I'll just say this...

It used to be that any given ranger could be called on to handle most any kind of call. It made rangering fun and an adventure unparalleled. You never knew what you'd confront but you grew with each successful resolution.

Nowadays, a dirt ranger spends most their shifts answering noise calls. You have to be in one of the other, trained, departments to be called to an altered participant or to patrol the inner playa (for instance) and once trained, that's mostly what you do from then on.

I figure the giant crop of alphas from this past year will start shedding this year because it's pretty boring to patrol now as a simple dirt ranger and we all can't be one of the proliferating cadres, or even want to be.

I suspect I'd have already bailed on rangering if I didn't base out of Berlin where all manner of calls come direct to me withoug being screened by the current crop of Khakis (who now have their own "Cadre" forming). Patrols are still pretty vanilla though.

Four or so years ago a ranger joined who makes their living as a corporate trainer and they've enjoyed a meteoric rise in the org since then. That's when this silliness really took hold and it grows more stultifying with each year with the traditional ranger task sliced into ever finer job descriptions complete with matching training protocols, cadres and rites. I personally like the person in question but I'm not in love with their effect on the organization.

Feh.

Sas