Today is the fourth anniversary of the day I learned one of my life’s most valuable lessons. Yeah, it took that long – 53 years old at the time and just then waking up to the realities of the world.
Let me start by saying I’ve got a history. While on active duty in the United States Air Force, I’d risen to sit in the highest enlisted seats of the unit where I’d started a quarter of a century earlier as a two-striper Chinese linguist. After over 27 years I retired in Korea as one of the top enlisted members of that same unit, and after a year in Seoul, returned to work there again.
My new job meant managing the unit’s language training program – a program with which I was familiar in a field in which I’d spent a great deal of my career. The program itself was doing well enough treading water, but it did have a few noticeable holes that needed filling. And with the help of some wonderful Air Force professionals, within 5 years we raised it to the distinction of being the best in the entire Air Force. Along the way to that award, my job was converted to a federal civilian position – a position into which I was immediately hired.
Things couldn’t have been going better.
Then only a little over a year removed from the program receiving that award, I was taken aside by my Commander for what I thought would be to brief him on a request that he’d had not long before.
So I got right down to business, giving him the data he had requested and explaining our best course of action. But his response wasn’t the typical “Great. This is exactly what I was looking for.” Rather, it was words that to this day I’ll not forget: “Bob, I came here to talk about something else. Commanders sometimes have to make tough decisions, and I’ve decided not to keep you.”
The problem was that when I was converted to federal employment in 2011, it started a clock by which I would only be allowed to remain overseas for five years. Typically, a federal employee would then be placed in a program that would return them to a job in the United States. But I was in a “term” position, and when a “term” is up, the job is either terminated or converted to a permanent position. One thing that did not come with a term position was an obligation from the government to give the incumbent employee another job, let alone the job in the United States a permanent employee would receive.
And so, the Commander was within his rights to just…let me go. His reasoning was that he didn’t want either he or his successor to have to fight this battle when he could just cut me loose now and get someone else to do the job for another five years.
And that would be it. I was done. After over 30 years of successful employment and notable achievements, I was being shown the door. And simply because of a technicality in federal regulations meant for permanent employees. Sure, I’d managed my program to be the best in the Air Force. But my five years was up, and those were the rules.
At the time, it seemed ironic when the Commander kindly offered to give me a reference if I needed it. How could I respond? “Well thank you sir. It’s certainly going to take a good reference to explain how I went from having the best program in the Air Force to being let go in less than two years.”
Fortunately I was not so flabbergasted that I was unable to explain to him what his decision actually meant – that I wouldn’t simply be getting on a plane and flying off to a job waiting for me in the states, but rather, it was a move that would force me into unemployment looking for a job wherever I might end up [I must admit here that working at a gas station somewhere has been a consideration, but my wife would have much to say about that].
And by the end of our meeting, I was able to convince him to check with others and, halfway through that sleepless night when I had nothing to do but to wander the internet, I was surprised by an email job offer to stay in my position for another two years. There was still work to be done (it had to be signed by a General fairly far up my chain of command), but a few stressful months later I was told I could stay. And yet, despite bringing the program yet another major accolade a year later (as the best program in Air Combat Command — ironically, the Deputy Commanding General of which any further extensions of my employment would rely), I was denied any extension in that position beyond those two years.
I say all of this to press home the lesson I learned from that day four years ago.
That same commander – who in the end was among the best with whom I had served – said something at his incoming change of command just a few months before this happened that I remember well. “Don’t love your job. It won’t love you back.” We can find our satisfaction in doing it well. We can enjoy the results of us doing it well. But in the end, we’re replaceable. The job gives you nothing more than a paycheck and perhaps a sense of well-being, but if you lose it, it’s not going to be there to give you any comfort. It’s the people in your life who do that. It’s the relationships you build with them that matter.
And if you haven’t taken the time for that, what do you have?
As some of you know, following some time in the United States at the end of my federal employment, I was hired again as a contractor doing the same job I had done so well before. It worked out for me, but in the end, it taught me that I cannot rely on the relationship I have enjoyed with the Department of Defense since leaving high school nearly 40 years ago for any sense of well-being or security. Knowing nothing else for my entire adult life, it was a lesson that was hard to learn. But it is a lesson well worth passing on.