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2 years ago when I arrived in Italy I was blindsided with a crazy hard operations tempo (ops tempo). I arrived in October and immediately went into a very important inspection in November followed by another inspection that was the real deal. If we failed on anything the inspectors would be back in 90 days to do it over again. We passed...just in time to start preparing for another inspection on another aspect of our job. We passed that inspection too.
Then there was the NCO Academy in Germany where I spent a month and a half getting a crash course in all sorts of stuff. I returned in time to get another crash course in taking over a hugely important job in my shop. I had 3 months to prepare for another huge inspection that was basically a copy of one of the earlier inspections, just with a different name. It was a little rough but we passed. Immediately after the inspection there was an audit conducted on one of the biggest programs in the section I ran. The audit ran for 2 1/2 months. It was extremely stressful being told by an outside agency there were things messed up with my program.
Nobody seemed to really care what the audit agency was saying. Still, it hurt me that the auditor viewed me as a person that didn't know how to do their job. Granted I didn't know everything. I found out fairly quickly what was involved in the program. All of it was way outside my career field, except for the fact that the equipment that was being tracked was ours.
In the middle of the audit there was another huge thing that interfered with the audit. Every single piece of equipment had to be physically found and marked with a bar code for tracking purposes. Both the audit and the scavenger hunt dealt with the same program. So I was completely wrapped up in numbers and spread sheets marking things off and wondering where else to look for things that appeared to be missing.
When the audit and equipment marking finally wrapped up in December I had a couple weeks to breathe before we jumped right back into inspection preparation mode right after Christmas 2010. For a month we worked 12 hour shifts getting ready for inspectors to come looking at our shop/equipment. We passed! Except that was the practice inspection. Another month of 12's and then the real inspection. We passed!! Success. Now we can put our feet up and rest...yeah right.
Less than 2 weeks after our hugely important inspection real world events kicked off that had a profound effect on us. For 3 weeks we worked 12 hours on 12 hours off with no days off. When we finally got a day it was like being dunked in ice cold water on a hot day. I was refreshed but not completely. For another month it was pure adrenaline that kept me going 12 hours each day, 6 days on 1 day off.
When we finally went back to 8 hour shifts and getting 2 days off on the weekend it was completely weird. We had about 2 months of feeling normal before we jumped back into inspection mode again. The real world stuff was still going on but it was more sustained and normal so we weren't trying to go 100% all the time.
For the last 3 months we've worked every 2 weeks for 2 weeks straight with no days off. Why? To practice an exercise? Why? So we know how to pack up an get anywhere, anytime, in no time at all...Can we do it? Of course! Except the inspectors don't think we do it correctly so we keep practicing until we get it right.
So that's been my 2 years here in Italy. I won't make it to Rome before I leave. I will not get to see Florence, Milan, or Pisa. I was barely able to see Venice and that's 45 minutes away from here. Will I miss Italy? Yes and no. I won't miss the work but I will miss the friends I have made here. I will also miss the bicycling that I've managed to cram in. Italy is cool to visit but living here is a whole other ball of wax.
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