Actually, that's BS. I was a Commander and I never gave anyone time off when they wanted it. Military days (training and proficiency) are so hard to come by and budgets are so tight we don't have time or room for lazy slackers. You may fly with guys that like to brag on how big their johnsons are, but the reality of the situation is people on orders are on orders for some specific reasons and/or functions: training, military schools, conferences, proficiency, deployment, deployment spin up, exercises, exercise prep, alert duty, fill in or illness or injury, back-fill for manning shortfall for active duty ops, or contingency support ops.

It is mostly true if you live in the area where your guard unit is you do get to see your family before and after duty. However, we really don't care how our guardsmen and women spend their off duty hours. Just so long as they rest up and are ready for duty the next day. Very similar to airlines: Airline management believes you should rest up and get un-fatigued on your own time, and not company time.

We've seen a few guys try and slip in orders requests for convenient reasons. If it didn't suit the needs of the military or the unit, those requests were denied.

You will find O-3 and below will do their fair share of alert over the hoidays. Those peeps are also typically the more junior in the airline, so they will get taken off of someone's flying schedule. You won't see too many Colonel's sitting alert over Christmas.