I’m sorry this is so long. I may be totally biased but even after editing I think it is worth reading. I spent nearly 6 years working for an organization that supplies retail goods and services to military service members and their families. Up front I’ll acknowledge the fact that I should never have accepted the position on a personal moral level. I am diametrically opposed to the application of military force on a global level. I justified this job by always living the idea of being anti-military but pro-soldier. I worked as a civilian and I’ve always felt indentured to our service members for the decision they’ve made to serve something larger than themselves whether or not I agree with what they’ve committed to. I preface my story with this to understand the struggle that came with this position and how the organization I worked for exploited these emotions and motivations for presence to imprison and exploit their working staff.
I was head hunted by management for our location with the same promises recruiters pursue nubile young men gunnin’ for war. Travel, see the world, instill your job with a sense of duty and accomplishment through service to our country, better yourself through our wonderful management training and growth plans. I was ready to move forward with the most stable retail company I could imagine considering I was entering into a time I may want to be expanding my family and if the government would relocate us allowing me and mine to see the offerings of some of our military allies' lands then I was more than willing to compromise some of my standings given the above justifications.
For a while it worked. I hosted huge gaming tournaments. My boss listened to me and let me open a hobby shop inside of our location and we began tabletop events and became a host for trading card game events. We were successful financially. We had a growing social presence. When people returned to our location from other posts you better believe I was a stop they were going to see before they left.
After Donald Trump took office, a lot changed. Foreign postings were all but completely stopped. All news channels except FOX were completely banned from the food court and electronics department’s televisions. (I once found the box in the food court and put on a varied list of news channels MSNBC, CSPAN, CNN, FOX, FOX local, and MTV on like 15 tv’s. It was reverted back to FOX and MTV inside of my 15-minute break.) More importantly though changes were made to pay scales, premiums, insurance policies, leave requests, and even our dress code.
Even if all of this is okay given your political leanings, please believe me when I say that it was weird in its integration. Most of the policy changes were there to cause chaos. Girls and women tended to dress up on Saturdays because a lot of them were military spouses and it was part of their niche culture. It was nice and though I had no affiliation I pulled out the button down and tie sometimes just to be respectful to service members, my peers and employees. When I was being asked to measure skirt length and shoulder strap width I protested. I can’t stand that shit in schools and I’m certainly not going to police a grown ass woman’s sense of dress. (I don’t know what would ever be considered an acceptable way to have this conversation in a professional environment short of absurd nudity but the colloquial rule around the store was that dress code was whatever wouldn’t upset your grandma at church so believe me when I tell you nothing about any of these ladies' dress ever deserved anything they were ever put through.) We had excess check-ins regarding absences and tardiness i.e.: doctors notes, tardy chits, write ups. We existed behind a military gate so traffic could be 0-30 minutes when you arrive regardless of your drive to base so there were a lot of check-ins.
Some of the day to day changes you just swallow as you are a cog in the government machine. You have to fill out another form, cool. You have to say hello to one more person at the door on the way out at night, whatever Jimmy is cool anyway. But those monetary changes were always a gut punch. As our insurance withered and our night premiums were changed into raises to our base pay filtered through an algorithm based on how many hours you worked at said premium it always became more oppressive while being sold as a great improvement for us.
Our jobs had a sense of service. Many of our family members served or were actively serving so many of us felt a duty to stay. Our base manager said that was part of our job, “You can make more money in the outside world. I can’t change that, but that sense of fulfilment and service will not follow.” I've got to admit that despite standing in the middle of the military industrial complexes fascist base camp I bought some of that and bonded with my coworkers. There is absolutely a sense of belonging that comes with the military community and while not much else I do envy that camaraderie throughout.
Now my personal breaking point came upon an event that my store’s location manager put together quite well. It was some holiday or sponsored thing that we did regularly. We were wrapping the day up and I had a small dispute with her regarding an operational efficiency. She never really appreciated a subordinate that challenged her and while we occasionally found good working grooves, she never understood that I learned through respectful questioning and clarification of her plan and instructions of course in the proper theater. I thanked her for unexpectedly giving me time to do exactly that earlier in the day to put to bed said dispute, I had learned from that meeting. I was genuine but it was perceived as snark. On our sales floor she grabbed a pressure point at the elbow in a way that a 5’3” manager should not be grabbing a 6’2” employee and pulls me in close, “I’m gonna make you an effective manager one of these days if it kills you or retires me.” I SHOULD HAVE QUIT NOW, but alas…
A storm of anger, loathing, and sorrow roiled like an over microwaved ramen cup in our break room. I knew every struggle I had put down in my mind to make a home for myself here was naught. I have always been a large person, size, scale, and personality, but I was made to feel small.
That sense of security, service, family kept me there longer than I ever thought. That was 2 years in. I outlasted that manager at our location. She went to Japan with her wife. Good riddance. As much as she was my personal nightmare, and I will always think of her as the worst person I ever worked for she wasn’t the cause of my issues with the company. She was just the agent of their execution. Queue a bunch of behavior that r/maliciouscompliance and r/pettyrevenge would love to hear stories about. Many employees were there long enough that they could get away with almost anything and I figured that with my general physical privileges I could last as long as I wanted at the job while also making the lives of those that worked with and beneath me as amenable as possible.
This was my way of surviving in an inhospitable environment when I like many others felt trapped by my hope of growth, fear of my landlord's power over my home, stress over debt, and unlike some – but like far too many – acute intensive medical struggles in my home. I was angry at our political place as a country and the fascist atmosphere, my boss who radicalized me against her with the above incident – and others that were akin but never physical in nature – and the grinding inefficiency of the bureaucratic establishment we existed in.
I approved wildly long vacations. I spent the max entertainment budget for every event. Fuckin’ pizza party? Your ass is gettin’ extra cheese. Beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. Takes a lot to get fired from a government job. My biggest sense of pride towards the end was that I took on our Employee Assistance Binder and I was aggressive about everyone knew it existed. Company had to provide time for me to talk to people if they were inquiring about services in said binder. Sometimes people needed legit help finding therapy or buying a home and I could provide connections. Sometimes I just got our 75-year-old cashier off her feet for another 5 minutes while we talked about “will planning.”
I spent 3 more years carrying on in this way, maliciously compliant but always available for the staff. As I said the changes had started with Trump, but it continued throughout his presidency, and I don’t equate anything other than the change to exclusively FOX in store to him directly. We lost more and more people. Standards fell on training, hiring, output, and even facility upkeep. At this point all the people in my position were now spending about 40% of our time on registers when it used to really only be symbolic, during busy times or on Saturdays to really deliver that CS. A series of shootings on other military bases led to escalated security, nothing too weird, it happened sometimes (I mean the security not the shootings.)
This change was the one that ended me for good. We were asked to do checks at the door. I was asked to do checks at the door. I’m big. I can be fuckin’ scary. My 60-year-old partner is not big. While she can be scary it's much more “I brought you into this world, I can take you out” than “I’ll fight you in the street, knives out, let's go.”
I don’t want to do this. I’m afraid. What am I looking for? What do I do if I find it? If I’ll fight a dude in the street and I’m afraid, what do our people half my stature feel? How the fuck is any of this okay? I no longer had respect for anyone in this facility that I worked for except two superiors that were only that in title but felt and operated like me in practice. I threw a fit. Literally revolted, walked out and led a few out the office ending a meeting.
I asked “What am I looking for? What do I do if I find it?”
Response from LP and newer location manager, “those are good questions and when we have answers for you, we will provide you with an updated action plan.”
I’m not trained as security. We have base police. Fuck this, people have died over this shit and you fuckers literally make us watch videos on store shootings yearly. Run, hide, fight. You drilled that shit in our heads and now you put me at the door? This isn’t security. It’s security theatre. I thought all this. I don’t remember all I said. It wasn’t as badass as you’re reading this right now. It was exhausted. It was grieving.
We all got our air, smoked our squares, griped our gripes, and finished our shifts. I never came back. Government jobs are hard to get fired from. I called in daily, took my sick days and finished the pay period to make sure I got what was built up. I stopped calling in but took care of all the last doctors' appointments I would need for the foreseeable future. I didn’t have a job lined up, but I knew that I couldn’t set foot on that base again. I was not a healthy person.
2 months later I was no longer clenching my jaw (I was doing that so bad my dentist tried to justify slapping $3000 worth of metal in my face.) I was sleeping again. I had overcome many mental health barriers that I had erected and accommodated in my daily life. I was treating my wife and loved ones better. I had finally put two and two together that I had spent the past 8 years absent of animals in my life after growing up around them all my life and that was a source of depression. My pup landed in my lap quite coincidentally and has done more for me than any mental health professional (not to downplay their impact.) Furthermore, I shifted into another industry, still retail, and I have been successful, respected, reasonably compensated, and even appreciated throughout our organization. All I know from the other organization is that the 5-7 people that I cared about that weren’t near retirement were gone within 6 months.
Vindicated for speaking up in meetings, praised for bolstering and developing my staff, my job has earned my dedication and I enjoy significantly more in retail work than I thought possible. Though it is still retail work, and it is still and always a persistent challenge I feel like my daily activity has an impact on my organization and community. I like it and it pays the bills and enables my extracurriculars but I’m always willing to leave.
Please recognize that while we always want to be prepared with another opportunity to walk into, I could not have received an offer for the position I am in now without immediate cessation of employment and time to breathe. I was not a good employee at the end. I don’t mean for the organization I worked for, fuck them, I mean I wasn’t a good employee to them either but still… fuck ‘em. I was not a good person to hire anywhere else. Please be ready to make that decision when it comes time. I have a dozen other days with a dozen other stories that should have ended my tenure before the day I left. Remember your value, respect the people you let train and teach you before you got where you are and leave the fuckin’ room when you don’t want to belong there anymore. You will be far happier and successful.