I work for the Dept of Veterans Affairs currently, and of all the gov't depts (other than DoD) that you'd think would be supportive, I ran into a middle-manager who suddenly decided that she alone would be deciding when I would be 'released' to perform IDT, deciding how often/how much Reserve work I would do each year, and what constituted 'proof'. As a recruiter, my duty involves quite a bit of alone time- driving, phone work, email, etc., and she tried to tell my commander that he needed to be with me in order to sign off on my duty.

One issue was that we started off by trying to play 'nice', not fully realizing how malicious she was going to get. Every piece of information we provided was twisted around and used against me (though ineffective).

USERRA was pretty useless. Their quote, "Does she listen to you? 'Cause she's not listening to me."

Though I couldn't get her to put the guidance in an email (believe me, I asked repeatedly), she did repeat it in front of our Union rep and to others in the section. Grievance was settled by mortified higher-ups with an apology.

The law is like a car's drivetrain- it matters most when the rubber meets the road.