100%. Unfortunately, and especially around here, the quickest way to a decent union fire position is through the volunteer system, or private EMS meatgrinder. Doubly so in the PNW - in other parts of the country you can barely throw a rock at a strip mall without hitting a paramedic school, but Central/Western Washington effectively has only two programs - Tacoma CC and Central Wash U. There was a Vancouver program that got effectively subsumed by AMR or something like that, and there's a Seattle program at Harborview - but you have to already be a Seattle or King County FD employee and sponsored to get into it - as a result TCC's program had an informal requirement to have 1,000+ patient contacts as an EMT, and the only time efficient way to get that is private EMS.

So private EMS supervisors know they have a steady supply of younger kids who'll eat shit for a few years to get their patient contacts. I did it later in life, and had a full time IT job, and it was always a source of consternation from this supervisor that he couldn't pull his usual shit, threatening to (try to) "blacklist" employees, or pull borderline illegal scheduling shenanigans.

> so they are very bad at managing schedules (that's the "stupid" part, this is not rocket science)

Oh, you'd think that. But most private EMS shift bidding is glorified "write your name on a whiteboard"/GCal type stuff that a dispatcher or supervisor then tries to lay out. I'll admit that it's a thankless job at best - do an optimal layout and no-one appreciates it, but anything suboptimal and there's accusations of favoritism, etc. And then, at certain places, like this one, there -is- -actual- favoritism, where dispatchers will "joke" about giving you a crappy shift or partner if you upset or argue with them, or will double-book you and then complain you didn't notice, or, if not enough people would sign up for a certain day, would "phantom" sign you up. Get a call at 7.30am - "Where you at?" "Home, sleeping" "You're on duty today" "I didn't sign up." "Says here you did". Leading to people taking photos of the shift sign up sheets right before the end of bidding...