Free teas / coffees for on a shout firefighters?

[Troubleatmill]

poo at Paul's said:

long story

Hats off

[AlexC1981]

This reminds me of when I was a teenager working in Sainsbury's bakery. A bloke wandered up with a little kid and asked if he could let his son have a doughnut out of the bag before paying for it because his son was a diabetic and needed a sugar dose.

I could have lectured him about his poor planning, but fortunately I wasn't a twerp

[gothatway]

Rick101 said:

I'm fairly local and I suspect this is bullst.

A more likely story is a woman walked into McDonalds and demanded drinks for the firefighters expecting it to be free. Chinese whispers and all and now it is all over Facebook with all the council types sticking their beak in.

Point to note, just off the top of my head I can think of at least twelve other outlets serving hot drinks between the site of the fire and that particular McDonalds.

I was wondering this. IIRC the article said they walked a mile to the other end of the retail park. a) that's a big park and b) there are surely other outlets nearer.

[Badda]

poo at Paul's said:

Always seems just a bit backward to me. They've all lost loved ones, but for some reason the public seem to place more weight on the life of a policeman who's paid and trained to take such risks, than the tourists that lose it all in an instant, who have no such support, training etc.

He chose a life which was inherently more risky than most in order to help people. If you don't understand why people empathise with his family more than the families of foreign nationals here on holiday, then I suspect you're some way, quite far along, the autistic spectrum.

[Sheepshanks]

gothatway said:

Rick101 said:

I'm fairly local and I suspect this is bullst.

A more likely story is a woman walked into McDonalds and demanded drinks for the firefighters expecting it to be free. Chinese whispers and all and now it is all over Facebook with all the council types sticking their beak in.

Point to note, just off the top of my head I can think of at least twelve other outlets serving hot drinks between the site of the fire and that particular McDonalds.

I was wondering this. IIRC the article said they walked a mile to the other end of the retail park. a) that's a big park and b) there are surely other outlets nearer.

Maybe the gear has changed, but my dad was a fireman and you really wouldn't want to do a 2 mile round trip walk in fire-boots.

[Jasandjules]

You know I used to think when I read the "notes" left on ambulances that they were fake, but reading some of the replies on here I guess they may well be true after all.

[rambo19]

Must admit, I don't see why they should get free tea/coffee, how far do you go with it? police officers/nurses/paramedics/soldiers etc etc.

Just imagine the manager of mc'ds gave them free tea, fire service put a tweet out saying thank you, someone further up the mc'ds ladder then wants to know why manager is giving away free tea.

However, if mc'ds gave them free tea without the firefighters asking for it, that is different, the firefighters should not EXPECT it.

On a slightly simular note, I was in a cafe on the south coast a few weeks back, and there was a sign that on duty police/ambulance could go straight to the front of the queue, which I thought was nice.

[djc206]

Jasandjules said:

You know I used to think when I read the "notes" left on ambulances that they were fake, but reading some of the replies on here I guess they may well be true after all.

No one here is resentful or rude like the bellends who leave notes on ambulances they just don’t think that people should be able to go around demanding free things just because of the job they do. If free things are given to them by people including myself then great, that should be actively encouraged, it should not however be enforced, that’s not how goodwill works.

[DoubleD]

When you are in one of the services getting free stuff is nice, but you should never expect it.

[Greendubber]

DoubleD said:

When you are in one of the services getting free stuff is nice, but you should never expect it.

Exactly.

[Glasgowrob]

this whole story has more holes than your average teabag.

but still

both sides are utter nuggets


Fire service for being ill prepared. a case of bottled water in a wagon is not exactly the height of forethought.

Mcdonalds for dropping themselves in a publicity st storm for the sake of goods that have a cost value of pennies.

any retail outlet with half a brain on that retail park would have seen the fire fighters there for a more than an hour and sent a couple of visibly uniformed staff members over making sure to walk clearly past any assembled press or the phone wielding brigade and for the sake of £20-30 won the ultimate in free advertising.

fire service sound like some disorganised Boy Scouts rather than a professionally managed rescue service if they can't organise for someone to run some supplies down from the station. christ the brass could have done some serious winning of hearts and minds by even taking a couple of flasks and some sarnies down to the lads on the front line. nothing builds a solid working team and comradery than looking after basic needs

[Rick101]

I can't really be arsed to dig into the detail of the story but I am aware the reporting is a lot of allegedly and reportedly, even on the BBC news article.

Also from the article
Steve Brown, a crew manager at North Yorkshire Fire Service, wrote: "I was one of the firefighters there last night, thank you to the lady and young man who brought us the teas and coffees, really appreciated."


BROUGHT not bought. Which suggests that the firefighters may have been at the fire site and not a mile away eating chicken nuggets.


In reply to the earlier question. Other closer outlets are
Tenpin
Vue cinema
Wilkinsons cafe
Tescos cafe
Costa
Tescos garage
Burger King
KFC
Francie & Bennies
Harvester
Chiquitos
Flying Legends pub

If you had no money and were full gear would you really walk past all these places to a different site around 20 min away in the hope of getting a free drink
Im not sure it even happened. People love to make this sort of thing up and get on a high horse about it.

[tim0409]

rambo19 said:

Just imagine the manager of mc'ds gave them free tea, fire service put a tweet out saying thank you, someone further up the mc'ds ladder then wants to know why manager is giving away free tea.

I suspect the management of McDonalds would have been delighted; if the scenario was indeed that they had walked a mile to get a coffee for their colleagues who were fighting a fire and didn't have any cash on them. The positive PR would be enormous.

I've run bars/restaurants in the distant past and if a firefighter came in and apologised for not having any cash on them but asked for some coffees I would have obliged without a moments thought (the mark up on coffee/tea is massive so it's not exactly going to cost much) and they would probably be back as paying customers given the gesture. As has been pointed out, I suspect McDonalds employ staff that are trained to not deviate from their "handbook"; it probably says "don't give away free stuff", but that's where common sense comes into play.

[yellowjack]

As always, there's a pre-existing solution to this problem of supplying hot drinks on a vehicle...




...in the form of the humble Boiling Vessel, and a tin of feckin' Nescafe.

[Cold]

I suspect they just wanted to collect the McD sticker tokens from the side of the cups.

[poo at Paul's]

Badda said:

He chose a life which was inherently more risky than most in order to help people. If you don't understand why people empathise with his family more than the families of foreign nationals here on holiday, then I suspect you're some way, quite far along, the autistic spectrum.

Inherently more risky? Maybe, but on what scale? How many officers are there in the Met, how many killed on duty, how many by terrorists?

Is it any more risky that people who drive trucks hundreds of thousands of miles per year? Any more risky that people doing a million miles in planes a year and being sent around the world to places that they don't know, being cared for by people they don't know and cannot vet in anyway?
I had sympathy for all those killed in those attacks and in other terror attacks also. But in, say, the case of 911, thousands of people killed, hundreds or FDNY and NYPD guys included. But who should people have more sympathy for, those trained to get involved, who went in to try to help and lost their lives, left behind families but with the weight of the FDNY, NYPD and City of New York behind them. Or the people who were wiped out because they got to work early that day? You say I am along some spectrum, because it makes you feel big and clever, but it is absurd to automatically focus on the people whose job it is to help and save people everyday, those who have the kit, have the training and who knowingly got involved that day, and paid the ultimate price, when there were thousands of bankers, lawyers, office managers, cleaners, maintenance people etc, who got caught up in stuff they had no say about, had no training for and no equipment to try to help themselves. And of course, all the people on the planes to, pilots, crew, passengers etc.
It seem to me to be a total kneejerk reaction and almost jumping on the bandwagon of praising our brave police and public servants, showing it by chucking paypal at it, without actually thinking about the horror that all including the "regular joes" went through, and what they may leave behind and how they may be looked after? The truth is that there are quite rightly substantial facilities, finances and support structure and help in place for those in some sectors of public service, that give massive and necessary comfort to those that work in those sectors. But not all. As any ex Services people will tell you, many could only dream of such peace of mind. And as for "regular joes", in jobs, or tourists on holiday travel insurance, the level of comfort is hugely limited by comparison and by no means a given.

As someone else mentioned, the Facebook page that gave rise to this "story" really does seem to be inhabited by imbeciles! Perhaps if more of them thought things through in such an "autistic" manner, they'd not make themselves look so fking stupid?

[JeremyH5]

We suffered a fire on our industrial estate earlier this summer in Worksop. The fire service camped out for several days on our car parks. They had four appliances, a control vehicle and a transit sized van kitted out with water fountain, hot drink machines, shower and toilet and sandwiches appeared at break times. Totally self sufficient.

[BruceV8]

In 24 years of doing bomb disposal in the army I was offered a sea of tea, a mountain of biscuits and a good few shots of whiskey in Northern Ireland. In Great Britain there was some tea, one pint of beer at a wedding we interrupted and one bottle of champagne from a lovely old fella who had been in the SAS in Malaya in the 1950s. I appreciated every drop. But I would never think to walk into a premises and demand free stuff. Never. If you're thirsty, what's wrong with water?

That is, of course, if it ever happened at all.

[Europa1]

Noodle1982 said:

Bigends said:

They used to send a welfare uni / mobile canteen out for prolonged jobs. Staff shouldnt have to scrounge from local businesses

Exactly this.

Failure to prepare by the fire service has caused this issue not a local business that refuses to give out freebies.

Noodle, if you had phrased your question in the same terms as Bigends did (but hopefully with better grammar), you may have received more complete answers. As it was, you did come over as a bit...aggressively capitalist.

[The Mad Monk]

Troubleatmill said:

Anyway - here's hoping your kiddies never need them to save them in fire.

What's that got to do with anything?