Look after yourself. So to me, everyone should have to go thru emergency drills of some sort as our part to reduce our burden on emergency responders. Happy Me time! I would push WAY back on this, simply because theres no agenda. You are going to cause someone mental anguish for little if any payoff in this situation. If you needed proof that these idiots have not clue, this is it. cristina's restaurant salsa recipe. When I voiced my concerns, he made a few jokes about how he would simply redirect the shooter to a younger person.. Calm is author Fearne Cotton's mission to find the simple things that can inch us away from stress and over to the good stuff. For staff, we simply review our active shooter policy at our annual inservice which mostly amounts to lock-down and hide and pray. What are the best (fake) excuses you've ever used to get out of - Quora First thought was to call in sick. I didnt want to go to the active shooter training (not a drill, a presentation) but went anyway to be a team player. What action should OP expect to be taken, as a result of this call? If you play dumb Yeah, I dunno man, it came out of nowhere youll have them feeling sorry for you and totally fine about cancelling. A headache isntsevere enough to render you useless for a long period of time but its bad enough that itll get you out of a social engagement. When staff brought this and other safety concerns to upper management, these were brushed away, even though 1) they hired the trainer to come and say these things, and 2) we had violent threats and probably at least 1 or 2 lockdowns per year. If you have an awkward situation that youd like example templates for, request a topic here. Interestingly, this attitude has prevailed even at the two urban campuses Ive worked at where gunfire outside is a not-entirely-uncommon occurrence. So yes, after a while you realize not much will change and there is nothing you can do about it and you dont understand why people dont careand you never see any photos of dead children so it is almost theoretical and what can you do so you just get numb. Ever. No joke, they slipped and fell WHILE managing a video shoot for a safety video, resulting in yet another work comp claim.) excuses to get out of drill weekend Follow us. Im not sure I agree with Hes a nice person.. Is it a valid excuse to miss national guard drill if I go to - Quora And your supervisor is totally wrong about saying that you cant handle it and are weak. In some cases, your civilian employer may not be able to release you for drill weekends or summer training due to business needs . Oh my! I am well into Gen X and we did an active shooter training and I hated every moment of it. You have a work conflict . There is a huge possibility that they wont remember asking you later in the hustle of all the guests,and in case they do, pick up any otherexcuse from this list. by Im so sorry, OP. Also want to say: I hear that there are differences between younger folks experience and us middle aged people who grew up prior to mass school shootings being so frequent. I worked in a call center. Alerting system for all employees and associated people created. Be sure to provide your commanding officer with the note as soon as possible. Just flat out no. The trainings I have had have been locally-created garbage not based on evidence. . Call in sick. 3) (last resort) try to take down the shooter. Its a 5-7 minute trip (if youre sprinting) to the nearest building with one of those. We do this because it means that most of our friends and loved ones will not have work obligations and will be able to attend and share the event with us. No job is worth your life. I would totally wake up with a migraine that day and never feel bad for a moment. I guess they need more real time training.. Im almost 24. Generally youre not asked to disclose why youre opting out. In cases like your school its more important that the adults know what to do than showing kids what to do/where to go. Ive been a high school teacher and used to absolutely dread the mandatory yearly training on school shootings we do in the week before school begins. There you go. Yes. Seven hours is unbelievable, but sounds more like a training event for the police than your workplace. What if theyre going to do it several times? I hope youre well. What a jerk. I mean, there are so many reasonable and sensible and logical ways to respond to being told to toughen up, and theyre all better than this, but sometimes If youre making me do this I want it in writing that when I forget this is a drill and deck somebody you pay my legal bills and I dont face any disciplinary action whatsoever is the way to their dear little dinosaur brains. Im so grateful to live in a country where this isnt a thing. Nope, apparently were supposed to magically ignore our actual needs as well as whether you can actually do any of this running and hiding in the building/area we work in. A person can seem nice on the surface without actually being a truly caring and empathetic person. Also, your boss is a horses ass. and if i got any pushback id say it was a mental health day. I really hope this changes some day in the US. Start documenting everything. Doesnt matter that the only reason that day is the only day available is because you told the office to schedule it only on that day. william lancaster obituary; how to open aegis bait station without key; rooms for rent in trenton, nj; Hello world! LWs boss is nuts. I would say that the same principles apply as the LW. They also handwaved off the fact that we work in a giant glass fishbowl and cant remotely lock the doors like you can with many other buildings on campus. About two months later I quit that job, but because I really liked most of my coworkers, I sometimes went there and bought a sub or a burger on my way home from college. Criminals have bad aim and bullets dont discriminate. And thats not even including all the training around dealing with bomb threat callers, with angry patients/family members, with weapons, with baby/child abduction, etc. But I like a little theatre. While participating in this @#$% drill would be doubly-triply horrible for you, it is not good for anyones mental health and, as Alison mentioned, most likely wouldnt do any good. I am sorry that you have to go through the process of saying noit should not be that hard to opt out and if they push back, it is wrong on so many levels. (They literally had us hiding in our offices while the public was still in our spaces creating a safety hazard while doing safety training!) Theres always That Guy who feels the need to comment. It gets so much worse! The last time we had an active shooter drill, HR neglected to tell emergency services that it was only a drill. Heres my example: I was working the midnight shift in a chain retail pharmacy. 30 Good Reasons To Call Out Of Work - Rigorous Themes Call in sick, OP, please. We then had a staff meeting to discuss their concerns and a number of my staff expressed anxiety about mass shootings, workplace shootings, and what their kids went through with drills at school. Im a boomer and if I can understand I dont know what your bosss problem is. Its not as full on as what the OP saying, theres no law enforcement or reenactment. A peer/fellow manager can say things in a much more direct way than you might be comfortable with doing with your own boss because of the power dynamics in play. or is there something unique about this type of training? If youre super close with them, theyll probably just laugh and say theyll catch you later. I am lucky in that my dean is sympathetic. Which is even stupider than forcing everyone to do active shooter training in the first place. Unfortunately I really doubt the boss is going to be at all receptive to having his eyes open, just based on the description of him. As a side comment, if you have not yet sought out a mental health professional who is experienced in dealing with PTSD, you may wish to explore that at some point. Im sort of lucky, in a way, because the school I work at is a non-public school serving children with Autism and Intellectual Disability. Absences from the Reserves - GI Rights Hotline Id like to nominate this man for worst boss of the year for this sentence ALONE. When my grandkid was 5 their school was involved with an active shooter, luckily, it was resolved fairly quickly, but thinking about how it could have happened still makes me shake. Large auditorium. An excuse thatshuts down anypossible follow up questions. OP, Im sorry you have to deal with this. I hope LW is able to realize his insensitivity is plenty of cause for reconsidering her stance on him and using all her effort to pushback on such terrible behavior from him. Ive found most team building exercises to be futile for their supposed purpose anyway. Be on your best behaviour: Another thing you can try doing is being on your best behaviour. A text like this will save you up from any long unnecessarydetails, especially if you cant come up with any other genuine sounding excuses at that moment. I already deal with the anxiety on a daily basis; I dont need someone pointing it out in a tasteless joke. If you look at the links other commenters have posted, theres actually little evidence that making people go through traumatic active shooter drills teaches them anything that they can put in practice if it really happens, so the usefulness of these drills is questionable at best. Im a teacher and have been in charge of children during these drills. This LW has already had a lot of training. Her eyelids dont SPARKLE today! I think state law might require us to do x number a year. So our poor security guard is stuck with trying to clear the error before the fire department responds. OP, go to your primary care provider. Perhaps it is the most powerful excuse and totally legit, but just imagine how lame you sound when your . Ours was a few days long, they played a sound over the PA every [whatever number of minutes it is that someone dies from drunk driving], and they staged the crash on the football field and made us all go look. She was very kind about it, didnt even make me use my leave for it, and sent me info to our EAP. But I was wondering how can reasonable accomodations include opting out of mandatory safety related training? We hope that these excuses will help you get some much needed you time. he is not a nice guy. There were two separate school shootings in my district in the time frame that I was middle school through high school. -Get together with some friends and head to the range. Sorry, I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come follows author Jessica Pan's hilarious and painful year of misadventures in extroverting, reporting back from the frontlines for all the introverts out there. I would not be able to control my instinctual reaction to a fake shooter. Whether or not your weekend work is a regularly scheduled shift or some overtime thanks to work that was not completed during the week, asking for time off to attend an important family event is perfectly justifiable. Hey really curious, since I am in a tangentially related field; is the same true for fire drills, earthquake drills, etc. My 18 year old brother called me in a panic because his girlfriend was in one of the buildings they thought the shooter was in, and Im pretty sure the panic in his voice is going to stay with me for the rest of my life.