This list is Huge. Chaos at all times, unsteady hours, schedules, and often a hostile work environment. I worked at the State Department in Washington D.C. If you are scheduled for four hours at no notice it could be a 12 Hour Shift. Often times when you are scheduled to get off work your relief does not arrive and you are left to call the scheduling sergeant who is usually incredibly busy and too disorganized, to find out what is going on. Although you may give them your Military Drill Schedule they still fail to give you off on the days of drill. Thus, those hours you were going to work are lost wages and you do not get a full 36-40 Work Week.
Sergeants are unqualified to lead anyone, the level of incompetency I experienced is astonishing . If you manage to stay employed for a year without any write ups you have a great chance of becoming a supervisor.
Management does not have your back if anything happens, you can easily lose your job and will have a weak union to support you. Most employees say if anything serious happens they will not get involved/protect/ or pull their gun out because they are scared to get fired.
It is extremely easy to get a job through this company because the Annual Attrition Rate is over 70 %. Often the contract goes through periods where they hire a surplus of officers, thus everyone's hours become low. Then they weed out and look to fire employees for small infractions. At times supervisors will be told that they need to write up more employees.
Multiple times the schedule would could out and I wouldn't even be on it, I would then call the scheduling sergeant and try to pick up hours on different shifts and different locations just to make the money to support my family. You are told that you cannot drink water on post which is a violation of OSHA regulations. A few times I was told to cover a post and not sign on to the paperwork, they regularly break federal guidelines.
My relief was changed with a 4 day notice and I informed them that I could not switch shifts because my wife would have to quit her job and we wouldn't be able to support our family. Management was not concerned and I ultimately had to quit.
My biggest regret was taking this job after the military and college, It took me two years before I couldn't take it anymore and left. Best advice I can give is although the pay may sound promising the Job is not, it is a dead end.
Forced Healthcare... terrible
Forced 401k
Forced Life Insurance