Your availability for missions

[Stonewall]

I'd say I'm more available now than ever before in my life.  With the exception of having 2 small children (4 months and 2 years) and being in the National Guard (one weekend a month), I can make myself available at night, weekends, leave from work and be gone a couple days.

I've seen lots and lots of people with the SAR and FIND ribbon awarded 50 times over, but have only a few years in CAP.  I've been in for going on 22 years so the awards have accumulated through time.  I've even heard people argue over our responsibility to "deploy", as if we'd be negligent in turning down a call from CAP to go look for an ELT.

Just curious.  What's your status?

[Duke Dillio]

I get 80 hours a year for vacation plus another 36 hours of floating holidays.  In addition, I work variable rotating shifts of 12 hours which gives me a week off every month.  For the most part, I can go whenever I really want to.  I've seen lots of Find and Save ribbons as well but have yet to have been awarded one.

[jimmydeanno]

I get 4 weeks of PTO, can work remotely if need be and my boss knows what I do (part of why I keep a bunch of CAP stuff in my cube.)

However, my biggest restriction is actually my commute.  I ride an hour each way to work.  I participate in a vanpool - so there are 13 of us on the same van riding back and forth to work, so I can't just leave in the middle of the day if I need to.

So, the days I'm working from home or weekends, etc, I'm available whenever.  Oh, and my spouse doesn't matter because she's in CAP too

[♠SARKID♠]

I have only had two missions since I've started my new job, and both times my boss(es) were willing to let me go (although for mission/muster related reasons I didn't take the opportunity).  Also, come January we will be trying to pass our WIWG Mission Leave law to get us out of work for missions (ran out of time last congressional session).  At that point I will become always available unless I'm already at work.

[Eeyore]

I work from home and make my own schedule. As long as the work gets done by the project deadline I'm free to do whatever I want, when I want.

[Eclipse]

I work from home and make my own schedule. As long as the work gets done by the project deadline I'm free to do whatever I want, when I want.

Ditto, as long as I have a cel phone connection I can usually bill hours...

[notaNCO forever]

 I'm not currently working and as long as it's not finals I can skip class; most of the teachers that I have are pretty understanding, one advantage to a community college over a university.

[EMT-83]

Depends on the day. I've had to turn down a couple of missions during the day because of meetings at work that I needed to attend.

[Stonewall]

I'm not currently working and as long as it's not finals I can skip class; most of the teachers that I have are pretty understanding, one advantage to a community college over a university.

Yep, when I was at a community college I got paged for a missing child search.  Took 3 days off from school and work since it was a real missing person search.  An ELT would have been a different story.  Results were not good by the way.

[Short Field]

They call, I haul - anytime, anyplace.  It is good to get back home once a month to handle paperwork but not required.

[JoeTomasone]

I don't fit the poll options...

I work from home most days, but am out of town a lot.   So when I *AM* home, I can always sneak in a nap the day after - so I'm pretty much always available.    But when I am on the road, I am obviously not available at all.

[RADIOMAN015]

Well I don't exactly fit the poll either.  Also after work weekdays (1600 hrs), I could go to 2400 local hrs each weekday Monday- Thursday.  I find that at least in our squadron retirees offer the best availability & I'm working with some to get them very proficient on the radio, since our squadron hdqs is located on a military base; we have emergency power; a VHF base station that can cover most of the western half of the state & two other adjourning states as well as high speed internet access.    I have still have to work every day in the private sector to earn a living, so I don't want to push my employer on this CAP emergency services missions (although I always mention to my boss specifically any recent missions I've been on -- last three weeks, 2 actual missions, fortunately on weekends!!!).  I also think it is a terrible idea to pass any laws in any states that force any employers to give time off to CAP members or anyone else.  This has the potential of backfiring, in that employers may decide not to hire people that would take advantage of the law, and force their hand.  It is a very relevant question in the initial interview, do you have anything that would interfere with you being on the job every day as scheduled?  If I remember correctly, in the CAP member profile you can indicate when you are available for missions.  That should be kept up to date.  Of course my unit commander also knows what my availability is.   It's unfortunate, that there's cadets & seniors very interested in ES training & are able to attend "scheduled" type training & exercises, BUT for no notice actual missions, many just aren't available.
RM

[Eclipse]

I also think it is a terrible idea to pass any laws in any states that force any employers to give time off to CAP members or anyone else.  This has the potential of backfiring, in that employers may decide not to hire people that would take advantage of the law, and force their hand.

In most cases that would be a violation of the same law, just as it would with mandatory military leave.  I'm not going to assert it doesn't happen, but in today's uber-patriotic / litigation-sensitive corporate environment, its just not worth the risk to be doing things like that.

It is a very relevant question in the initial interview, do you have anything that would interfere with you being on the job every day as scheduled?

There's a difference between being available for your normal shift day-to-day. and being activated for CAP.  In most cases its a day or a few hours, rarely would you leave the state, and members always have the option of saying "no".  As long as you characterize the entirety of the situation, the majority of employers would never consider CAP service a detriment.

If you choose to characterize the situation as "no-notice, mandatory activation for an indefinite period", or something similar, you do so at your own peril.

Considering that one member of my Katrina team was terminated for this very reason, I am strongly in favor of job protection, at a minimum.

There are also jobs which simply will not allow for short-notice CAP participation - law enforcement and fire service, as examples, since the odds are you're being called by them first.

The way I summarize in interviews, "If I get called up for anything big, you'll likely see the event on the news before I come and talk to you."

[LtCol057]

My last job was ok with me needing time off for CAP. I'd request a day or two, they'd give me a week off. That was the advantage of 12 or 24 hour shifts.  My last year there, I was at encampment for 10 days, then 2 weeks for Blue Beret.  They only charged me 3 days vacation.

The job I'm at now, I can't even leave 15 minutes early to go home, change, and then get to my meetings on time. Micromanagement at it's worst.

[Stonewall]

I also think it is a terrible idea to pass any laws in any states that force any employers to give time off to CAP members or anyone else.  This has the potential of backfiring, in that employers may decide not to hire people that would take advantage of the law, and force their hand.

In most cases that would be a violation of the same law, just as it would with mandatory military leave.  I'm not going to assert it doesn't happen, but in today's uber-patriotic / litigation-sensitive corporate environment, its just not worth the risk to be doing things like that.

My [new] boss said to my face, "we hired you because you're the right man for the job, but we took your service in the National Guard into consideration and felt it to be a worthwhile risk, knowing that you may have to go away for a long period of time."  That made me feel good, because I feel guilty every time I have to do my one-weekend duty or my annual training, or like in February, we have a 5 day FTX which will take me away from work for 3 days, plus a weekend.

As a "boss" myself with 13 employees who fill an absolute time period for work, it would hurt us greatly to let someone miss a shift.  If you're scheduled Monday through Friday 0700 to 1500, then you must work it.  If not, you get charged sick leave and we have to pay overtime to another employee.  It's different in my case because I'm salary and I don't fill a specific set of hours, not to mention my job is more administrative.

I don't think however, that my boss would be too thrilled about me taking time off from work for CAP all the time.  He could care less why I leave work early and will chalk it up as me doing some odd hours (of my choosing) since I need to monitor operations 24/7 and I often go in at night and weekends.  Either way, I work about 45 to 50 hours a week.

[Eclipse]

Being salaried is usually the key, since by design those jobs usually have more schedule flexibility, and anything involving a virtual office helps, too.

In every instance where I have been working for someone else, I have always tried to visibly insure that the "comp-time" bucket was decidedly in the favor of the employer, that way there could never be an argument about how much time I was spending there versus how much time I might need off or being flexible where my "desk" was.

I've had a couple of great gigs where the key was "keep it running" and answer the phone and fix it when it stops.  They really didn't care where I was as long as the above two criteria were met.

My current contract engagement is with a major hospitality chain, working with some marquee service providers and almost the entirety of the effort is through virtual offices. 

I've spent more time in Panera in meetings than at corporate HQ.