apollo

So as any native born "Oaklander" would tell you, I love this city. From a factual standpoint its one of the most dynamic, culturaly diverse and amazing cities in California. We have 2 lakes, 3 proffesional sports teams with a ginormous capacity staduim and an impresive arena to match, a nationaly aclaimed musium of modern art, an international airport, an international sea port, various types of terrain ranging from old growth redwood forests tucked in the hills to a beautiful pacific ocean bay all within 10 minutes of each other, pleasant weather almost all year round . . . the list goes on

But sadly, i was extremely dissapointed in my beloved city today. The Oakland fire dept. employed a rather unusual method of recruitment where applicants wishing to serve as an Oakland firefighter need only have a current drivers license, a DMV printout of ones driving history and be able to make it downtown on this very morning at 8am to hand in the app. By doing so, the 1st thousand applicants would be accepted in to the 2nd stage of review with the possibility of attending the fire academy on their dime without having any prior, standard fireman prerequisits. Sounds simple enough, right? Well at least i thought so. ****, a couple thousand other people from all across the USA did too.

I thought i would give it a shot. All i had to lose was a couple hours of my time and for a starting salary of damn near 80k a year it was worth a try. The entire ordeal was HORRIBLY unorganized. Applicants, inculding yours truly, lined up last night and some as early as thursday to get a chance at this opportunity only to find O.P.D. telling 3-5 thousand people that they lined up for nothing. All "lines" were not actual predetermined lines, just ones that formed out of the organizational habbits of man. And as such, they were telling everyone to go home and come back at 5am?! Ya friggin right!!!

So once 5 rolled around there were no city officals to communicate the process, people freaked and started forming large, tightly clumped masses near all 5 of the entry points to the city plaza. And then once the selection process started, get this, the fire chief comes out and starts to hand pick 16 people at a time from each entry point. So of course people start pushing and shoving and getting all excited cuz there was a total lack of event planning/organization and crowd control. After each group of 16 was selected you would assume they move on to the next entry way in an orderly fashion, but no. They skipped from group to group, sometimes making repeated group selections. And to top it all off i would say at least 40% of the cities police force was there to hang out, drink coffee and play with their retarded, mongrel k-9 units. They werent doing any kind of crowd control, general communication or anything. Just sitting around and talking for about 6 hours. AAANNNNDDDdd there was a few motorcycle cops that were just wasting gas, poluting our air riding around aimlessly within the city plaza.


So after not being enough of an ******* to push and shove my way through a crowd of hella people, i bounced disapointed and angry that my beloved city could put on such a haphazardly thrown together event.
*sorry for the vent session*

NismoPick

dude....

not cool.

JPerkins

in the immortal words of Southpark
"...holy **** dude..."

SHADY280

well at least you tried, and dont worry bout the vent, all the typing prolly wore ya out. everyone needs to vent. did you get in??

apollo

Nah, didnt get in but the city has gotten so much bad press about the whole ordeal they are letting the rest of existing apps be turned in. They'll most likely shred'm, but hey, its worth a shot.