A Day in the Life of a Services Member

  • Published
  • By SSgt Christopher Goett
  • 182nd Force Support Squadron
24 Jan 13 --  You may only see our faces twice a month during lunch, but our mission is a full-time endeavor. A Services member UTA starts not on Saturday, but rather weeks prior. In addition to creating meal plans, the nutritional values for those meal plans, and food orders, we are constantly working with a budget that we have to maintain and stay within. We are in constant contact with our food vendors, as prices continually change and orders can get mixed up or lost. We have to make sure all of our food and meals are planned out because when you are serving on average 600 plus people a day, there is no room for any miscalculations or shortfalls.

Culinary operations are only one part of our mission. One might be thinking, "Where do all of the base members stay on a given UTA?" Well, Services is responsible for all of the hotel accommodations for the base. This is no small task by any stretch of the imagination and a great deal of planning for each member. First, there is an inspection that must take place by a member of our Services team, Security Forces, and Public Health. Before each UTA we most go to each hotel we have contracted and pick up last month's hotel sign-in roster and drop off the new sign-in roster for the following month. We must then go through each person who signed into the hotel and make sure the member was charged correctly by the hotel and that each charge is processed correctly.

Another aspect of a Services member's job and career is fitness. As you know the fitness standards are constantly changing, and we are in charge of fitness for the entire Wing. We have to ensure Physical Training Leaders for each flight on base are trained and up to date on the current standards to conduct fitness tests. In addition, we inventory, stock, clean, and up-channel repairs for everything in the fitness area to ensure our members have full access to every piece of equipment that our fitness area offers twenty-four hours a day. The gym has treadmills, T.V.'s for the treadmills, stationary bikes, elliptical trainers, stair climbers, TRX, free weights, squat racks, benches, and weight machines. We are proud of our gym and we can honestly say that it rivals any fitness center around.

Lastly, is our latest addition to the Services spectrum: the Fatality Search and Recovery Team, also known as FSRT. Our FSRT team was the Air Force's pilot unit established in 2007. As a FSRT member, we are trained in HAZMAT and work directly with the CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages for both the Army and Air Force. Our primary duty is to pull fatalities in the event of a natural disaster. We have traveled all over the United States training other units as well as participating in training exercises to stay current on the latest equipment and techniques to do such a job. Since 2007, the Air Force Fatality Search and Recovery Team has grown not only in size, but in equipment and technology, so if a disaster does occur we can be ready to deploy at 100% with each member knowing their equipment, their duty, and what to expect.

This is just a glimpse of what the job description of a Services member entails. Hopefully this shed some light and you were able to gain some insight as to the complexity and how hard working each member of the Services Flight is. We truly embody and live the three core values of the Air Force, except we add something extra that truly encompasses our full job description: Integrity first, SERVICES before self, and excellence in all we do.