What does ‘A’ shift mean?
So fire stations are organised through shifts, and there’s the shift captain — usually either an actual officially ranked Captain or a lieutenant (or if you were my dad’s station, they had captains running each shift for Union compensation reasons) — and then all the crew.
The 118 as far as I’ve been able to figure out, Bobby is the captain of the station and the only captain there, so he’s both shift captain for the A shift and in charge of the whole house. There have to be unseen lieutenants who are in charge of B and C and maybe D shifts (no idea how many shifts they have) who are Bobby’s immediate underlings.
If Chim is going to head toward becoming Captain Han, his first move would be the lieutenant’s exam which could add some interesting dynamic tension.
But mostly! A Shift and then B Shift (which Ravi is officially on) and C Shift are just the ways you’re broken down for scheduling stuff. In my dad’s station, he was the house captain but was on B Shift of his own wishes (I guess because he likes the letter? Idk) and he didn’t tend to take the cream of the crop firefighters, he tended to take the probies and the people no one else could get along with, because he was the house captain and often times the Union President so it was his job to keep peace.
I am sure its clear that this is all secondhand information that came from growing up with a firefighter for a father so if anyone with a more immediate connection to the service has corrections, take their word over mine
