Larry T
Help Wanted!!
Now Hiring: Police Officer
Are you interested in becoming part of the occupation with one of the highest suicide rates of any profession? If you choose not to kill yourself, you’ll be happy to know that a 2013 study published by the National Institutes of Health found the average life expectancy of a police officer to be 57. Does a divorce rate of almost certainty sound great to you?
Well then, once you go through an invasive and detailed background check, physiological examination, physical examination, fitness test, written test and a 6 month long (often live in) boot camp style academy, you’ll be released to the streets where uncertainty and possible death wait around every corner!
Before your first tour of duty, you can look forward to being issued used and often expired body armor that may or may not fit well but will still “probably” stop a bullet. A used firearm, sometimes 20 years old or older with no maintenance record will be what you depend upon for your life. Rest assured that more often than not your equipment will be whatever was cheapest! You will be trained to the state MINIMUM standards, gray areas will often be entered in training as your given a poorly photocopied and dated handout to read on your own time for your official training. Sometimes you will go your entire carrier without getting a refresher on some of the courses you had in the academy!
But that’s not all!
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How would you like to work 6 days on, 2 days off
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Rotate to midnights every 2 weeks
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Weekends, holidays are a must, every year
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Mandatory overtime, often with no notice!
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Court on your days off
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Natural disaster, blizzard, pandemic – forget your family, home and personal safety and get to work slacker.
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Morning and or afternoon court on your midnight rotation (Sleep??….Suck it up butter cup!)
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An entry-level police officer starts off making $31,965 per year on average in the US according to reported salaries by Indeed users! Finally get that used car from 2003 you’ve been eyeing up!
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You’ll have a split second to make a choice, but don’t fear! The Monday morning quarterbacks and Facebook lawyers will have your back and be sure to correct you with how they would have handled the situation better.
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Eating at a restaurant? – make sure to request they hold the spit, shards of glass and rat poison