When I got out and retired, it's a lot of apprehension
because you're leaving a life that is so structured.
It's so routine, and you know what kind of policies you have
to follow, what kind of uniforms you have to wear, and
a whole different speak.
And so when you get out after 20 years of doing that, and
you get into the society where they may not have the work
ethic or the work values that you are accustomed to, it can
be very frustrating.
As well as being an armor officer, there's not many
tanks out in the real world.
So I was like, well what the heck am I going to do?
My skills are with armored tanks and that type of thing.
So I wasn't really sure what I was going to do.
Especially moving back to Minnesota, and in the area
that we live right now, it has a very small military bases
and anything like that.
So it's not like I could really go to work at a fort
something and go to work as a contractor.
So I had a lot of apprehensions when I got out
of what I was going to do, where I would fit in, what
kind of job I would get.
And what I found out is that the skills that you bring out
of the military, the leadership skills, the
organizational skills, the commitment, the work ethic and
all that is highly valuable in civilian life.
But you have to also realize that civilian life is not
military life.
And so when you come in there and try to just go gangbusters
on something, it doesn't always fly.
So that was kind of hard getting used to it first. But
as long as you can incorporate that, you'll be all right.
I remember some days where my guys would be working 24, 36,
48 hours straight when we were out in the field.
And if a tank went down, they worked until they fixed it.
If it was 30 below zero, they were out there
working and doing it.
If it was 120 degrees--
I was stationed at Fort Irwin in
California for three years--
those guys were still out there working on the tanks,
doing what they had to do to get the job done.
And when you get into the civilian life, you're kind of
punching a clock in a lot of areas.
Now there are some jobs, of course, where you have that
work ethic, and the timelines, and the suspenses, and that
you have to get them done no matter what.
But for the majority of the civilian life, you come in at
8:00, and you leave at 4:30, and most of
the people are leaving.
And I find that probably a lot of the military people are
sitting there by themselves in their office finishing
whatever needed to be done that day.
So I did find that there was kind of sometimes in some
professions a work ethic that was punch the clock 9:00 to
5:00 and you were gone.
So you have to kind of ease into that.
And to tell you the truth, the first couple years I was a
workaholic.
And especially working in the Pentagon where you're working
12, 13 hours a day, 6, 7 days a week, to come back and only
work 8 hours a day was different, to say the least.
When I was going home at 4:30, I'm like jeez, shouldn't I be
working another two or three hours?
So it takes some getting used to.
So you could almost overextend yourself, I think, when you
first get out and you have that commitment to the job
that maybe not everybody else has.