Life Outside Of The Federal Service With Monica Tanner
Ask yourself this question, and answer it honestly: Have you ever thought about leaving federal service?
If you have, did it invoke a feeling of anxiety? Are you scared that you will lose "street cred"? Are you too comfortable with what you do now to pursue other things? Are you always trying to get that coveted perm position? Are you apprehensive to apply to anything else because "this is all I know"?
How many opportunities have you passed up due to these reasons?
Well - that's why we have former USFS helitack turned county firefighter, Monica Tanner, on the show today to talk about this very topic!
Monica started off in the USFS as a seasonal firefighter. After a handful of years, she realized that she was ineligible to get that "coveted" permanent position due to the 37 and a 1/2 rule (yes, there is a maximum age rule for getting a permanent position with the feds)... So, with the guidance of her overhead, she had to make the move beyond the feds to find a new career opportunity.
Disclaimer: This is not intended to be adversarial or as a "Hey, you should leave your job" at all... It's merely Monica's experience in taking the leap into an other career path...
So, for anyone considering leaving - I hope this helps your decision!
Y’all know the drill...
Stay safe, stay savage...
Enjoy!
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Life Outside Of The Federal Service With Monica Tanner
I hope everybody is doing okay and getting excited and ramping up their PT schedule for the start of the new fire season, which is somehow already started in some areas. It's weird. California is its own beast, but you got that whole thing going in Texas and Oklahoma as well. I hope everybody is ready for it. On the show, we are going to talk about leaving Federal Service. Ladies and gentlemen, there is a life outside of Federal Service. I know a lot of people are going to think about this episode being a total dump or slight against Forest Service, BLM, or any Federal Service. It's not.
All we're trying to say here is no one is going to look out for you except for you. Hopefully, you have the right people in your corner and you have a good, fair amount of training underneath your belt to move on if you so choose to. No one is going to make that decision besides you. No one is going to do it for you. People are going to talk crap about it. If you do decide that is the best option for you to leave Federal Service, you want to take a look at this episode. I know I’m one of those people that left Federal Service and so is my homie, who is a former helitacker like myself.
With that being said, I’d like to introduce my good friend, Monica Tanner. Welcome to the show. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how many times I have to throw this disclaimer in there, but I am absolutely not encouraging you to leave Federal Service. However, if you're considering it, this episode is probably going to be for you because there is a life outside of Federal Service. There's also a lot of opportunity within the Federal Service. You need to weigh your pros and cons there and make the best decision for yourself.
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In the episode, I’ve got one of my good friends. We've fought a little bit of fire together on our helitack days, Miss Monica Tanner. What's up, homie? How are you?
I’m good. I’m glad to be here.
What's new?
I’ve taken some classes and I thought I’d hit up an old friend and maybe have a little bit of discussion.
Welcome to the studio. Tell us about yourself. Where did you come from? What do you do? I know this obviously. We're homies but how did you get it starting into fire? Lay it on us.
I am one of the people that started fire late. I didn't start in wildland fire until I was 35 years old. I didn't know it was a thing. I never heard of it before. I happened to be on vacation in London and had a drunk conversation in a pub with somebody. They said, “If you could do anything, regardless of pay or education, what would you do?” I was drunk enough that I thought about it a little too long and I was like, “I’d work for the Forest Service. I’d get paid to hike and camp.” When I got back home, I was like, “What the heck? I’ll give it a shot.” I don't know how I found USA jobs. Even more amazing, I don't know how I navigated USA jobs because I didn't even know what GS levels were.
I’m looking around there and I’m like, “I don't know trails and cruises. What's this fire? That looks cool.” I accidentally got a job on an engine in Idaho. I was there for two years and then I ended up going to Bridgeport Helitack. In my opinion, it’s one of the best crews that's ever existed. I was there for three years with Erik Newell. I had a great time, but because I started when I was 35, I ran into that wall. I always heard these whispers like the underground railroad, “There's a way.”
Everybody is like it's the force or something. Everybody has got some voodoo magic that they spread out there into the world. Half of it is conjecture. Half of it is BS.
With chicken blood and writing the right Congress person, you can get a perm after 37. I was like, “Okay, cool.” They did the Direct Hiring Authority and I was like, “That's not going to be a thing.” I ended up going to the county fire. Matt Petersen had come out with us on a roll, and at that time, he was the Fire Planner for Humboldt-Toiyabe and then he moved to Elko County Fire. He contacted me. He’s like, “Come over here. I got a job for you.” I ended up going over and left Fed Service.
You left Federal Service.
I know I’m the only one that's ever done it. It's not happening, but I did.
I wonder how many other people have done that but there's a point to this. I can't put my finger on it because when I decided to make that leap from Federal Service, I was scared. I don’t know what your thoughts were.
It's a big umbrella to step out from under. There's a certain comfort in your mind of being a federal employee. You're part of a large structured organization and you feel good about it. All of Wildland, you feel a sense of purpose, you're proud to be there, and you feel loyalty. I was scared about it, but my helitack crew at that time told me, “This is a good move for you. This is the direction that fire is going to go. You should do this,” so I did it. I was nervous about it, but it turned out to be a good move for me in my circumstance.
The federal service is a big umbrella to step out from. There is a certain comfort being a federal employee that gives you a sense of purpose and loyalty.
That's the whole thing, too. I’m not trying to advocate for stepping out of your job or the Federal Service. It could be completely fine for some people, but not for all walks of life. I know there are a lot of people out there, especially these days. Brè Orcasitas wrote that great Exodus article. I don't know if you got a chance to read that.
No, I haven't yet.
It's a great article. I tried to record about the article that she wrote. It turned into a junk show so I had to scrap the episode. It’s my fault, not hers, obviously. Anyways, she was not necessarily exposing, but telling the inconvenient truth that people are leaving Federal Service in droves. I’m not advocating for one way or the other. You got to do what's right for you at the end of the day. Our numbers are dwindling. If you're going to hold onto that Federal Service career, hold onto it. I understand why people are leaving.
It's also good for the people that are staying. The people that are leaving are opening up avenues for people that stay to move up. It's freeing up spots for them. Depending on your situation and what you're going for, it may or may not be the right thing for you. For me, I could be there as a GS4 and I could continue to be a GS4 without benefits and retirement. I could get more and more responsibility. I could gain more quals on my crew. For me, retirement, benefits, and stuff like that is what I wanted. I wanted it to be year-round. If you ask me that now, not even a one-month layoff period, I do miss my off-season. I keep reminding myself. I’m like, “You wanted this.”
That's something we should preface this episode with. We're not trying to be adversarial towards Federal Service by any means because it's a wonderful job. It's the best job I’ve ever had.
To be honest, I do think it was one of the coolest experiences I ever got. It was one of the happiest, best times of my life. Where I wanted to go and continue on from that, I personally couldn't do in Federal Service, mostly because of my age. There are a couple of other things that I can see why it would be right for some people. If you have a family, you might not want to be gone for 21 days, R&R in place for 2, and 21 more days. It got old after a while. I am not knocking it. In a lot of ways, I miss it a lot.
I miss it every day. Don't get me wrong. As I said, it’s the best job I ever had. A lot of the things that you're talking about there is not necessarily the loyalty to the mission and the agency. The mission, yes. You're providing a great service to the American public. Sometimes, the international public. You are a civil servant. You have a purpose greater than yourself. The loyalty aspect, that component lies within the crews. Once you find a good crew like Erik's, you tend to want to stick there. It's hard to move up, especially if there are people above you that are fighting for their rise up the chain as well.
On a great crew, you don't have a lot of movement so there isn't a lot of opportunity for growth. It's a great crew. I would've stayed there forever if I could have. Fortunately, he was a good enough leader that he did encourage me to take the step that was best for me. It has been interesting. A couple of times, I’ve noticed since I’ve left. When you're at classes or conferences and you interact with other firefighters, you're in your blue Nomex and they’re in their green. There's that little bit of separation. We all came from Federal Service. That's where we came from.
That's where the vast majority. It doesn't matter if you're structured, state, or county. A lot of these folks that have jumped ship from Federal Service over to something like you're in now, the county, the state, municipal, or whatever, you're still putting foot in the black at the end of the day. I don't know if it's envy, pride, or what it is, but there's always that age-old battle just as old as Cal Fire versus the Forest Service.
It's good. Everybody should think that the agency they're in is the best. It is interesting to be on the other side of it. Now I see the little separations that exist there that I probably didn't notice before.
It makes you look back and question, “Was I acting like this to people outside of the Feds when I was in the Feds?” We're all guilty of it. It is what it is. There's always going to be my crew or federal brethren over here, we're the s***. Who the hell are you?
It's a big organized structure. A lot of the smaller ones may not have that organization yet, but they're getting there. A lot of them are new programs. It is hard to cut them a little bit of that slack. Their overhead may have had some fire experience, but they've probably hired a lot of new people and they're getting there. It's going to take 3 or 4 years for them to probably catch up to the level that a lot of people are used to working with, but they're getting there.
The mission is completely different. If you're say with Reno Fire, your mission is completely different than a Fed hotshot crew or a Fed engine even.
Our mission is a lot more in Elko County. That's our primary response zone. We do go out on rolls like everybody else and things like that. Portal to portal, which is nice. Thank you very much.
She said the P word, portal to portal. That's another point of contention. It is the benefits. If you look at a lot of these Fed agencies, even contracting agencies, the benefits package that they're paying and they're providing to the employee more often than not fails in comparison to the municipal county structure or whatever. Sometimes, even the military.
No brag, just fact so people out there know. Switching over in 2022, I’m making twice as much as I made before.
That's a thing that needs to change. I’m not trying to be adversarial or anything like that, but that's why organizations like Grassroots exist because we need equity, or else we're going to continue to have this employment attrition like Brè was talking about. In some places, it's 75% turnover and no applications or maybe backfilling 25% of those 75 people that left. That's insane.
You'll meet people and they'll be like, “You're a firefighter. You must make pretty good money.” You're like, “No. It's wildland. I don't make any money at all. People at Starbucks make more money than I do.” They're like, “Why do you do it?
It's love. It's the passion.
I don't want to do anything else. You feel like a sellout, but you're like, “The county retirement, 70% of my 3 highest years is pretty good. I’m pretty excited about that.” Also, they might be able to fill their jobs a little bit more if they'd had a slightly easier application process.
There needs to be a lot of reforms and the USA job is getting people's feet in the door. That's hard. You even said it yourself when you first came back from Europe. You had no idea what a GS level is and how to navigate USA jobs.
I was applying for GS7 jobs on rappel cruises because I didn't know what they were. I had no idea. I got a job by accident. It’s purely an accident. Since then, I’ve tried to help people get through USA jobs and apply. If they don't hit one right button, it kicks them out. It's pretty hard to get one of those jobs. I was like, “If you can't fill your jobs, you might have a problem. Don't make it like the secret door like in Allison Wonderland.”
There are definitely some ease-of-use hurdles from the get-go. I don't know if that's ever going to change because that's a standardized system across the entire government. That doesn't matter if you're going for an IT professional job with the Department of Defense or a wildland firefighter with the Bureau of Land Management. It is all the same.
That's true. It's hard to tailor something to a specific audience when it is meant for so many different things.
To clean the process up, I couldn't even begin to tell you how to do that. It's too big of a machine.
That's the problem that I was running into. I wanted to be full-time. The opportunity didn't exist for people over 37. It did but then it didn't and there's no way to bring it to the attention of the agency. There's this weird discrepancy for these people who love working for you, but they're not able to move ahead in their careers because of this one strange rule. It's such a large organization. That one rule applies to 5 or 6 special situations and they can't change it. Moving to a smaller pool, that problem doesn't exist for me.
Federal Service: There are no opportunities for a wildland firefighter with the Bureau of Land Management for people over 37. This weird discrepancy hinders people to move ahead in their careers.
It's also been nice because I was held back for a while. It’s because of the age restriction moving over and then being the person that they hired. There are only a few that they've hired, so they're investing in their employees. They want to give you all the classes they can. They want to give you all the opportunities they can and all these things that you have wished that you could give for a long time. You have so many of them that you don't even have time to do everything. I’ve been at class after class all off-season. I haven't even seen my crew for a couple of weeks. I was there long enough to hire a new round of people and then I haven't even seen these poor people for three weeks.
That's the thing though. It is moving from this humongous turning gear of bureaucracy, which is, at the end of the day, what it is. You can only do so much. There are going to be a lot of rules and those rules are in place with the Fed side to prevent things like nepotism, fast tracking, or any of this thing that can get your ass in a pinch basically with something that's smaller and more agile like your department.
The way I see it outside looking in is you have a lot more ability to pivot and then you can focus all that time on training. You can concentrate on a firefighter butler or something that wants his IC5. You have the opportunity to do that. Lightning busts are a dime a dozen here out in the West but you're in a small organization where you don't have to crawl and fight tooth and nail to get those quals.
You know how Elko County is. You fought in fire there before. Aside from last season when there was almost nothing throughout the Great Basin, they can get 32 starts in one day if flighting comes through there. You're dropping one person off on every fire. For our new people that are coming in that want to get their IC5s, if you focus on them, you can pretty train up in the course of a season, which is pretty nice.
Now you're not fighting other agencies. Not other agencies per se, but you're not fighting other resources that are around you. You're not paying the fairness circle. You are to a degree, but it's still smaller.
A little, but most of them are all in the same area. NDF engines are there and we know them. We cross-trained with them a little bit and we cooperate pretty well. We went to Caldor with them last season. There's a little bit of a familial bond with the other state agencies and stuff like that around there because Elko being what it is. Everybody knows each other.
Fire in general. It doesn't matter if you're fed or anybody who steps foot in the black. Let's blanket that out there. It's a small community, to begin with.
No matter what color pants you're wearing or where you're from, when you're fighting fire together, you're doing it or you feel somebody has your back, you bond with that person.
Federal Service: No matter what color pants you're wearing or where you're from, you bond with the person you're fighting fire with.
It's like a trench warfare bonding moment. It's different. It's unexplainable, but that's the only thing that a lot of therapists that I’ve talked to, that's what they compare it to. Is like battle camaraderie. I forget what Shannon was calling it. There's something unique about that feeling and that's where that loyalty trap lies as well.
It's a trauma bond. It's like a dysfunctional relationship.
That's what it is at the end of the day. It's a trauma bond. Is that reflected across the entire fire community? Absolutely. We're doing the same thing. It doesn't matter what pants you're wearing, blue, green, or whatever. We're all experiencing the same thing. We need to check our egos a little bit and realize that we're all in this for the same end goal.
To be honest, I don't even think that most people realize that that distance exists there. I certainly wouldn't have before. It is a unique situation now where it's going to start being dissipated quite a bit more because so many people are leaving Fed service over these types of jobs. You're going to run into people that you know wearing different color pants. It's going to be more and more common because those are the jobs that are available and paying. Once you have 2 or 3 kids, sometimes you got to make the practical decision.
I totally understand that. I made my own decision based off of those very same circumstances. You can do it in the Federal Service, but it's hard but then again, there's a lot of benefits with Federal Service that you don't necessarily get with the other side. The other color pants, if you will.
That's totally true. To a certain degree, I missed that. I’ve tried to figure out how to take the best thing because my co-captain is from the BLM. We have a couple of people from NDF and we've been trying to take the best things from each agency and incorporate them into our SOPs. What did we love about the Forest Service? What did you love about BLM? What did you love about NDF? We crystallize all those things into one standard operating procedure for our crew. What didn't work? What was stupid? What did you love? What worked great?
We incorporate all those things. The established culture, even when you get new hires, having them come in, and automatically assimilate into the established culture of the agency is a priceless thing. It takes a while to establish that, get people that buy in, and the subconscious nuance of that on our crew. That's what we're trying to establish. It is one of those things that exist in the Federal Fire Service that makes you feel you're a part of something. That has a history and some depth.
It's got a rich history dating all the way back to 1910. The history that the Forest Service or these federal agencies have is pretty impressive. That brand is already established. As you said, you're walking into that career or that job knowing that you're part of something greater. If you don't realize that within the first few minutes that you walk into that door, then you probably will realize it pretty damn quickly. The whole loyalty thing, the higher sense of purpose of what you do, that's a hard thing to establish, especially if you're forming a new crew. It takes a while to build a reputation.
It's going to take some time, but it's a fun challenge. That's what's neat. Getting in on anything at the ground level and saying like, “I have the opportunity to pick the people that work for me. I have the opportunity to write the training, the PT schedule, and all this stuff.” Whatever problem exists here, it's my fault because the sky is the limit. I’m forming this. It's pretty cool. You never get to do that.
To be hands-on in all of those things is pretty special. I don't know that that's always available everywhere. This is one of the crews that's sponsored by the power companies. During the fire season, we're free to be a regular wildland fire crew. During the off-season, we mostly put in fuel breaks and things like that. We have winter work all year long.
You don't have to fight for it either.
That was the crazy thing. We hired first-year firefighters and they weren't aware that they weren't seasonal. Some of them were hired with no experience as full-time career firefighters.
It never happens in the fire season.
I know. I’m looking at it and I’m like, “Do you know how hard I had to fight for this? You got it your first year here. I’m happy for you. I hope you appreciate it.”
That's another fringe benefit of the Feds though. It is that seasonality, especially if you're a young going to school person or you like to be a ski bump during the winter. That's a huge fringe benefit of having that time off, especially if you have something lined up that'll provide an income during the winter. The insurance and the retirement thing, it's fine. Even if you're a perm though. It doesn't pay into retirement when you're laid off if you're at 13/13 or an 18/8.
There's a very real small part of me that misses off-season layoff. I have a theory that everybody in wildland fire is either a hunter, a skier, or a traveler. You could break that down into a couple of different variations. You've got the snowboarders of course, but they will fall into the skier category. You've got the people that go to Bali for yoga retreats. You've got the people who are chasing the endless winter on skis and then you've got the people who are shed hunting. Pretty much anybody in the wildland will fall into one of those three categories. I defy you to say otherwise.
Federal Service: Perhaps everybody in the wildland fire is either a hunter, a skier, or a traveler.
I know a lot of people out of Central Nevada that go over to Thailand for six months out of the year and they go and do Muay Thai camps. That's all they do. It's wild. I would fit under the traveler category. You have a lot of opportunities to do rad s*** outside of fire. You work your ass off in the summertime.
You do need that time. There's a lot of conversation about people going on unemployment in the off-season.
You can earn it a little bit.
You did but you can't go that hard sometimes all year round. You need that time to go decompress for a while and then you head back in and hit it pretty hard.
That's another drawback of that seasonality. You're working 1,200 hours of overtime on top of your regular 80-hour pay grade or 40-hour work weeks. You're working upwards of what is a year if not more.
You’re working for 1 year and 6 months.
Sometimes, even less.
Those tax returns are sweet.
They can be but that's one of those things. A lot of these people were a minimalist that doesn't need a lot of culture. To save that money because you live frugally and go blow it all during the winter in Vietnam, Mexico, on the ski hill, or wherever, you have that opportunity. It's awesome but at the end of the day, it's a young man and a young woman's sport.
That is cool. Didn’t you end up with the Peter Pan culture? It also exists in Wildland, which is another part of the reason that I ended up maybe thinking about leaving. I’m going to be honest. Alcoholism and three divorces are not exactly what I want my future to look like.
It's an all too common reality.
You live half the year completely disconnected from your life and family.
Even yourself as a person, you become a different person.
You're devoted to one aspect of yourself and then you come out of that. You lose some of those crew bonds in your sense of purpose and you get lost for a little while and then you fall into some pleasure-seeking or self-soothing. All of a sudden, you're in this endless loop of, “Why am I not adulting? I’m way too old to still be doing this.”
If you’re devoted to one aspect of yourself, you lose some of those crew bonds in your sense of purpose and lose even your own way. This brings you into an endless loop of wondering why you are not adulting.
It's funny you should mention that. it's even more than that. It's an adventure-seeking and thrill-seeking lifestyle. We're adrenaline junk at the end of the day. Shannon and I talked about this on the last episode that we did and we always resort to drinking, f******, and fighting in the wintertime because we don't have anything else better to do.
It is what we were also doing during fire season, but now we don't have fires.
It was drinking, f******, and fighting in different ways. You're fighting the fire.
They were talking about that in class. Apparently, people with ADHD are specifically drawn to wildland fire because of the activity level and things like that.
That's first responders in general. It doesn't matter if it's EMS, fire, or police.
It's not only that. It's people basically who tend to be very action-oriented or pleasure-seeking that need to be stimulated constantly with all that stuff. Those people are drawn to this line of work. When you take the more constructive form of that way, which is work then you dive off into some rough off-seasons.
It was fun when I was a younger man. I was having a lot of fun doing that. Would I have changed anything? Hell no. I had a great damn time. Unfortunately, that Peter Pan thing, the Neverland, I had to grow up because I wanted to. I made that decision consciously.
There was a point when I looked at myself. It seemed totally normal to me, but as a 41-year-old woman with two adult children, I had to be like, “Is this the way that an adult woman behaves in American society or no?”
It was fun though.
It still is, but it’s a digression.
It's a culture and a lifestyle. That's something that's wildly expressed on this show in pretty much every episode. We have a very purpose-driven adventure-seeking, diehard attitude culture. We're almost like, not necessarily sick of fans, but fanatical in its own regard. It is a cult. It doesn't matter what color pants are wearing either. I guarantee you structure fighters. Firefighters are the same damn way. I mean certain structure firefighters.
They don't get to do it that often.
It's a different culture. It's the same roots or way of doing business, just a different context. There is a life outside of Federal Service. That's for damn sure.
It is. I’m not saying people should leave Federal Service. it was one of the best experiences that I’ve ever had. I do miss it to a huge degree, but this was the right decision for me. I have noticed in a couple of people that I’ve talked to, like in hiring and stuff, and some of the people that I’ve worked with before that I’ve reached out to, there's a little bit of hesitation to leave Federal Service. I totally get it but a lot of it is because we believe that people that don't work for our agency aren't as good as us and we don't know what else is out there.
I can 100% agree with that. Even beyond fire like in marketing. I’m a director of marketing for a company. I’m the honcho of marketing. I’m probably one of the youngest people to do that in my industry. It doesn't even have to be fire. You can do anything and think about it. For everybody tuning in, think about the skills, relationships, and things that you've learned over the course of your career thus far.
You are the jack of all trades. You are MacGyver at pretty much anything you want to do. If you're good at something and you happen to have that drive or fire instilled in you inherently, go do it. I’m not saying leave it if you like where you're at. Don't leave but there's a wide variety of things outside of fire in general.
It's hard to think of ever doing something outside of fire. I’ve tried to picture myself in an office before and I can't do it. The ability to think, “Here's my plan. No matter what goes wrong, I will vary and tailor my plan so that I’m still successful. It doesn't matter what happens.” It’s like continuing after a goal no matter what. It is something that fire teaches you that you can apply to anything.
It doesn't matter if you want to be an arborist, a municipal firefighter, county, or marketing. If you want to do woodworking and sell s*** on Etsy, you're probably going to be pretty good at it if you stay motivated.
As long as it doesn't involve being socially appropriate with the public that often, probably yes.
There's a multitude of things out there. The world is your oyster. Go forth and conquer. That's it at the end of the day. Aside from that, what about your mental health game? Coming from Fed Service and doing that concentrated, repeated trauma and then the drinking, f*****, fighting in the winter for years after years, how has your mental health status changed?
This is probably not the answer that you were expecting. It has been a weird year because this is my first year away from that. Having forced stalled for several years, having real-life close relationships with people, and investing in anything long-term. Before, you were only there on a temporary basis or short term. There are a lot of vignettes of interactions with human beings. You don't have to form a real and lasting relationship, real communication, and see the aftermath of some of the things that you do.
Having to then reconnect with real life and truly step back into society was a little overwhelming for me at first. I didn't handle it all that well or at least, there were things that came up that surprised me. Overall, it was good. I didn't experience that weird little lull of depression that you get after the end of the season, which for some reason, it seemed like it was getting a little bit worse and a little bit worse every year.
In retrospect, every year was worse than the previous.
At first, I didn't know what people were talking about and then it would get a little worse and a little worse. I don't have that anymore. I’m in my life most of the time. Reconnecting with real life was like using an atrophied muscle. It was very strange for a while, but I do feel like I’m starting to get past that. It is weird to not be only superficially involved in your own life and then to step back into it.
Reconnecting with real life was like using an atrophied muscle. It is weird to not be only superficially involved in your own life and then step back into it.
That speaks volumes right there because superficially involved not in other people's lives but your own. That's a self-reflection on me and Jesus Christ in retrospect.
It was something that I didn't expect at all. It snuck up on me. It was weird for a while, but it is like having a muscle cramp of something that you haven't used in a while and then it goes away. I’m getting used to it but it was strange.
It's almost like culture shock.
Especially because you don't see it coming. Do you think you can jump back in like you did every off-season? You jump off the merry-go-round and you show back up to your family and you're like, “I’m here. Who are you?”
That's one thing. The depression and reconnection, those negatives of seasonal work, that's not exclusive to the Feds. That's the contractor's state. Anybody who's a seasonal firefighter, typically, you're going to experience that. We don't front-load the harsh truths upfront at the beginning of the season or when you start your career to explain this stuff and give them the tools or point them in the right direction. If you start noticing this happening, go in this direction. It's going to help you in the long run. Trust me that's the salty old FMO or BC or whatever. We need to start frontloading that stuff.
I don't think I heard about it until a couple of seasons in it at all. You know about this nebulous, a little bit of the blues that you get after season and you don't know what it is. When you feel weird and empty because you don't have a purpose and you're away from the people that you've bonded with, don't drink all day.
Also, sit on your ass, play video games, and do nothing with those shades closed. People are becoming more vocal about these issues and they're not necessarily taking notes from these municipal departments or this county or whoever with an EAP program that is aware of this whole seasonal depression thing, especially for first responders. People are being more vocal about it and they're saying stuff. Now it's changing.
People are starting to identify exactly what it is that's causing it. For a long time, I would hear about some of the stuff. That applies to structure firefighters more. They are responding to a lot more accidents and medicals, and seeing more traumatic things. No offense to anybody. I don't feel traumatized necessarily when I see trees burn. There are not that many times that I’ve seen people that I work with in a great deal of danger. That kind of trauma, I didn't incur on a very regular basis. It's a different thing. It's not trauma, but the stress of going from the thing where you feel like you have a purpose. The place where you feel you belong and then feel you're cut off from that. You exist and you don't know who you are anymore and then going back and forth between that fairly frequently.
The 110% to reverse constantly.
It's like getting back and forth between the pool and the hot, the pool and the hot tub and pretty soon you pass out.
I could see that. Everybody says PTSD, which is inaccurate. It's PTSI, it's Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. What's a common thing there? Stress. You've said it yourself. It's stress that still develops into a complex PTSI. If it develops into a disorder, which is a diagnosable thing, now we've got serious problems. You can nip that problem in the bud, but it's not until now that we're talking about this. We need to keep talking about it because you can't escape it. If you are working for somebody who doesn't want to hear about your problems, it's probably somebody that you don't want to be working with.
If you can't talk about it with the people on your crew, who can you talk about it with?
If I were to tell the stuff that I’ve experienced to my wife, she wouldn't understand. She has no frame of reference.
I’ve tried talking about it to various members of my family and they're like, “Aren't you glad to be home?” “I am but I can't wait to go back to work. No offense. I don't want to be here anymore.”
Look at that, too. With going home and sleeping in your own bed every night versus f****** off in the woods for two weeks at a time was your escape. It becomes an addiction that you're chasing. I know a lot of men and women out there tuning into this. They're going to realize exactly what I’m saying. You don't want to deal with the BS at home. When you're here every freaking night and you don't have a healthy outlet to get the stuff out of your chest, talk about stuff, or escape, you're going to want to go back to work sooner. You're going to want to go back to those 2-week, 3-week rolls with two days off and then back out.
It's very weird to realize that the small stresses of dealing with family life are much more difficult for you than fighting a forest fire. You were there. You were out with your crew. My son got a traumatic brain injury while I was out there and they were like, “Do you want to go home?” I was like, “No. I’m not a doctor. There's nothing I can do. I want to stay where I’m at. It's a lot easier to do what you're doing and deal with those things in front of you than deal with the stuff at home that you can't fix.
The professional problem-solver can't fix this problem so they get pissed.
Those are things that you can't affect. I can affect the things in front of me and I feel I’m making traction here. When I get home, there's this wide range of silly things that I feel I should be able to take care of and I can't. It's frustrating and then I don't want to be there. I feel guilty that I don't want to be there.
It's even like the simple stresses of, “What am I going to cook for dinner? I had fire camp food for the last three weeks and now I have to make another. I have to make a simple decision.”
I wouldn't know about that, Brandon. I was on a helitack crew. We bought groceries.
The privileged helitack life. Not as quite as privileged as Cal Fire. I said it. I got nothing but love for you Cal Fire folks. Even the Cal Fire folks deal with the same stuff that we do. At the end of the day, the same traumas and stupid things that we have to deal with at home that becomes so mundane and boring. You can't fix it and it's not exciting enough for you to even want to put effort into it. I get it. It's much easier to fight a raging forest fire.
It is. It's hard to explain to somebody why that is your happy place or comfort zone. Trying to figure out why your 17-year-old won't do homework is too much for you. You can't handle it and you want to leave.
Healthy outlets and that's one thing that Shannon, Dr. Ohs, and Danny Snedden close the gap in wellness. I’m giving you a shout-out right now. those are all the people that have walked that walk or have experienced enough people within these fields. It's real similar to EMS, LEO, military structure fire, and wildland fire. It's all the same or it's different flavors of ice cream in the same bowl. Finding those healthy outlets and not trying to use your work as escapism from the mundane BS that's going on at your house, that's one of those things that we need to be cognizant of.
Also, not finding your identity in your job. You are not what you do. It's hard because it is so much of its own culture. A lot of people don't even know that wildland firefighters exist. They have no idea what we do. It's such an entrenched culture that in a lot of ways, it's very easy to lose yourself and identify with being a wildland firefighter. That is not who you are. That’s your job. Accountants don't identify as being accountants. Dentists don't identify as being dentists. That's what they do. They vary from person to person. They have all their different things, but it's easy to drink that Kool-Aid.
Never find your identity in your job. You are not what you do.
It's an all too common trap, especially when you're young, impressionable, full of piss and vinegar, and you come into this career. It doesn't matter if you're a man, a woman, or whatever. Everybody drinks that same Kool-Aid and they're drinking it from a fire hose all at once. It's a real easy trap to fall into. I know that I define myself as a human and as a firefighter for the longest time and I’m like, “Let's reel it back here.”
It's also hard because several of us do look quasi-homeless most of the time. Maybe questionable habits and social.
It's part of the culture.
When you meet somebody, they say, “Thank you for your service.” You get respected for something and you're like, “That's weird because I’m not that respectable of a human being.” You start to identify with this one thing that makes you feel like you're doing something worthwhile.
Little do these people that are thanking you or trying to buy you Starbucks or whatever. Little do they know that you're digging holes in the dirt in the middle of nowhere with twenty of your best friends making farting jokes. That's what you're doing at the end of the day. It's this weird disconnect. It’s like you're almost living a lie sometimes.
Yes and no. Definitely, forest fires are something that people are nervous about. You're going out there and you're taking care of it. They appreciate that because they don't want to do it and all that. If they knew how entirely ridiculous we are, sometimes they would probably offer us a few fewer free Starbucks. That's the type of person it takes to get that job done.
It does. It takes a hearty bunch and a certain type of individual that's very get s*** done. I’m not saying that we're a bunch of raging alcoholic hooligans. We do respectable work. We do work that's unrecognized, except for a few people that truly understand what it is so they thank you. At the end of the day, have we done some questionable stuff? Probably.
At the same time, that's expandable. You can meet some people who can have fun with the best of them, but when it's time to be serious, there are people who know a lot about fire. They can make a lot of good decisions fast. There is some incredible combination of a sports and business mentality coming together to attack a problem that not very many people will be able to handle. There are people that rise to that occasion. There are some people who are still working neck down, but there are some people who fall outside of an alcoholic hooligan model, or at least when it matters.
That's the point that I’m trying to get at. We do commendable things, however. Everybody has got, not necessarily true person, but they like to let it out every once in a while. That's anybody. I’m not trying to say that we're villains by any means.
It’s circling back around the fact that I left Fed Service, so now in these county crews, you're in a community. You're out there with these people more and they put you out there more on the truck in the parade or you go talk to the kids at the camp or whatever. I’m like, “Before I get in my truck, don't cuss.”
I had this conversation with my chief a couple of times and I’m like, “We are not the people that you put out in public. These are not the shiny pennies that you want to show to the community. We'll put in all the field breaks and everything you want, but we might not be the most socially appropriate for all of these venues.” To be honest, they've all done well. Nobody's let me down yet.
Federal Service: Wildland firefighters are not the people you put out in public. They are not the shiny pennies that you want to show to the community.
That's good. It's like coming back from a two-week roll. You're in a restaurant and you're like, “This is a fork and napkin. How do we use this?” Cavemen and women.
I still struggle with that. I wear most of my food on a regular basis.
We all got to eat. I don't understand where the disconnect becomes. It's an interesting culture and they're very good people. Some of the most solid people that I’ve ever met. Are we a little wild? Absolutely.
It's like brain surgeons. People are always like, “They're super egotistical.” They have to be to do what they do, don't they?
You have to have confidence in what you're doing. You're doing surgery on a brain.
It takes an egotistical person to be a brain surgeon. That's the type of person it takes to want to hack into somebody’s brain.
It's wild. Different walks, same stuff. There is life outside of Federal Service. A lot of people are thinking about jumping ship but there are a lot of fear factors involved with it. Let's expand on that.
There's also a lot of hope. To be honest, one of the things that I hear is a lot of the stuff that you guys are doing in your movement, there's a lot of hope and things are about to change. People want to wait it out and they want to see if it's going to change, which is great. Some of it is fear of leaving the Federal Service, which I experienced. It's a large organization and you feel you're a part of something that is very permanent and isn't going to change a whole lot. That's comforting.
People feel like when they came up in that organization, that organization is the best and they don't want to leave it. They have a type of loyalty to it. They should, but for some people, there are other options out there and they're not illegitimate. If you're married and you have young children, you might want to be home half the time or something like that. Maybe you're over 37 and when you're old, you don't want to eat cat food because you don't have a retirement.
There are options out there and they're pretty good. It's worked out well for me. I happen to have fallen into the right position where I have a fantastic boss. I have a lot of support. We have fantastic funding. In some ways, I feel like I’m a kid in a candy store. It has been interesting when talking to people about hiring to see the hesitation in their eyes and hears it in their voices because they don't feel like there's anything outside of Fed Service.
It's a big world out there. Unfortunately, with a career like this, you have to be an opportunist.
People told me about my whole career coming up in the Forest Service. When it comes to getting assignments or pushing people to sign your task book and stuff, you have to look up and out for yourself in your career because nobody else is going to do it for you. If you're waiting to feel like you're the most qualified before you let somebody sign you off, you have to fight for your opportunities. You have to take the things that work for you the most because nobody else is going to do it for you. This is not the time to be a wallflower.
Do not wait to be the most qualified before you let somebody sign you off from federal service. You have to fight for your opportunities and take the things that work for you.
There are a lot of hungry people out there too. Not being necessarily shameless about it and pimping yourself out for every opportunity that you can lay your hands on, but unfortunately, at the end of the day, that's what's going to move you up in the chain. Getting that experience, those quals, that ink in your task book, all of those things. The classes even. It is hard to get classes. Maybe not for you. I could only assume that for certain contracting outfits, there's got to be pining for classes.
I’ve taken 4 or 5 classes this off-season. Only one time that I had one contractor in there with me. He’s a cool, highly educated, interesting dude from South America. He was the only contractor that we had in any of the classes with us. It was almost all for a service and there were a couple of other agencies throughout there. Over here in Reno, there's a little bit more NDF in the classes and stuff too, but over in Provo, it's mostly for a service.
I remember you'd get one class a year if you're not a perm. If you're a perm, maybe you'll get two. In these smaller agencies, literally, them counting on you, you're the person that they picked for this job and they're willing to give you an unlimited amount of support to get where you want to go in your job. They gave me a schedule and they said, “What do you want to do?”
I didn't even take as many as some of the people that I work with because I didn't want to be that busy. It was carte blanche to obtain as many quals and get as much information as you possibly can. Funding is one of the biggest differences coming from the Federal Service. If something doesn't work, you get 1 that does, maybe 2, and it's insane. Our pumps work. That's crazy. Your mark threes and start right up. That's wild.
I heard you the first time. You say you're marking three pumps work the first time. That's a concept.
I didn't think that those existed. I thought it was a thing. Across the board, they don't work the first time, but apparently, they do.
There are some benefits for both sides of the argument there, whether Fed, a smaller municipal, even a larger municipal, county, state, or whatever. It's all got its drawbacks. It all got its pluses as well.
The more people that have come over, it's going to be a little bit more integrated between everybody because you're going to run into people that you know. The unfamiliarity is going to start to blur a little bit and those things are going to go away. For now, it's strange to feel like you have to talk people into maybe taking a decision or an option that might be better for them. It's not for everybody, but it is for some people.
I get it, especially with this whole grassroots movement. A disclosure here. I’m a board member of Grassroots so full disclosure that I’m sipping for the brand, but it's partially my doing. If you're holding out for Grassroots, kudos to you because there's a lot of uncertainty with it.
People are hopeful.
It's going to happen. I’m hopeful for it. I’m far removed from fire. I’m working on my dad's.
I’ve seen a couple of people and they're legitimately hopeful for the first time in a while that maybe this will turn into an adult gig for them, which is cool.
That's another thing too. There are so many little things that are going on with grassroots and a lot of them I can't talk about. Some of them I can. We got Tim’s Act coming up. That's going to be a huge infrastructure. We had to fight tooth and nail for infrastructure. There are a lot of questions regarding the pay, the $20,000 bonus, the mental health thing, and all of that. The infrastructure bill was meant to be like a Band-Aid on an arterial wound.
This patient is bleeding to death obviously with the attrition rates that we're seeing. People jumping from Fed Service to something like you're in, county, state, or whatever. Tim’s Act is going to be that tourniquet, the long-term care, the definitive care of that whole scenario. Is there a lot of politics involved with it? Yes. It's inherently going to be a lot of politics in it because you're working for it.
If that's the avenue that you need to take and you have to, so be it.
This is a federal system. There are a lot of gears of bureaucracy working here and there are multiple agencies working together trying to come to a common goal. I would never, in 1 million years in my entire life, anticipate all of them working together to make this stuff happen because they realize it has to happen or else, there's not going to be a federal firefighting workforce.
It's becoming a little bit of an endangered species. Many people are leaving. People still have to do this job. We are not a community that says, “Somebody needs to take care of us.” At a certain point, it's like, “You don't have to take care of us, but you do have to help us out. Help us help ourselves a little bit.”
Federal Service: Firefighters are becoming a little bit of an endangered species. Many people are leaving, and yet somebody needs to do this job.
One thing that concerns me about if this thing doesn't for some reason go through is the future not because of the people that are already leaving but because of the fact that we're not getting new people. That's what concerns me the most. If you're 10 years in, what's another 10 years on your retirement, especially if you're a perm?
If you're ten years in, you're probably not going anywhere. What else are you going to do?
I’m talking about perms that are ten years in. You might as well stick it out and get your retirement. There's a lot of opportunity to move up in ten years and your high three might be pretty damn good at that point. The problem is, is your GS5s and 6s, your up-and-comer leadership, they're going to bolt. They're going to have it. they’re not going to stay. Even worse, you don't have a future.
You're not having people apply because they realize they can make more at Burger King than they can be risking their lives doing arguably the most fun thing in the entire world, which is fighting fire. It is the greatest job I’ve ever had. Hands down. However, would I do this for $15 an hour? Not a chance, knowing what I do now. I get it. That's why organizations like Grassroots exist because they have to. They're trying to save a legacy.
In my hiring, I’ve had a hard time getting people to come in at the squad bus level over from the Federal Service because they don't want to leave.
Those holdouts we were talking about for infrastructure in Tim's Act.
Where it has been different for me on my side is that I can get a lot of first-year firefighters because we have a pathway to a structure. When they come and work for us, they also get their EMT, their exterior support, and all of these things. That's the hiring pool that the all-risk guys draw from. They hire from our crew. This is a pathway for them to move on to that, which is, it's hard to get your foot in the door over in structure.
A lot of kids who want to do that grow up wanting to be a “firefighter.” They want to start out in Wildland because the paying you due is part of the process and then there's a way for them to move over from there. The problem is for straight wildland, how do you get those kids to come in and then stay long enough so that in X number of years, we have our FLOs and things like that that are still around?
It’s because you're central leadership. It's tough. Honestly, I don't know where it's going to go. If I had a crystal ball, I’d tell you, but some things need to change. You used the terms real firefighter, structure, or whatever. Why aren't wildland firefighters considered real firefighters?
I don't know. There is, on every level, still the stigma. If you're the wildland crew, then you do the leftover maintenance and facilities.
Federal Service: On every level of the federal firefighting service, there is still stigma. If you’re the wildland crew, you do the leftover maintenance and facilities.
You scrub shitters in the off-season.
You're the grunts and the other guys are the shiny firefighters that you trot out to the public and they sit around until there's a house burning down or whatever. I’m not talking crap about those guys. They're great but there's very much still the stigma of we're a little bit the roughnecks.
We're a little bit of a silly bunch like we were talking about. It’s rough around the edges. One thing that needs to change is the dynamic of being perceived as a “real firefighter” or an unskilled laborer.
That's the other thing. When we were talking about all the other jobs that a firefighter could go into, it's like, “Of course, you could. How many times have you been asked to do some very strange job that you should have training to do?” You're trying to figure out how to cut holes in a quantum hut. You can put windows in there that don't fit and you're like, “I don't know how to do this but the Forest Service wants me to, so here I am.” You're like, “Put in a sprinkler system? All right.” I’m like, “Isn't this the job that you have to know what you're doing to do it?” You’re like, “I’ll figure it out.”
Think of it like you’re professional solvers. Think of all the crap that we've done over the course of your career or you will do if you stick in this long enough and you have a dangerous human.
You have a whole group of people who don't say, “I can't.”
You don't have a group of people that say that I cannot do this when they can. As far as going into that leap or making that leap, if you had any advice for anybody who's tuning in. If something is calling them to make the jump to something different, what would you say to them?
Look at what it is that you feel like you're missing from where you're at. Look at what they're offering on some of these other platforms and see if that's the right thing for you. You're not going to become less legitimate. You're not going to see less fire. For some people, I don't think it's the right move because there is so much awesome camaraderie and history established in Fed Service. For some people, what you probably need to make that leap into your more functional adult life may lie outside of Fed Service. Evaluate your options.
When leaving the federal service, look at what it is you feel like you’re missing from where you’re at. Look at what others are offering and see if that’s the right thing for you. You will not become less legitimate.
Make the best decision that is going to work for you at the end of the day.
Nobody else is looking out for your future. You have to do it.
There are some soups out there or some crew leaders.
Mine did and I was lucky. I worked for maybe one of the smartest, most magical unicorns in the Forest Service. He encouraged me to do it. More often than not, you're going to have to look at your life, see what you need and see what's right for you. It might not be federal and there's nothing wrong with that.
Two people in the same room. We did it. There are some pretty good points in this episode, but at the end of the episode, I always like to give you the opportunity to give a shout-out to some homies, heroes, or mentors. Who have you got for us?
Jamie Strelnik, Erik Newell, and Joe Lambert, thank you for hiring me initially. Everybody I work with in Elko County, Matt Petersen, David Metz, Mickey Newman, and Hunter Tracy. One very special mentor I’ve had in fire, whose name I shall not say because she's incredibly media shy. She is 6’ tall and an ex-hotshot woman.
She's super rad. I ran into her at Home Depot not too long ago, but shout-out to her as well. Ladies and gentlemen, take some advice. We're not crapping on the Forest Service or Federal Service. We're not shooting on Cal Fire or any other place. Do what makes sense. We'll tie this all back into Federal Service. Do what's right for yourself because no one else is going to do it. Thanks for tuning in. Monica, thank you for coming to the show. I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Right on guys. See you.
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There we go, ladies and gentlemen. Another episode is in the books with my good friend Monica Tanner. Monica, thank you so much for coming on the show and saying your two cents about leaving Federal Service. it's important that folks hear this message because it is a decision whether or not you may or may not stay in Federal Service.
A lot of folks out there need to read this message. A lot of people come to terms with this whole decision-making process of leaving the Feds. It's not for everybody. I’m not going to say that there is a better life for everyone out there, but you're all firefighters. You all can do amazing stuff and you're a jack of all trades. You can do pretty much anything you put your mind to. If leaving Federal Service might be for you, I hope that this episode rang true to you. I hope you got a little bit of advice out of it.
Monica, once again, thank you so much for being on the show. You have left Federal Service. I have left Federal Service. I know a lot of other people have left Federal Service and it's not intended to be a total taking a dump or thumbing our noses to the Feds at all. You got to make decisions and sometimes those decisions are hard. You got to make them for you because no one else is going to make them for you. That being said, I hope everybody is doing well. You all know the drill. Stay safe. Stay savage. Peace.
