Sure, they should have plenty of time to do charity work. On their own time, out of uniform, as individual citizens, as members of the Elks Lodge, members of a church, members of a soup kitchen, whatever,.... just not on work hours as firefighters. Their job in that capacity should be simply to fight fires (and perform related public services).
Do firefighters routinely do charity collection while on the clock? I don't think I've ever heard of that, but I'm from the UK not the US. Are they from small fire depts that operate as charities and rely on donations to stay open or are they collecting for unrelated charities?
Yes, it's pretty common in the US. They stand at traffic lights in uniform with empty fireman boots for passing motorists to deposit money for causes unrelated to the fireman mission... Muscular Dystrophy research among other things.
But the point is not about receiving payment. The point is, they are representing themselves as fireman out doing something other than fighting fires. And this irkes me.
I'd love to go to Costa Rica and plan to at some point in the future. But when I go to Costa Rica I'm going to surf and drink beer and eat a lot of seafood and lie in a hammock and do some shopping. I certainly don't plan to waste time in front of a computer writing code during this period. I do that here every day and I don't dream about Costa Rica nor worry about how many women nor minorities are in cubes next to me while I'm doing it.
Yes, it does annoy me (not a major annoyance but an annoyance still). Do you disagree with separation of concerns or feel firefighters are raising more money than their salaries and expense of getting them there? If so, don't be shy. Just tell me you disagree and why.
There are words for people who make comments with implied insults. Passive aggressive is one of them.
The fire service has a lot of downtime, yet you still have to have a lot of folk salaried, not all of them can just be on call. Given you have a lot of salaried folk sitting there waiting for fires to occur, I see no reason for them to not help out with other things. They are being paid to sit around a lot otherwise.
And sorry if you thought I was being passive aggressive, I was aiming more for comedic sarcasm.
I highly doubt any firefighters are doing charity work while getting paid. Most of them are probably just wearing the uniform because kids think firefighters are cool. And firefighers _are_ cool, so I don't think it is completely unwarranted.
Again, just my opinion.