About the pension thingie, surely you must be aware that it’s (ahem) common practice to let the soon to retire (insert publicly employed union person) max their overtime just before they retire so that they can get the maximum, even absurd pension?
Also, about your veterinarian friend, that’s sad. I know a girl from my high school whose Dad was a vet, and they did very well.
That was not done on the fire department that I worked for. Our pensions are based on the average of the final 5 years salary. We get no preference at all when it comes to overtime in our final five years. The pension fund that we have is fully funded, with fire fighters themselves funding 2/3rds of the expense and fire departments covering 1/3rd. The problem that we have been having is that the teacher's unions have been trying to raid our pension funds through the legislature since they have a huge shortfall.