In honor of the #Veterans project on Steemit I thought I'd share my experience regarding Veterans Affairs. To qualify this, let me just say I've been injured several times over my career and was dealing with Veterans Affairs regarding rehab.

Dealing with Veterans Affairs is potentially the longest-standing hobby one will have over the course of their post-release life. To get one document processed and rejected because something was improperly attached will take about 6-9 months. There is an online system which is handy-dandy and will ensure that a 12 month milestone is reached as no staff member actually knows how to use it to retrieve documents.

Let's not harp on poor Veterans Affairs staff members. They have it tough. That shit wears them down, day in day out. Rejecting all those veterans, being the gatekeepers to coffers of unlimited gold piles, is a stressful job. The gold must be protected at all costs.

Their mission is to protect. Below is what they are protecting and as you can see, the responsibility shouldn't be taken lightly.

Thank you random tea blog for sharing this patriotic image.

The most tragic thing that can happen to any Veterans Affairs employee is a home visit to the veteran's house. Sometimes home visits occur when a veteran lives two hours away from the office. They are typically enjoyed as the Veterans Affairs staff member can then exit with a light heart and full of joy that they saved a poor soul. Yet sometimes, just sometimes, they are tragic.

This type of tragedy can occur for several reasons:

1. The veteran may not be homeless

This is not acceptable as all veterans who attend Veterans Affairs must be homeless. The existence of a home does not compute all that easily. The instant response is to ask whether the veteran is in the process of losing said home. The assumption is yes, he is losing the home and only Veterans Affairs may offset the loss.

2. The veteran may or may not live in a tiny one-room apartment

The image of a run-down rental, preferably single-room but a one bedroom is acceptable as well, must be perpetuated. All Veterans Affairs employees that ourselves or anyone we've ever known has come across expected this outcome upon a home visit. The furniture must be old and the accommodations themselves should, under the ideal circumstances, have unpaid bills strewn all over the table. The building should be as derelict as possible to lessen the mental burden on the visiting staff member.

3. The veteran may live in a house

When that happens, the Veterans Affairs staff member eagerly expects to find a dilapidated structure barely standing under the weight of its own roof. It should be tiny, have some broken siding preferably, have a rusty car under a collapsing car port, and have weeds out front.

4. The veteran's house may be large

When the dreaded home visit arrives and the Veterans Affairs staff member pulls up to a driveway that can and does hold more than one car, her stress levels suddenly elevate. This must be the wrong house. Is there a room, perchance, being rented in this house? She enters the house and it has a lobby. Her head starts to spin; the veteran cannot possibly live in a home larger than her own. There are real tiles on the ground. To her relief, she is led to a room that has wallpaper that is being replaced. Thankfully, it has no furniture and is thus acceptable.

5. The veteran may own his house

How such a horrible injustice can take place is unknown, but sometimes it does. It shouldn't. It's wrong on every level it could be wrong on. The veteran may not own anything more than the breadcrumbs that Veterans Affairs provides and whatever leftover kit he has that Stores didn't want back. To own a house is insanity. And to own a house that's worth more than $100,000! Peace in the Middle East is easier to accept than the concept of a veteran owning a nice house. The Veterans Affairs staff member feels she's been cheated -- that Veterans Affairs have been cheated -- by veterans. How, she asks herself, does it make any sense that this person own property? Shit can't be real.

6. The veteran may not be selling

This just doesn't make any sense. Zero. Like relish on cheesecake. No sense. WTF? At this point the Veterans Affairs staff member leaves the premises and pretends she misheard.

There is so much injustice in this world, and so much of it falls on the shoulders of Veterans Affairs, that I cannot keep writing this post without tears welling up in my eyes. Such great power. Such responsibility. Such idiocy.

Cheers.

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