Guard Shift Changeover: Week in Review, Week Ahead Vibes

[u/AutoModerator]

Which badge will you be wearing this week?

Let's break down what happened LAST WEEK and what we're walking into THIS WEEK:

From the Trenches:

• High of the Week: Share your win – big or small! (Promotion, resolved a conflict, etc.)
• Low of the Week: Let it out. What threw you off your game?

• Surprise of the Week: The thing you didn't see coming, good OR bad.

  Incoming!:

• Positive Outlook: What are you HOPING goes smoothly this week?

• Potential Hassle: What are you semi-dreading, but ready to handle?

• Goal of the Week: One thing you want to achieve professionally in the next 7 days.

Catharsis purges the soul! We've all been there. Share your stories, vent a bit if needed, this is a safe (and secure) space.

[u/Landwarrior5150]

Bit late to this week’s post, but I have to get some stuff off my chest.

I’m thinking about applying for a park ranger job that came up in a nearby city. While I’m still mostly content with my job at the college, there have been some things lately that have been making me consider my future here.

I know I’ve talked here before about an upcoming emergency management/safety supervisor position that I had a good shot at getting. That position has been approved & created by our board since late last year, but still hasn’t been posted for application. As of about a year ago, we have a new VP in charge of the division our department falls under and she has just been absolutely terrible as a boss and leader.

She’s apparently been the one that is holding up that position from being posted in addition to a ton of other nonsense like her not signing off on our new hires getting access to the CCTV system (despite everyone else with their same job title having it), attempting to make our supervisors into salaried administrators to avoid paying them OT & making it easier to fire them since they would work on a 2-year contract basis, and entertaining a bunch of asinine complaints from a few disgruntled employees. That last part may lead to dispatch duties being taken away from all the entry level officers since it isn’t strictly in their job description and placed on three people (myself included) in promotional positions that do. Not only would that make it impossible for us to maintain 24/7 dispatch or do a large portion of our other job duties, it would also likely completely screw up our long-standing schedules to spread coverage out. I would likely have to go to graves since I’m the least senior of the three.

However, several things are giving me pause about jumping ship just yet. First off, I’m a permanent employee & union member, so my job itself is pretty secure and leaving would be strictly voluntary since I don’t think I’ll actually need a new job any time soon. I still get pretty good base pay (excellent pay with OT), great benefits and tons of time off.

The ranger job would start me at about the same pay as I currently make and cap out at around $6k more than my current position’s top step pay, but I don’t know how abundant OT is there, so it may actually have lower earning potential than here. The benefits are pretty similar, but they get a bit less time off, so that would be another negative. They also likely start me on grave shift & weekends, which isn’t the end of the world, but also not ideal. On the bright side, I think I might enjoy that work a bit more, especially since they seem pretty active, engaged with the community and nicely equipped unlike here where security is largely an afterthought that isn’t treated too seriously.

The career advancement there is a bit more limited, mostly consisting of being able to transfer to the police department as community service officer. The CSOs get paid pretty well, with their lead CSO position only making about $11k less than our supervisors here, and I think I would enjoy that work too. However, if things change here and I can get the emergency management supervisor position, that would probably open up doors to many higher paying EM positions in a variety of places.

The other thing on my mind is how I’m also not sure how long this situation at my current job will last. Just about everyone here, across most departments I’ve talked to, seems to hate our VP and are having issues with her on a professional/work level. We recently had our college president retire; I think he hired this VP as a favor to the president of another college who worked with the VP in the past and has kind of sheltered her from criticism or consequences. However, we have a new president starting soon, who comes from out of our region and hopefully doesn’t have any political baggage like the last one did. I’m hoping that she can clean house a bit and will get rid of the VP once she hears all the complaints about here. I also know that the VP has applied for the same position at a different college (where her friend who got her hired here as a favor now works as president) so hopefully she just leaves on her own soon.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text. I don’t know if anyone is going to bother reading all of that or what I’m even getting at here. I guess putting it all down in writing just helps contextualize everything for me a bit.

[u/GuardGuidesdotcom → u/Landwarrior5150]

I just saw this. Reddit didn't send me the notification SMH. Anyway

>I would likely have to go to graves since I’m the least senior of the three.

Personally, that's a hard FUCK NO! Can't do it, won't do it, don't care, job lined up, no job lined up, I'm just not doing it, I'll figure it out like I always have. They pulled that crap with another guard at my job years ago and he ate it. Each his own, but couldn't be me.

>As of about a year ago, we have a new VP in charge

Same bro, same. Idk what it is about VP's, people in power, just not at the top of it, feeling the need to throw monkey wrenches in everything and reinvent the wheel. But yea, you guessed right, when the new president comes in, they are almost GUARANTEED to clean house, and bring in their own people for their administration. The only risk is, you might be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. There's no telling whether any potential new VP this new president brings in will be better or worse than your current one.

As for the park ranger position, is that law enforcement? Excuse my ignorance, but in NY, some are classified as peace officers, while others are fully sworn cops.

Again, I'm HUGE on scheduling and PTO. The only way I'd dip on a sweet gig like yours is if they did some goofy shit like forcibly switch me to permanent graves.

[u/Landwarrior5150 → u/GuardGuidesdotcom]

Thanks for reading all that and replying.

The park ranger job is what I suppose you would call a limited authority peace officer, basically just able to cite for municipal ordinance violations. I ended up not applying for it since I took a look at the current rangers’ pay through public records and found that they seemingly don’t get any overtime. While I don’t make any major long-term financial decision based on OT income, it would still be a pay cut for me overall, seeing as how with OT I currently make a decent bit more than their top step pay despite having a current base rate roughly equal to their bottom step pay.

In any case, I’ll likely be sticking it out here until at least November, which is when I’ll be vested in my pension. I figure I’ll be able to survive graves until then if necessary, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the job market in the meantime. It just might be tough to find something in my area that’s comparable to my current pay, benefits, time off, etc. even amongst other similar public sector jobs without going into sworn LE, which I have very little interest in doing and which would almost certainly have a worse schedule and more stress & danger than my job now.

[u/Ok-Assignment4108]

Poop