ok so I was really upset last night after getting home from our search and rescue drills...because:

I was a certain partner named Tim who happens to be very overweight (which I'm not judging him for but it has caused him a lot of issues here at fire academy), and he happens to be going through this course for the fourth time.

i was with*

so you can guess that Tim was probably not the most efficient partner to be with. so naturally he ends up in my group which I'm not thrilled about because almost the entire class has had to pick up some of his slack at some point. but further than that he ends up specifically as my partner.

so I'm thinking great... I'll just take the lead here and as long as we can communicate we'll be good. but that would be too easy of course.

so our very first drill is with live fire inside this building. first floor search and rescue. I tell tim the game plan multiple times.. and multiple times I get the ok from Tim.

door opens up, we drop to our knees as planned, hes grabbing my ankle, good, we start making a right hand (counter clockwise ) search around the room, yelling out "fire department, anyone in here?". so far so good.

yelling out that we have visible fire to my right, I'm crawling along and... wheres tim? Tim has let go. Tim has stopped talking. ..... Tim has frozen. what for? anxiety I suppose. I check on him, get him connected with me again, make sure we are good to go and we push on.

we get to the next room and the instructors block our way out with fire. at that time Tim's low air alarm starts going off.. we havent been in the building 10 minutes yet, wtf? he starts freaking out yelling about how he needs to get the hell out cause hes running out of air, etc. we reassure him hes fine. I move the fire out of the way and we exit the bldg

instructor pulls us aside. we have to redo the drill. excellent. (sarcasm).

we redo the drill to similar results, he freezes, we exit. dude wth...

I get to move on, he re-does the drill once more and joins up with us at the second drill.

the second drill is in a bldg that uses smoke machines, no heat, no fire, no light. again I take the lead with him in my group (group of 3 this time). we get in, his SECOND pack starts going low on air. REALLY?? we turn around and exit (and somehow I end up with his tool? (he brought an axe with him to search with.)

I take this moment to switch my pack, so I'm now on my own second bottle of air.

this time HE wants to take the lead.... sure timmy go ahead. I'll follow you in.

well in the bldg here they have these weird wall partitions that sorta hang down and swing a bit.

Tim crawls through them and... freezes. his helmet falls off, his gloves are off for some reason, hes not talking and not moving forward.

we tell him the situation, that those are 'walls' and that hes ok. we ask if he wants to keep going or exit.

very weakly he says he wants to push. ok let's go.

this time hes 100% out of it. just freezes completely says hes moving but hes stuck there to the ground.

had to switch around to exit.

had to do that drill twice too. so my knees are cut the fuck up and I HURT

3rd drill I did fine but had my low air alarm going off the whole time thanks to having to 4 drills worth of work first. and that one was climbing a ladder to the 2nd floor then searching.

so fuck Tim tbh. I refuse to work with him because hes going to get himself or someone else killed.

if this is his fourth time taking this course and he still doesn't have his shit together, I don't think he should be in this line of work, imo

What gets me is that a firehouse has to sponsor you to get into the course and only the first round is free. Like if you fail you have to pay for the additional tries.

So his firehouse is somehow still trying to let him do this??

I have to show my coworker this, she's not going to believe it happened if I just tell her about it. Also, exactly what Beth said. How is this guy allowed in again and again if he's that much of a danger in the situation?

his father is a FF...

Can you get a new partner?

yeah I'm not gonna be stuck with him again. or I'll just straight up refuse. they'll understand

At some point they should refuse to let him try again...

you would think. perhaps that will happen after this incident

I honestly feel super bad for this guy. He clearly has a lot going on that needs to get dealt with. I'm sorry you're being stuck with the fallout- that shouldn't be. But thank goodness they're not passing him.

yeah I feel for him, so I tried to work with him as much as I could on this but I dont trust him at all.

this is Timmy btw