While plenty of people like to joke about the hours that federal government employees do, or do not work in a given week, the schedule of a federal agent is no laughing matter. Agents are required to work an average of 50+ hours a week. I use the word average because some weeks they may work 40 hours, but the following week they may work 60 depending on the demands of certain cases or field operations. This schedule is part of the administratively uncontrollable overtime work (AUO) program.
Some mornings my husband is out of the house by 4 a.m. and on plenty of occasions he won't get home until well after midnight. The tricky part in all of this is that there's never a set schedule. You never know when a 'day in the office' will turn into a full night of surveillance. Good luck planning out your weekly grocery shopping list around a schedule like that.
Then there's the travel. I never knew to anticipate so much travel when he first took this job. I'm not sure that he knew there would be as much travel, either. My husband is out of town at least one full week out of the month. Sometimes it may be two days one week and four the following, but one week a month is a conservative estimate. That's a minimum of a fourth of a year. And if the agent is on a special response team (SRT), they're gone probably an average of two weeks a month minimum.
To say that these hours are unique is an understatement. This job demands a lot not only from the agent but the agent's family. That being said, my husband's job has made me a much stronger person and I'm thankful for that. Without fail, my child will get sick or the furnace will stop working when my husband is out of town. Handling these situations on my own has been challenging and empowering. I know many other agent's wives that acknowledge that they can expect something to go wrong when their husband is gone. It's almost comical at this point. It's as though the universe wants us to be as strong as possible and it strengthens us with adversity.
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