Except , of course , that the National Fire Code is not an actual law. It’s a code developed by a trade association. Various jurisdictions may adopt it in whole or in part , but it’s not a Federal law itself and therefore doesn’t apply everywhere.
Little Nemo , I work for a different area of the same agency you worked for ( or perhaps its successor agency, depending on when you retired). On my side, I’ve received many stupid orders and probably given a few. But the conversation on my side would have ended:
“But it shouldn’t be on the schedule.”
“Probably not. But I’m not the one who wrote the schedule and I’m not the one who signed it.”
“Why didn’t you tell your supervisor it made no sense?”
Because we would have told the supervisor . When I get directions to do things that don’t make sense, I absolutely let those above me know it doesn’t make sense and why. They frequently tell me to do it anyway , but if they ever said “But you should have known it didn’t make sense” my answer would have been “I told you it didn’t and you told me to do it anyway”. Does the prison side really discourage questioning policies to that extent?
NFPA requires monthly alarm tests but it doesn’t require them to be conducted around the clock. Once the administration became aware these tests were occurring on the night shift, they put a stop to them and rescheduled them for shifts when these buildings were open.
The quarterly drills were continued in all occupied buildings as that had never been an issue. NFPA does not require fire drills to be conducted in unoccupied buildings.
This particular prison had a pretty dysfunctional administration. It was an unofficial dumping ground for executives who had been around long enough that they were entitled to a promotion but whom nobody wanted to work with. They got dumped on us and left there to put in their time until they retired. It’s notable that in the eleven years I worked at that prison not a single executive team member got promoted.
And honesty makes me admit I caused some of my own problems. I’m not a very political person. I generally work well with people (I was actually widely liked) but I expect everyone to be doing their job. My problem was that I expected this of my superiors as well as my subordinates. So a prison where they dumped incompetent executives was not a good fit for me. Most of my colleagues had as low an opinion of our administration as I did but I didn’t conceal my feelings as well as others did. The result was that I had a rather antagonistic relationship with the administration.
My navy friends were on maneuvers in the 80’s where the job of their ship was to stand between the aircraft carrier and (hypothetical) incoming nuclear-headed missiles. The crew weren’t asked to volunteer: they were informed afterwards.
My Dad started at the coast of France and went to the end of the Ruhr Pocket. So, from 29 Jan 1945 til April 21st 1945 he was with the 13th Armored - he was transferred over with part of his original unit as experienced cadre to bolster the ranking NCOs. Before that he had been rumbling around parts of France with his original group. They were not in the first batch on June 6th 44, they were a few days later. So he slogged for pretty much a year, heaviest fighting at the beginning and the end with a bunch of hurry up and wait in the middle.
It was fun and scary - he could sit and be ominous when some poor guy showed up to pick me up for a date in my 13-15 years =) 30 years in the army gives one good menace And after reading his records when we cleared out his desk after he died made me glad he was never really pissed at any of my boyfriends enough to want to accost them in a dark alley! :eek: [his bronze star/V is my good luck pocket piece, I keep it pinned in one of the pockets of my daily carry messenger bag.]
Then they were given enough gas for a one way trip and, believe it or not, their feet were wired to the rudder pedals making exit impossible. Second thoughts were thusly prevented.
You got a cite for this feet wiring thing? I’ve read quite a bit about the subject and never seen this. I’m skeptical that anyone could even reach that far into the cockpit, with the pilot already in it, to wire his feet to anything.
I’ve never heard of feet-wiring (unless the pilot was a woman trying to enhance her sexual appeal) but I have read of locking the kamikaze into the cockpit, which seems a much more feasible and simpler approach - just secure the cockpit hatch from the outside.
The locking the pilot into the cockpit thing seems to be a myth. People have “heard it’s happened”, but nobody can point out specific times it did, and none of the records of surviving kamikaze pilots have said that they were locked in or saw their fellow pilots locked in.
Yes, but it’s not really any help. The nature of an order is such that it is intended to be obeyed, and failure to obey isn’t really considered. They tell you that unlawful orders are not to be obeyed, but never tell you that it requires more bravery to defy one as it does to simply obey it. They leave it to your judgment, which inevitably is going to be different from that of the officer who told you to do it.
In the end, if you defy an order you’d better be right, and even then you’re going to answer for it, often with long-term consequences. Few officers like the idea of their competence being questioned, and they’ll remember that you’re the guy who did it to one of their friends.
Yes, I know that superiors do not like having the orders questioned but when I was training people, I mentioned that if a superior gives a questionable order to ask for clarification.
This can be difficult to do especially for the new recruit.
What are you supposed to do when the guys in very expensive suits show up and let it be known that it would be a shame if something happens to your brother, you know, the one in Africa with the Peace Corps that has a tattoo of a cross on his big toe? And, when you get home, your wife has a package about the size of a pack of cigarettes that came that afternoon with French writing on it from Côte d’Ivoire?
There was a fictional movie that explored this type of issue, Crimson Tide. Denzel Washington was an XO on a submarine and Gene Hackman was the captain. The captain orders his crew to launch atomic missiles or some such thing, and the XO finds him unfit for duty and relieves him (which is I guess part of the philosophy of having an XO; I have never been in the military). Then there is all this discussion about whether this is a mutiny, etc., etc.
And after reading his records when we cleared out his desk after he died made me glad he was never really pissed at any of my boyfriends enough to want to accost them in a dark alley! :eek: [his bronze star/V is my good luck pocket piece, I keep it pinned in one of the pockets of my daily carry messenger bag.]