April 1995-
S.Korea has come and gone and I’ve rotated back to the states. I am now stationed at Randolph AFB working for (then) U.S. Air Force Recruiting Service. They are now known as just Air Force Recruiting Service.
I spend my first 2 years in the “computer” shop. Fixing hardware and rebuilding UNIX systems which I hated beyond belief. I went so far as to get a UNIX for Dummies book. When it comes to UNIX, I’m beyond help it would appear. To say I was miserable is an understatement. In my world, “UNIX” is a four letter word. After 2 yrs, I find myself transferred to Recruiting Service’s telephone help desk. I went unwillingly, but when you are told what to do in the military, you do it.
Before the move, the NCOIC stopped me in the hall and asked why I didn’t want to work for him. Told him point blank I didn’t like the way he acted to me\us in the computer shop. He told me to wait; it would be different when I worked for him. Talk about an understatement! Those last 2 years were the most fun ones anyone could have at the end of their career. I would talk to recruiters from all over the US. Recruiting has gone from old fashion paperwork (in 6 part) when I came in to a sort of offline database. Recruiters would enter data by day; the servers would remote call-in to each cpu and download the data. By the time I got to the phone desk we were just going live with a fully online database. There were bugs to work thru and we did work thru them.
One of my favorites was when a recruiter would have a “kid” who didn’t know who the dad was. Mom had nothing on the birth certificate for whatever the reason. I went to the programmers and told them they had to modify the database to allow for “Unknown” as a first and last name. Talk about a minor war. Their excuse was that the security clearance paperwork required it. True enough, but I pushed on. My reasoning was “he is a test tube baby, sperm bank donor or ….”. The light came on and I had won. A funny battle to win but it made things easier for the recruiters at the time.
The last 2 years flew by and I found myself at the end of my 20 yrs. It was time to decide what to do now that it was time for me to grow up….