Twelve Years in Uniform, Then the Other Side of the Desk

Alicia went through a processing station as an eighteen-year-old applicant in 2011. She remembers almost none of it clearly and all of it emotionally. "Terrified. I did not understand a single form I was handed and I was not going to say so."

Twelve years later she came back to one as a civilian, in human resources. "It is a strange sentence to be able to say out loud."

She had assumed, going in, that human resources meant paperwork. "It does mean paperwork. But on a heavy processing day I am the reason forty people who drove three hours get seen, sworn in, and home the same night. You feel that at the end of the day in a way I did not expect to."

The station side of the job is staffing, classification, benefits, and the veteran hiring authorities that bring in a large share of this particular workforce. The part she says matters most is not in the position description.

"When somebody is standing at my desk with a question they think is stupid, I remember being that person. I know exactly what that feels like. So I answer it properly, and I do not make them feel like they should have known."

She is direct about what the trade is. The hours are real hours, she is done at five, and nobody calls her at nine. The pay is a federal schedule rather than a negotiation.

"It is not the most exciting job anybody has ever had. It is a good one, and it is the same building I was frightened in, which I think about more than I expected to."