It’s Jeff. SCFD’s greatest meme and FFA’s best™.
Also the Director of Operations for the NASA Oxford-Firestone Program, with NASA FFA as a subsidiary. See the paragraphs posted below for details.
If you’ve been keeping up with FFA for the last few days, read on. If not, you should probably leave before you think I’m a zealous 
igheaded bigot. Or you could just keep reading. I can’t stop you.
can i just add real quick that the program thought that “DHS getting Spike Strips” was a very similar topic?
can someone look into that? maybe? … k
As some of you will steadily be learning in the coming days, CTO JJKingdom of the FFA announced his retirement during the graduation of FFA Class 2018-7. As such, he met with Mack to pick his successor, which was former TO iiPentagramz.
Now, I’m not writing this because I’m butthurt.
… what the hell am i saying, I’m on here for a reason, so I’d best spill my guts out.
Call me butthurt, call me envious, call me jealous, whatever you want. I personally simply feel that I’ve been cheated out of the system, out of an opportunity that could have been great for everybody in the long term.
Yes, I’m butthurt, but I’m butthurt for the right reasons.
Hiring a lesser experienced Training Officer instead of myself- I’ve been here for six months. SIx months. Meanwhile, you’re out there promoting people that haven’t even been in our staff for four, much less two, and come completely unprepared to the table.
I may sound like I’m looking for power, but, let’s be honest, I haven’t pulled a Clyde or Southern. yet. there’s always the chance, keep that in mind, toodeloo.
First. Most obvious. I’m, quite literally, the only remaining original Training Staff member. Ever since the Fire Academy was restarted roughly six months ago, we’ve been through four Chief Training Officers; CaptainClyde, who got us up and running before he backstabbed everyone, Ryefred (i’m not even gonna try to guess his name, they’re all practically the same), who… practically did nothing, JJKingdom, who, while he had some moderate downsides, did fairly good during his time here, and the fresh-off-the-boat iiPentagramz.
Besides Clyde, everyone on that list came after my time. Pent even reminded me that I was a Junior Training Officer while he was an Applicant. An Applicant.
And what with everyone else from the original staff having quit, retired, or moved on to other work, whether in Firestone or out of it, that leaves me as practically the most experienced training staff member. Except now I still have to take the backseat while (no offense, but it’s still going to happen) Pent and JJ take the credit for instituting the new policies and ideas that I’ve been working on and discussing for the last three months.
Just a great way to see your work fly out the window and go under another person’s name, instead of, you know, actually being recognized for it.
Second, a majority of FFA agrees that I’d honestly make a good candidate for CTO. I was, for a moment, Mack’s second choice behind JJ for CTO. A majority of those in FFA who have remained with us, as students, graduates, or certified members, commonly agree that I have the experience to work as CTO.
Pent and Dr_PhantomSCPF (who I call “Bright” because SCP, bb) even started an unofficial “#Jeff4CTO” campaign while they were JTOs.
no joke, it was friggin hilarious, except for that one time bright submitted a nomination to the grammies on my behalf. now that was too far, brotha.
I’ve been through FFA for every single phase of its new life, and I’ve compiled the inner workings of the Academy inside my head (to write it down on paper would be quite too much subconscious information that couldn’t be reached). Why would we just dump all that for one of the newer generation, lesser experienced Training Officers?
It’s like the Sergeant Major in a military canteen. You see the new youngsters, the kiddie officers fresh out of West Point, rising up through the ranks, but you don’t really go anywhere at all. You’re the most experienced guy in the club, yet the most they’ve done is promoted you to SGM, and left you there instead of recognizing you and maybe giving that boost up to Lieutenant.
Third, speaking of my policies. I had a whole Five Point Plan that I borrowed from my homeboy Stalin back in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that I would have implemented had I gotten CTO. Now, I’m not going to disclose any of that information on here, but it’s adept enough to the point where we would have seen some really quick changes in FFA.
JJ worked quick on his feet and managed to get a basic plan going. Pent, however, had literally no idea he was going to get promoted, and as such pretty much had to fall back on me for ideas. Well, go team. Next time, pick General Eisenhower.
And while I’m still on the topic of changes, I’d like to point out the horrible state FFA’s being left in. Classes have steadily declined in activity. The Training Staff have internal drama, and are often immature, both on Discord and at the Training Campus, even during class. We’ve been getting lower and lower quality students, even with the enrollment application; I swear to god, one of them even told me he was a paramedic for Mano County. The curriculum for the academy may have been upgraded, but what use is a new curriculum if your students are going to be the stupidest people on the planet?
Fourth, I’ve been doing the lion’s share of the work around FFA, seen or unseen. The Discord has to be managed and maintained while the CTO and Director are away, people have to be roled, ranked, they have to have certifications updated, I have to check and double check people’s certifications, I have to deal with the Training Staff when they get out of hand, I have to deal with the people in the Discord when they get out of hand, I have to answer the stupidest questions on Earth in DMs (“how to send enrollment app” “where is enrollment app” “why can i not send enrollment app” “how to become applicant” “my exam hasn’t been read” “my app hasn’t been read” “random question that doesn’t pertain to the role i play in FFA so i should probably tell the chief training officer but i’m asking you so answer me”); like friggin’ Lord of the Flies in my inbox.
Plus, with every new Junior Training Officer, we need people to supervise them, and I’ve done my part in standing around a room for one to two hours while I could be somewhere else and doing something else and instead I’m just bingeing Wendover Productions videos over here.
Fifth. What I’m going to say is extremely controversial, but it’s a view that I know quite a percentage of people share.
FFA is dying. The points I’ve said above are enough.
- Internal drama in the Training Staff.
- Immaturity among the Training Staff.
- Training Staff are inactive.
- Students are inactive. We didn’t even get up to our tier limits this class.
- Incoming students are low quality.
- Enrollment applications are building up in a large queue.
- General interest has steadily waned. There’s no statistics, but we’ve felt it.
Lemme do a number crunch real quick. As of the time that this message was written (0306Z EST 8/2/18), there are 847 people in the Firestone Fire Academy group.
1 Founder, 1 Director, 2 CTOs, 3 Training Officers, 13 Junior Training Officers, 44 FFA Certified members, which makes a total of only 64 people.
There are only 783 actual students, and out of that, 606 of them are Pending Enrollment, which means they aren’t even students at all.
Quikk maffs says that only 177 people are actual students.
In a percentage, that means a good 77.4% of the 847 people in FFA are just filler, and the only actual students that make up FFA are just 20.9%. Talk about a disparity.
Top that all off with the knowledge that we’ve had the most unstable last few months. Ryefred comes in, stays for who knows how long, leaves. JJ gets appointed, stays, gets held up because the Training Staff infuriates him over ‘roblox is lego’, and decides to resign, and now we have Pent.
Where the fuck are we going, what the fuck are we going to do, and are we going to make it through the rest of the damn year?
We could have fixed all these problems. We could have taken time out to get all the enrollment applications finished, we could have started one last full-month class before launching into this new experiment I had in mind, we could have hired better people for our Training Staff, ensured that our students were actually quality and not cancerous tumor growths from Mano County and other wannabe SCFDs and fire department groups, we could have ensured that our Training Staff was top notch and probably even could have been a model for POST instructors to follow (not calling you guys out, just saying, we do have that ability, prove us wrong by all means), instead of- and I’m going to be brutally honest right now- hiring the lesser-experienced, unprepared, unexpectedly promoted Pent, who’s literally using me as his stepping stone. We could have made 
FFA 
great 
again. 
WE’RE GOING TO BUILD A YUGE WALL hold on wait not here
“I’m sure JJ and Mack had their reasons for not wanting to choose your power hungry ass who would have possibly ruined FFA had you been instated into office.” Yeah. Like me running a space program.
I actually do have a working Saturn V, except… it… doesn’t work as intended.
if you can script filteringenabled please contact me i’m only very preliminary in that field you won’t get paid because i’m broke but you’ll do the modern day NASA budget a giant favor
Couple pointers there.
- I was actually JJ’s runnerup for the CTO position when Ryefred retired, except I had been promoted to Medical Operations Captain earlier that same day, and, as this was the fallout from Clyde r/absolutelymurdering the SCFD, Mack wanted to take it easy on me, lest I turned tail and backstabbed everyone as well, so he decided to hand it off to JJ, who was only a Paramedic in Charge. I could have handled the stresses.
- Mack more than likely only got what little information he did regarding me (and probably the rest of FFA) from JJ himself. Seeing as I’m no more than just another pawn on the board, there’s no reason to pay attention to me at all. Most of the time, the brass reports directly to the brass, and the command staff is left in the dust. So, of course JJ would be in a position to weed me out of the spot, especially because I’m what he determines to be ‘immature’.
- Again. Most experienced. Had a plan, even though I didn’t say I had one, of course I’d keep one on hand. Popular public opinion. Exactly what was the problem holding me back?
Previously stated “immaturity”.
“You’re immature?”
According to JJ and Mack, yes.
For overediting/ “overdevving” the campus classrooms for my students so that they’d be in a more comfortable environment than being under the bright light and stresses of sitting in a compact classroom. For actually being a human being to my students and allowing them to be free and talking instead of being shut up and always sitting down.
For actually trying to make sure they understood the information being taught while having a teacher that was both fun yet had his mind on the proper goal at hand, and ensured that they knew the goal as well.
And, as the students and staff have consistently told me time and again over the last few classes, for being the most relatable and “best” Training Officer they’ve had.
For those of you who’re in POST and who’ll more than likely say “But it’s a serious classroom environment, we’re teaching people here,” need I remind you that FFA isn’t a police or military academy. It’s a fire academy, for civilians, who practically stay civilians even while on the job. Additionally, it’s not like my methods of teaching haven’t been negative- a good five class speakers out of the last three classes came from tiers I taught with my own style, ever since we began getting class speakers not that long ago.
Mack says that my “FFA space program” was the pinnacle of my immaturity that was the swaying factor for choosing Pent. Well, Mack, if you want to see actual immaturity, head down to the campus while we have some of the more immature JTOs down there. You’d love to see what they do to each other with OC and tasers _during class sessions. I’d love to see what Pent decides to do about it, because, while I’m not necessarily saying he did it to the extent they did, he was one of them. Plus, that space program can’t be counted, because it was never under the jurisdiction of FFA anyways. I can make a few references to it being “NASA FFA” here and there, but you should have the brain cells to know that in the end, it’s really nothing, and that it boils down to what the person’s capable of, not what they’re currently doing, to get the job done.
Compare this to Pent, who’s been screwing around these last few days, even as we’ve wrapped up the classes. The last thing we need is for the head role model of FFA to just whip out a haligan and start butting people in the sides with it.
Compare this to the Training Staff, who chase each other around doing things that would normally be considered criminal offenses (but I’m pretty sure the big POST campus case solved that a few months back).
There is a fine line between professionalism with leniency and immaturity. I know where the line is, and I know where to stop. Unfortunately, there’s people who believe that the line stops where it only begins, and for those people, I can’t tell them anything but “get a sense of humor”. This is one of those cases.
A space program that practically isn’t even going to be really part of the Academy itself pales in comparison to just what other people have done. Overediting a classroom pales in comparison to not being able to teach students with quality material by a quality education system. And I can’t even think of a reason why- not to sound like I’m bragging, but I’m clearly bragging- someone as experienced as myself would pale in comparison to someone as unexperienced as Pent in this field.
These last few months in FFA have really honed my idea for resignation. I’ve realized that it’s now a shell of what it was back in February, or even later in the year, like April. The interest in firefighting and paramedicine has slowly died, with more people opting to go for POST and the fun-filled world of law enforcement. We’ve gotten worse students that have really torn the staff’s hair out, especially mine. Many of the people I knew have moved on, replaced by younger yet more inexperienced members that act like they’re ten. What with SCFD itself not getting any updates or better materials or equipment anytime soon, combined with the building realization that I’m practically considered useless- despite my experience, despite my work, despite how much effort I’ve put in and want to put in for FFA- and the fact that the big push for Stapleton; V3, will only be coming out in an undisclosed amount of time, I honestly feel like I’m not wanted here anymore.
"You said you’d always be there for me. But you’re not."
And it’s not because of me, it’s because of you.
I’m not necessarily saying that the decline in FFA has been a result of the work of the past Chief Training Officers, neither am I saying that it necessarily isn’t. It’s just that we’ve been profoundly unstable during these last few months, and the fact that we’re just hiring lesser experienced people over the people that actually matter simply because of small stuff is just beating me over the head. It says a lot about what people think of me, and it says a lot about the direction FFA’s going to go if a miracle doesn’t happen.
To Pent and JJ, if you’re reading this. I respect both of you as good people. You do your jobs, you do them well, but it’s just that I personally feel that I deserve a good, proper chance. Not sitting on the sidelines letting people going “oh, jeff made that happen, grats jeff” only because you see one or two things that’re wrong that’ll seemingly screw an entire necessity over. There’s at least an infinite amount of things more satisfying, and an infinite amount of things less satisfying, than sitting back, looking over your work, and being patted on the back by the people you’re working for and working with for making such a spectacle happen. I want to be there when I get the recognition I’ve been working for these last several months, and to leave would mean it would all be a waste without satisfaction.
I feel that I’ve been let down far too many times for small, minuscule, honestly bullshit reasons, putting time and actual effort into a group that’s just denied and disappointed me time after time, and has steadily gotten worse and worse.
Lock the thread if you have to, if you feel it’s too controversial, if I broke a guideline somewhere, whatever. But I want to get this off my chest, and I want to get the message out.
~ jef
Oh, and before you try to think I’m going to change, here’s a pic.
Because this is me. This is the style I use. This is how I teach my classes, and how I work here. And I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.
tl;dr go back and read for the full effect, what, you thought i was gonna be nice on here?