Rites of Initiation, Part 1

After reading Motorcop's post on Supreme Court Double Dog Dares, I was inspired to write this...

As George Bernard Shaw once said, "youth is wasted on the young."  While Mr. Shaw probably wasn't talking about new public servants, I think the idea carries over to our new guys, many of whom are likely to start puberty within the next 6 months.

Everybody knows the new guy.  We all call them something different - rookie, rook, boot, probie, new guy, FNG (F'n new guy), greenhorn, etc - but they're all talking about the same guy.  He's probably young and thinks he knows everything.  He probably takes himself WAY too seriously.  And your newest pair of boots is probably older than him.

While many of our "new guys" are actually not guys at all, some of our new men and women have a highly charming combination of entitlement, arrogance and self-importance.

To be fair, most of our probationary employees are good employees, but there are always folks that aren't yet living up to their full potential.  This post, however, isn't about them specifically.  Instead, it's about the rites of initiation we can put them through.

Now, don't mistake me here.  There have been many high-profile incidents in the media over the last few years that make us all look terrible.  Hazing and all other kinds of bullying are serious problems, and there's no place for it.  Hazing and bullying can cause all kinds of physical, psychological or mental harm to the victim, and expose the tormentors and their agencies/employers to serious civil and criminal liabilities.  If you're hazing someone, stop reading this blog and figure out where you screwed up in life.  Many of the hazers out there were hazed themselves and feel the need to perpetuate this vicious cycle, and this is decidedly not okay.  If you're jeopardizing anyone's health and safety, wasting department resources, delaying emergency response or in any other way acting unprofessionally, you're doing it wrong.

I'm talking about team building exercises that help the rookie learn to take themselves less seriously and quicken their transition into public safety.  I'm talking about station pranks.

Shenanigans.

To paraphrase, shenanigans are cheeky and fun.  If your shenanigans are cruel and tragic, you're probably Farva, and you're probably hazing someone.

Proper shenanigans help the rookie relax a little and, ideally, help them learn.  One of the easiest (and most common) things to do is to send them on a fool's errand.

Done right, this involves the rookie wandering all over the station, often for quite some time, looking for something.  Aside from entertaining the rest of the house, it teaches the rookie to ask questions and clarify orders.  Some of the typical tasks include finding:

#7 Fallopian tubes
Strobe rotator grease
Ladder stretchers
Sky hooks
Electrode chargers
Helicopter landing gear
Neck tourniquets
Tubes of elbow grease
Water hammers

They can also be sent to rotate the air in the tires of the backup rig, shake all the IV bags to preserve freshness, replace the squad's spark plugs or even sent to fill out the ID-10T (idiot) form.

While rookies are fun to tease, the whole point here is to bring them into the family.  If you're making them feel like an outsider, you're screwin' up.  So make sure that the rookie isn't singled out.  The shenanigans should extend to the other members of the crew, too.  You've also gotta make sure that your timing is appropriate, and that the victim's got a good sense of humor.  Also, if you aren't able to take it, you better not dish it.

A can't-miss crowd pleaser is to switch the victim's mattress and box spring and remake the bed like nothing has happened.  The great thing about this one is that it won't typically be discovered until bed time.

Another good one is to buy a universal remote and program it to work on the station's TV.  If you select your victim carefully and only use your remote sparingly, you can torture him for months.  If you can pass the remote around to other crews, he won't know who to suspect, and if it only happens every week or so he'll slowly go crazy as the channels randomly change on him.

If your rig is equipped with a field programmable keyless entry (most Fords), pick a spare one up off eBay.  Program it to work on the vehicle, and if you do it right you can convince the new guy that the doors are voice activated and programmed by saying a specific (and embarrassingly goofy) phrase.  When he speaks the phrase, you lock or unlock the doors.  When it stops working, have him fill out the proper equipment repair forms.  Works even better if the Chief is in on it, and best if the 'programming phrase' is insulting to the Chief -- but only if he's in on it...