Is that the one that takes place in a bar? Call me paranoid, but I cant think of a bigger threat to security than announcing an all-day active shooter drill in advance. To this day I can remember everything about Columbine and it felt like there was this huge shift that altered the rest of my school experience. And weve had a former employee fired for making death threats, who did come back to cause trouble at least once, who would know where all the exits are if he was going to do something worse, I also have been dealing with bomb threats and shooter drills since middle school. They also talked about throwing things like your chair or a pencil (?) That said, there is a little bit of the risk involved because either y, ou will end up making them feel bad or you. This LW has done THIS TYPE of drill so has met her obligation and should have no guilt or issue dropping out of this particular drill. And if my boss gave me grief about it Id jump straight to calling a lawyer. I have a perfect non-attendance record for the last 10 years of active shooter training at my firm. I was in a lockdown at a conference at a university. As someone old enough that I had to worry about this in high school and now I have to see my kid doing active shooter drills, I absolutely think people who did not grow up in a similar situation do not understand how very different it is having lived with it much of our lives. This will help you be more alert and less grumpy during drill. Less than perfectly shiny styled hair is practically a sign of leprosy. You might still be able to get them to modify how they do the drills, and who they choose to be the instructors, etc. Law enforcement continues to train others and practice drills. You do volunteer work 8. I started a new job recently, one where I wanted to impress and have significant imposter syndrome. No amount of training can mitigate the danger of letting anyone have a gun. My blood boils thinking about it. The next year they just showed a video, called Run, Hide, Fight. We started calling it Run, Hide, Die as a joke, if only because if we didnt laugh at it we would all have gone insane. Dealing with Life Events or Advice, Texts and Messaging Templates. At the time, I had an employee for whom the video would be too much. Hey [Name], Im going to stay home tonight as things just ended with [Insert Your Partners Name]. Yes, maybe some people had left for work already. Your boss is being waaaay too cavalier, he should recognize the possibility of one of his employees having already lived through a mass shooting, had family members affected in a mass shooting, or experienced shooting drills in school, even if hes not a huge mental health fanatic. We finally did get robbed. Which will be entirely true. Read More 9 Best Practices for Career Success in Your 20s, no.7 get you PromotedContinue. A few days after the drill, I heard from a coworker that several faculty were sitting together in a conference room with the door open. Maybe you can convince them to reconsider? Emergency response training can be very useful because the correct thing to do can vary for different scenarios and in different buildings (go to x interior room in a tornado, versus get out of the building via the stairwell in a fire, call campus police first and then 911 or vice versa for a medical emergency). If someone has a heart attack in my vicinity, I can call emergency services or run a few hundred yards to get the defibrillator, but someone else will have to start CPR. This is not an uncommon occurrence at my unit. I have no polite words about your boss. Im so sorry youre in this position, OP. There is zero reason to be doing this training. And I dont live in bad area.. Not minimizing the OPs fear but I relate to it. When you want to enhance your professional skills with expert-led, online video tutorials, the only place to go is LinkedIn Learning (Lynda). I grew up in the era of mass shootings. The most serious consequence of missing a drill weekend is getting drummed out of the reserves. If you have a family or work obligations that conflict with your drill weekend, there are a few ways that you can get out of it. What action should OP expect to be taken, as a result of this call? I had to sit through one video active shooter training at work several years ago, and that was bad enough. No matter how frequent people use it,this one never gets old. This LW has already had a lot of training. how do I get out of an active-shooter drill at my office? The problem is you have random, unqualified people thinking they can provide effective active shooter information when thats clearly not the case. There is a debate you can maybe find evidence of online as to whether this is effective. You're going to an important family event 2. Ive been fine since then knowing in advance it would happen and simply closing my door. Are they tenants in a building that is having this training for all businesses? But youve already established your workplace isnt likely to be reasonable. Working too much will cause you to burn out, which will be detrimental to your productivity and mental health. (And imo no child should be doing in-depth active shooter training beyond heres the exit route, heres how to lock the door, but Im not a parent and I know this stuff is tough.). Boo yeah! Getting excused from Drill? : r/army - reddit.com This site does not constitute as legal, mental, or medical health advice, please consult a competent licensed professional. Ive opted out of CPR training because I cant tolerate being on my knees for any length of time (5 seconds is my absolute maximum). There are plenty of hours in the day to work, but youll only get one chance to attend that special occasion. Same. I wanted to go to school and cared about awards. They were rushed out of the pool without their towels (not time, not with lives at stake) and had to hide in an unheated locker room for 2+ hours afterwards. What could they possibly need seven hours to cover? But if thats not the case,tell them you were here (at some distant place) to pick up some workrelatedstuff,and it will be late till you reach there. There were public safety officers walking around with labels as the shooter, and they were shooting people, meaning they were telling them that they were shot. My kids know no other world and Im sad and sick (and voting and advocating) for them. There Is Inclement Weather 9. Maybe you suggest lunch instead of drinks. I got upset, started crying, and had to ask to leave. Since its not one ofthefrequently used excuses, people are most likely to fall for it. Most mass shootings happen at schools or venues where there are a lot of people because the shooter wants notoriety. I work in a clinic that serves LGBTQ+ patients and I live in a state that is very second amendment and extremely not LGBTQ+ friendly. For context, I work at a facility that stores large quantities of hazardous materials. My dad was a teacher for 15 years (+7 as a sub) and never had to deal with an active shooter, fortunately. In that case, the advice to advance schedule a dr appointment for that day applies. Weve had active shooter trainings, but no drills in any of the universities Ive worked at (thankfully). This goes on your permanent military record and can affect your career negatively. In the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution (namely, the Bill of Rights) proclaims that all citizens have the freedom to practice their religion and that there will be no laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Jesus. What isnt so nice is leaving someone hanging or saying youll do something that you have absolutely no intention of doing. I hope it goes well, and click send. 3. It should be the same level of training they get for things like earthquakes, fires, or hazardous weather: how to recognize a situation that requires action, where you go to evacuate/shelter and what to do if a problem arises, how/who do you notify. My apartment building fails fire drills because we have false alarms EVERY GOSHDARN WEEK. Law enforcement starts working together on active shooter drillsmy organization does not add training. And just like that, my butt is covered. After much hand-wringing, the law enforcement liaison finally convinced this person not to develop such training. Anyone who schedules a 7 hour mass shooting drill is not right in their head. If you do not own a car, you might be thinking that you got to pass all the car excuses. We remembered the event very differently. I was home sick that day and watching messages pour in over our communication app on my phone; cant even imagine being there, but Ive heard similar things from coworkers. CLICK HERE to get your copy. We had a meeting with security at our clinic because now we are also a target. We didnt find out until later in the day that it was staged. Like, the drill should be a relatively calm way to practice and build some muscle memory to rely on in case the thing happens. I always break down and cry when they get to the part where it tells you to, if need be, abandon your patients so that you can save yourself and live to help others later. we had to watch those run-hide-fight videos at the old job and the entire time Im like how is this going to work for us. I am not sure why the school wanted you to do this, but the drills are a regular thing for Emergency Services. You Have a Doctor's Appointment 3. You are attending a religious event 4. I choked up reading that and I have no kids and am not in the US. Im sorry. We had emergency drill training (which did include a segment on active shooters), and from the get go there were multiple training options presented. Re-traumatizing everyone is just so very much not the answer here to any of this. Most units require at least a month notice, but the sooner the better when it comes to requesting to be excused from drill. Just remember, an employer or client doesn't have to accept these excuses. This is especially true if you have school-aged children. Can confirm, this works well. Im so thankful I dont go to that mall anyway; now I have yet another reason to avoid it. This means that a significant proportion of the volunteer labor force comes from people who are already occupied with paid labor elsewhere. Ive found most team building exercises to be futile for their supposed purpose anyway. Call out sick LW. Its probably the post practical workplace safety training Ive had since the generic mass produced run-hide-fight videos are worthless in a real situation. We had one on site drill each year that was conducted by security. And a huge waste of time too. So is drill. 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. My high school teachers kept hammers and baseball bats in the classrooms and told us where they were when we did ALICE days. And hiding or fighting is just not in the cards. None of these excuses should be used regularly, because inevitably the second you say you need time off for dental work because you have a job interview, you then also need time off for dental work. Two toddlers during Sandy Hook. Works a treat every. The vultures swoop in when a shooting takes place, pretending to offer support as they build their trauma resumes and then move on to profit from death, offering lockdown training and recovery services. Nope. Repeated training hones the reflex actions needed in terrible situations. That's fine. There is no excuse for him to be joking about this, calling you names or otherwise mistreating you. 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. www.boxingaddictions.net > Blog > Uncategorized > excuses to get out of drill weekend. The self advocacy takes its own toll. It was horrendous to experience. Parents regularly talk about sending their kids with headphones so they can plug them in and divert the alarms to something much less likely to be overheard in the event of an active shooter situation. An online training video should be an acceptable alternative. 4 You have religious obligations . Just in case. What Not to Say: "I miss my spouse." What to Say: "That sounds like so much fun, but unfortunately, I have a date night scheduled. My direct boss fought it and tried to get me excused, but her boss was firm that it was required. If she calls out sick, she can just insist Im sick; cant come in regardless of what the boss says. They dont even have scissors at their desks. These are typically held one weekend per month, and they can last anywhere from 8 to 12 hours. [M]onkey. (ex. Hes a nice person but has very deeply entrenched ideas about mental health, anxiety, young people, and triggers, and I dont want to have to disclose my own mental health diagnoses to him, make him think Im simply not tough enough to handle it, or come across like a millennial snowflake, etc.. I think state law might require us to do x number a year. Question about Army Reserve - skipping out on drill Children. Question regarding missing drill weekend. Seven hours at work, doing not-work how much of a backlog will there be the next day? You Have a Home Delivery or Are Moving 12. This is your time to show that you are the best and that you can definitely take the weekends off and enjoy the weekend. If you do work full time or have family obligations and work part-time, you can only study in the evening and on weekends. I mean, it had a helicopter so that the cops could bill the school board or the city for helicopter deployment. As an Australian, I cannot fathom living life like this. I also grew up in the earlier era of school shootings, before they did things like training for kids. According to the United States Census Bureau, around 13 million workers in the United States have more than one job. Id develop a migraine toward the end of the day before and call in the next day. There are many reasons why you might just not want to work on the weekend, such as: In this instance, you can propose a better alternative. And leaving them alone would be a big question mark to the whole face of humanity. We never needed to do it more often than that, and I am so thankful we never needed to do any other type of drill. LW didnt really mention it as an option, though, so Im wondering if both her PTO and Sick leave is limited. If your employer or client asks why you can't or don't want to work on the weekends, you are not obligated to provide a reason. Id been through a training so I found the safest (not safe, safest) spot in the room and went to it. As the first step in run-hide-fight, you totally should call in sick, say you are running. by A.C is the editor-in-chief & career development expert who writes about real-world career advice on job search, interviews, career success, and hiring the right people for the team. want their party blessed by the presence of these little party wreckers. Cookie Notice Ive been participating in active shooter drills since high school, know about run-hide-fight, and have friends who have lost siblings to gun violence. Empowering for LW, maybe. My boss, who is also the only person to whom I report (no grand-boss applicable), is much older, which I mention because I think hes just coming at this training from a totally different perspective. 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. I think it varies both person to person and generationally. The prurient excitement exhibited by those conducting the trainingsand folks like OPs bossis a sickness in our society. Criminals have bad aim and bullets dont discriminate. All-day training puts it in a very different category. A friend from high school was sentenced to life in prison for committing one of the first, and worst, workplace shootings in Massachusetts. (Joking, of course, but trying to make a point.) Not sure if you can find information about it in English, but here in Japan we have frequent fire and earthquake drills; there is also a very loud and scary alert that goes from the earthquake detection center to your cell phone. Oh my! Wanted to add that I agree the real problem is in the proliferation of guns and the lawlessness favored bycertain politicians. So long that the lights went out. Ive been through multiple safety courses (as in, semester long professional courses, not one-day training) and I still froze with a phone in my hand the one time I had to do it for real. In the past 10 years, both employees and employers have recognized the importance of fostering a work-life balance. The site ate my previous post, so Ill do a shorter version. We also have a conscript army, which means that the vast majority of young men and an increasing number of women who volunteer learn to use firearms appropriately. I still dont see any reason to simulate a real event that thoroughly. For many of us, a side hustle allows us to: If you have the passion, stamina, and ability to have a successful side hustle, having your weekends free to pursue it is a legitimate excuse to avoid weekend work. That sounds wildly excessive thats the kind of time spend on drills for issues you deal with every day, like chemical release training at a chemical storage facility. It demystifies mindfulness and shows you the many simple ways to be mindful while carrying on with your life. But the elderly retired people didnt evacuate, even the ones who can do stairs. I am tired and frustrated that my unit has decided to disrespect my schedule and time. CLICK HERE to get your copy from Book Depository. Do they set real fires for a fire drill? Please save yourself from living through a trauma unnecessarily. Because when you get out of working on the weekends, someone else will take your place. 3. (This shooting range has since gone on to have neo-Nazi ties and host fundraising events with certain family members of certain politicians.