I'm sorry, but I'm with hourshore on this one. 9-5 jobs are becoming increasingly unworkable on the new AFRES. Guard, who knows, I've never really dug into the full dynamics of the local bro network Guard unit, but the AFRES is functionally AD Lite these days. I've done my fair share of bumming/troughing and can tell you there was no way I could maintain my mil participation and keep a civilian job with a 9-5 schedule. No way. To those who make it work, great. I like to not work twice as hard to get to the same place as my civilian peers AND still be penalized at my job for serving my country. Defeats the purpose of defending it in the first place. I digress.

It;s becoming increasingly difficult to get all the beans and flying done on just a weekend schedule, and for those who commute FROM their 9-5 job? forget it. There's no way. Civ employers wipe their rear with USERRA, and honestly I kinda understand. They can't afford you. I certainly did not appreciate being constantly threatened about my civilian job participation while serving my country, on my own time and dime no less. "we support your service, outside the hours of M-F 9-5 of course" doesn't sound very patriotic to me. THAT is the reality on the street though, outside the organically pre-positioned and compatible schedule of an airline job. It is what it is. I'd go back to troughing, or worse, go active duty, before I entertain getting *****ed out everyday between two employers that have no compatibility with each other. This ain't a PA officer job, you can't kill your beans one saturday/sunday pair a month and be good to go....Try swiging the Tuesday night schedule on an engineer schedule, out of town on top of it. To each their own, forget that. That seems almost as painful to me as the thought of resting my career on an arbitrary date of hire and lateral-career-lacking seniority system job..oh wait, wrong forum...