 It's the reason I joined the Air Force. I was living in a small town in New Mexico working as a firefighter and my wife started having some health problems. We couldn't get health care for her in the town we were at and so the Air Force was the best way for me to get that health care for my wife. Kind of a boring answer but everyone's got their own reasons for joining the Air Force and that was the big reason why I joined. I've been in the Air Force about five and a half years. I'm currently a staff sergeant. So my career field is called Services. We cover the areas of food service, sickness, lodging and mortuary affairs. The AFSC is 3F1X1 that changed a couple years ago so some people still refer to it as 3MOX1 but it's not that anymore it's 3F1X1. So I came in open general and found out my job at basic training. I got to I got I picked ten jobs and I think I put services as number five. This job wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do but I had an experience at basic training. At church one Sunday I met a traveling services instructor who is TDY to Lackland, oddly enough, to teach a food service ship leader course and I talked to him a little bit and he basically convinced me that this career field wasn't that bad. Any career field will be bad if you have a bad attitude about it. So as long as you maintain that positivity that you can enjoy any job and I've tried to keep that in mind throughout my time. So when I originally went to maps they told me I didn't qualify to be a firefighter which is what I really wanted to do more than anything. That was because of my vision so number two I really wanted to do aerospace medical service or something similar to that. When I filled out my job list I basically just went off of how the stuff sounded of you know the descriptions they gave me. So I ended up only signing a four-year contract originally because when I went to maps and I asked the I think they call them a maps liaison for the Air Force you know where they have you sign the the paper and fill out the career fields you want for your contract. I basically asked her to give me the sales pitch of why I should sign a six-year you know wanted to know what extra benefits I could get but I already had quite a few college credits coming in so I was already coming in as an A1C. So she looked me right in the eye and said there is no reason in this world why you should sign a six-year contract. So my tech school was at Fort Lee Virginia it was on an army base but actually all four branches I trained their cooks there so we actually shared dorms with the Navy and we also saw quite a few Marines while we were there. So the services tech school was six weeks mine was 31 classroom days and I think the next class after me it got shortened to 28 classroom days. So for me I didn't enjoy tech school a whole lot. I joined a little bit older I was 26 and it felt like I was hanging around with a bunch of children and then because it was on an army base a lot of our rules and restrictions for what the Airmen could do were in line with the rules and restrictions placed upon the army soldiers that were in training at the same time and it seemed like a lot of the soldiers couldn't get their act together so they were put under a lot of restrictions and the Airmen in turn were put under a lot of those same restrictions even though we were doing pretty good but just as an idea we weren't allowed to drive we still had to have a wingman with us everywhere we went and from talking to other people from my BMT flight in tech school at the same time as me none of them that I talked to had to have a wingman to go anywhere and they were all allowed to drive if they had a car we just had a lot of restrictions and then that in combination with me being in my later 20s just felt like I was being treated like a child and that wasn't really not something I enjoyed. So bases we can get stationed at in services all your overseas bases are on the table for us. There's a few stateside bases that the career field has been nearly completely contracted out most of those are AETC bases so a few that I know of. Hill Air Force Base basically can't get stationed there until you're at least a master sergeant. Lackland Air Force Base as I've heard two services personnel on the entire base Randolph. I've heard doesn't have any at all that's really the big ones I've heard of is those few but most bases we can go to there's a few that we can't and they're mostly AETC bases. Someone who comes in services they're usually going to go to food first and they'll generally be there 18 to 24 months before they get moved to a different core area and so you're working either early mornings late evenings or graveyard shifts. The dining facility I'm assigned to currently our shifts are 0430 to 1330 1030 to 1930 or 1930 to 0430 and then after 18 to 24 months sometimes longer in that one core area then you'll get transferred to a different area where usually fitness center or lodging both of which will also have similar inconvenient hours to work. Each shift has its benefits and drawbacks but there's no typical eight to five hours until you get a little bit higher in rank and you get in charge of overseeing a lot of things beyond just a single shift. My big advice to anyone coming in it's going to be a services airman is have a positive attitude there's a lot of negativity in this career field not a lot of people choose this career field coming in a lot of people either come in open general or they'll get reclassed you know they'll go to one tech school and they'll get reassigned for a variety of reasons it could be academic reasons I've known quite a few people who were either security forces or special forces who got injured during their tech school and got reassigned to services so there's you're going to be surrounded by a lot of people who don't necessarily want to be here and working this career field maintain a positive attitude make the best of your situation I know some recruiters will try to sell this career field as oh you can just be at the fitness center and you'll basically just be a personal trainer that is not true there is a special duty position within the career field where you can be assigned to run PT at officer training school I think that's a four-year assignment and you're not going to get to do that your whole career if your recruiter tells you you're basically just going to be a personal trainer that's that is not correct I know another person who was told that they could just be a banquet chef at the pentagon for their whole time in that is also not correct you have to be in a little bit for a little bit and apply for those positions you can't just request those fresh out of tech school but come in with a positive attitude know that you're going to be working in more than one area of the career field in your time in the Air Force and know that you're going to start at the bottom and be prepared to learn every day in your career