Responsible Consumption

A few months back, one of the firefighters at the hall decided he wasn't going to continue with firefighting. He'd been a forest fire supervisor for many years, but he hated wearing bunker gear, so he left the department. While he was with us, he'd taken over managing the canteen at the hall. Well, canteen manager might be a slightly grandiose title - he kept the beer fridge full.

After he left, I volunteered to take over his responsibilities. After working in a bank, this is pretty simple stuff - record your costs, make change for people, and occasionally go on a massive beer run. Nothing like rolling out of the liquor store at 9:30 on a Wednesday with 10 flats of beer to get weird looks from people on the street. Now, I haven't been in the Fire Service that long, but my impression so far is that pretty much every Fire Hall has some sort of beer dispensing system, be it a vending machine or fridge or one of those hats with the can-holders and flexible straws.

This led into a conversation I had with a local resident when I was discussing my responsibilities at the hall. "Beer?" he said, "Should you be drinking beer in the hall? It's public property, I don't think that's appropriate."

I thought about this for a few moments, because I realized that this was a valid concern. The Fire Hall is public property, after all. My eventual response was this:
As volunteer firefighters, we aren't paid anything for the time that we put in, either for training, community work or calls. Even paid on-call departments don't really receive "fair wage" for the time they put in. We do it because it's an important service, and because we like it. One of the big benefits that we get for volunteering is to utilize the hall for social purposes. We drink responsibly, keep the place clean and generally behave in an appropriate manner… Generally.

He decided that this was reasonable, so hopefully we won't be getting a call from the Regional District anytime soon. Still, it was interesting to be called on something that you pretty much take for granted, and considering things like alcohol consumption from an outside perspective definitely gives me extra reasons to make sure that I behave in a responsible and professional manner - even if I'm not getting paid.