What do you do when you get fired?...

Here's what I did: Came home and told my wife, had a good cry together, ate a "just got fired" breakfast (scrambled eggs, a day old cinnamon roll, and Eggo waffles), taught Sunday School AND Elders Quorum, ate a tasty Sunday dinner of Lasagna and French bread, and watched Titanic with my wonderful wife.

Yep, I got fired. Technically, I "resigned in lieu of being terminated," but let's call a spade a spade. I had just started my first night of my second week of "prescription training," following the big endorsement by my first phase trainer. However, as I said in my "70 hour week" blog, this new trainer hadn't seen how far I'd come, and only saw how far I yet had to go. Anyway, about half way through the night he gave me "the talk." He basically said that a lot of people were concerned with my progress and needed to see some significant improvement this week. He said that he had seen some improvement, but that I really needed to pick it up or else my time may be up. He then reminded me that police work isn't for everyone and that there is not any shame in walking away if my heart wasn't in it, but quickly clarified that he wasn't saying I should quit. I had already made up my mind that I was not going to quit, and believe me, I had thought about it a lot of times during these eight weeks.

So we went out and worked the rest of the night. We ended up arresting this guy for R&O (resisting and obstructing officers) downtown when he kept getting in our face and wouldn't back down while we were interviewing his brother. A few hours later I pulled a suspicious car over and found the two brothers inside. The one had just bailed out of jail and his brother had just picked him up. That was pretty funny, but they were good natured about the whole thing. I really tried to do a lot of the things that my new trainer had talked to me about on that traffic stop to show him I could apply his training into my work. I thought I did pretty well, especially considering I'd totally fumbled a traffic stop earlier that night. However, when I asked him how it went, boy did he go on and on. "You didn't see the bullets in the ash tray. You didn't get your spotlight in the right place. You failed to update your location. You didn't control their movements upon re-approach. You didn't have your flashlight in your hand upon re-approach..." and so on. The shift was winding down so he told me to head back to the station so I could write up my reports and he could work on my evaluation report for the night.

About an hour and a half later, Sgt. Christensen, one of the sergeants I had worked with during training, appeared behind me in a dress shirt and tie and asked me to come speak with him. He took me into an office where I saw Lt. Plott, the Lt. over the field training program, sitting. Lt. Plott, whom I had never spoken to before, I had heard of previously several times when I had been getting a talking to from one person or another about my lack of progress. This wasn't going to be good. I sat down and Lt. Plott said to me, "I heard you had a rough night last night." I thought to myself, "It wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad." But then I realized that given my situation, "wasn't that bad" was not what they were looking for from me. Gulp.

Lt. Plott and Sgt. Christensen explained that they had been following my progress reports, speaking to my trainers, and that they hadn't seen the amount of progress they needed to see to keep me on. They explained that they had to make a responsible decision at some point regarding my safety, the well-being of my family, and the safety of the other officers at the department. Then they said that they were offering me the chance to resign. It was pretty surreal. It's like all of my time in training was flashing before my eyes:

- The mornings when I got home after getting yelled at for what seemed like 10 hours straight by Officer Nicholls.
- The times when I sat in my car or in my chair at home, thinking to myself, "I really want to quit." But then realizing that the pain and stress of my job would pale in comparison to the pain and stress of unemployment.
- The stress, the stress, the stress.
- Feeling like a fraud failure and making the same mistakes over and over again.
- Getting those knots in my stomach and feeling my heart starting to race as the hours counted down before my next shift.
- Not wanting to go to bed on my days off (in spite of being so, so tired) because that would mean I was one day closer to going back to work.
- Working nights. That stuff will shave years off your life (or so I hear).

Don't worry, I had some really good times too. But I have to admit that I kind of felt a little sliver of relief as I sat there, being fired. In fact, I was proud of myself for sticking with it until I got fired, rather than quitting all of those many times that I wanted to. I took it like a man, kept a positive attitude, and really tried my best. I also thought about a few of those nights when I came home from work, picked up my baby boy, looked at my wife, and felt a massive, crushing fear, guilt, and sadness of what would happen to my family if I didn't come home one day.


So I wrote my resignation letter, turned in my badge and gun, and drove home to my family. I walked in and saw Mitzi and Corbin sitting on the couch. Like she always did, not knowing if I had an awful night or not, Mitzi waited for a minute and then cautiously asked me, "How was your night?" I looked at her and said, "I'm not a police officer anymore." She put the baby down and called me over to sit with her and we hugged and cried for a few minutes. Then, she made me a fabulous "just got fired" breakfast and we talked about all of the silver linings we could see. I realized that for now, the main thing I was really going to miss about this job (besides the paycheck, of course) was the three day weekends. That was a sweet gig. Mitzi said how she had been wanting to tell me for some time that she would support me looking for a different job, after seeing what a toll this one was taking on me, but held her peace as a way of showing her support. All in all, I think things will be alright.

So that's the story. If any of you have job ideas or connections in the Boise area, we'll be looking.