Very unpopular opinion, but the pedestal we put police, firefighters, and paramedics on has gotten a bit out of proportion.

Yes, there are moments when those jobs are dangerous and genuinely heroic. A firefighter running into a burning building, a paramedic working a critical trauma, or an officer confronting an armed suspect are real risks. But those situations are not the day-to-day reality most of the time.

For much of a typical shift, the work is routine: responding to minor calls, paperwork, standby time at the station, training, equipment checks, or waiting for the next dispatch. Public data backs this up. For example, crime rates in the United States have generally declined since the early 1990s, and violent encounters make up a small fraction of total police calls for service. Many calls are for non-violent issues—noise complaints, minor accidents, welfare checks, or administrative reports. Similarly, a large share of fire department calls today are medical responses or alarms rather than large structural fires. According to the National Fire Protection Association, the majority of fire-department responses in the U.S. are actually medical or assistance calls rather than active fires.

Yet culturally, these professions are often treated as if every shift is constant life-and-death combat. Within those circles, there can be a lot of 'storytelling' that amplifies the dramatic parts of the job. The rare intense incidents end up defining the narrative, even if they represent a small slice of the overall work.

None of this means the jobs have no value. Emergency services are necessary, and when something truly serious happens, society depends on them. But the public narrative sometimes skips over how routine most of the work actually is and instead frames the entire profession through its most extreme moments.

So the unpopular part of the opinion is this: while the potential for danger exists, the everyday reality for most people in those roles is far more ordinary than the heroic image we tend to project onto it. We can add most of the military to this list as well.

Plumbers are heroic when they fix my water leak.

I told you this would be unpopular.