Originally Posted by Albief15

I took some grief one year from my company on this, and I've heard similar complaints, so let me offer a few examples.

F-15s (and other fighters) pull alert. The active duty and AGR guys get slammed with a lot of this, and there are times the part timers step up and help out.

In my case, I was in the training unit at Tyndall. We were behind the training timeline and workload was high. We had a LOT of guys who were NOT from NW Florida and on active duty that wanted to go visit family, burn some leave, go ski somewhere, etc etc. For guys like me--who lived locally anyway and considered it home--going on 30-40 days of orders took the pressure off the squadron/wing to let guys take leave and bug out. The "locals" held down the fort during the Holidays. While not "required", it was a way for the part time guys to step up over the holidays and give a break to the AD (and AGR) guys who didn't get the time off or have the flexibility we did during the year.

In my case, I had just upgraded to the right seat of the 727, did not fly an fighter sorties during the period, and was about to go non-current on several mission quals and below my required sortie count for that year. Going on orders allowed me to not only help the squadron, but it allowed me to hawk the ops desk and catch up on some flying too. It was a win/win.

An over-zealous assistant chief pilot emailed me to "deny" my mil leave request, especially since I wasn't "helping the war effort" with that kind of flying (his words--not mine). At that point, I deferred to my ANG boss who called and discussed the matter. I made it clear I wasn't trying to dodge work, all I was trying to do was stay current, do a good job for my Guard unit, and try to keep ALL my bosses happy. I offered to my ANG boss if he would let me dash out on non-flying days (including Xmas and NYE) I'd fly for the company on those peak days and fly Eagles or pull SOF every other day he needed me. In the end--that's exactly what happened, and my logbook from Dec 2004 has a ton of flying--Eagles and 727s--and about zero days off that month. I was more concerned about money and trying to make everyone happy that month than opening presents under the tree--but the point is I was wedged between two big boulders and was trying to keep from crushing me.

So--the "scam" your military bro may be pulling may be exactly why you WEREN'T in the tower, the command post, or on alert that Christmas. It may because some of us were. I'm not asking for thanks for anything--it was my choice and I loved doing it--but taking spears from our co-workers when we just worked 27 days out of 31 sucked. You might want to do a little research before you go blasting those guys...