Monday, March 24, 2008

Maybe it was just practice

It is fairly common for people to take their work home with them. After all, at the end of the day, there is usually plenty of work leftover on the desk, and, in order to have something approximating a clean start for the next day, many people take a few pieces to work on in their private time. Not that they couldn't use the break from work; they just tend to choose to continue to focus their energies on similar tasks to what they spent 8+ hours per day doing.

Naturally, some professions are better suited to the concept of taking your work home. After all, designers, IT consultants, musicians, plumbers, and protesters can all get something job-related accomplished while sitting on their own couch. Emergency personnel can hope that they won't need their work experiences in the home setting, but, well, sometimes things happen.

And sometimes, things are caused to happen. Such is the case of a firefighter who was fired after she lit her father's house on fire. Now, she's petitioning to get her job back, and she's got lawyers using the buzz-word of the day.

"Constitutional rights".

That's right, folks. The firefighter's lawyer is claiming that being fired violated her constitutional rights, and that they didn't have evidence to uphold the firing. Never mind that she admitted to setting the blaze. And definitely never mind that, if someone's job is putting out fires, the last thing they should be doing in their free time is setting new ones. Least of all for a suicide attempt.

The scary thing is that she just might win this case, and be allowed to go back to work. Sure, she's the first female firefighter (selling sea shells by the sea shore) in the history of Erie, PA. True, there were no charges filed. But still, if she admitted to lighting a fire, that would seem to disqualify her from the position of "firefighter". After all, policemen are generally arrested if they commit crimes, doctors can get sued (and fired) over people getting sick, and politicians are ousted if they're found to tell the truth too frequently. Why shouldn't a firefighter who does something the exact opposite of their job description be allowed to continue?

And where on earth does it give any sort of rights about lighting fires in the Constitution? Did we miss that somewhere in the 2nd Amendment? Is it truly the right to bear arms and become an arsonist? Or are they going to try and get some sort of freedom of speech argument going here?

It could only have been worse if she'd also borrowed the hook-and-ladder truck for daring raids, a la Animal House. Of course, then it would also have been hilarious.

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