Yeah. If he were at the bottom when the hiring freeze hit he was sort of doubly screwed. First of all Compass was overmanned - which triggered the hiring freeze - which means that reserve troops are underutilized and there is no movement for them. So not only are you stuck on it a long time, you aren't getting many hours a month, which sets you up for an extended time to get 1000 qualifying 121 hours to upgrade.

Then when you eventually DO upgrade, there isn't anybody behind you who is upgrade eligible, so you STILL stay the bottom man on the next totem pole until there are substantial numbers of people behind you who can upgrade to a reserve spot.

What is worse is that a lot of people that were hired had:
1. Pretty minimal ME time
2. Pretty minimal TT (RATP)

So even once they did get their 1000 121 hours they STILL didn't have company minimums for upgrade meaning there was no one to move up behind him.

So yeah, the Fickle Finger of Fate sort of gave the shaft to Slowhawk.

Your mileage may (and hopefully will) vary. Those of us talking about a week on reserve before getting a line were mostly hired 7-10 months after Slowhawk and have benefitted greatly from his misery in terms of short reserve and upgrade times and have an avalanche of people behind us in seniority to push us along.

But it's a regional. It can change in a heartbeat.