse, then you get to the hospital and get attitude from the nurse at hospital. Then you radio for a bed delay and catch more flack. Then the supervisor gets involved and you need to supply a dissertation as to why the hospital cant get you a bed right away. And then you get dispatched while the pt it still on the gurney...... It's never ending..." Yep. That's the story. I can't even start on values and corporate culture. If it doesn't make them more money, they aren't going to do it, but they'll tell the workforce "we're looking into it" or abjectly lie. These are some greedy sonofaguns.
