I had a 4 month break in service from the Army in late 91 to early 92.
I signed out on terminal leave on a Tuesday night, started a new job that Thursday. The morning I showed up there were people asking me questions about what I did before, I told them I was Army, they said I'd be better off going back.
My job was to place bearings into plastic injection mold. The mold shuts and encases the bearings. In the meantime I had to cut the excess plastic off the new parts. The process took about 90 seconds and produced 10 parts. There were way to many times when I didn't have all 10 bearings loaded and rarely ever got more that a couple parts cleaned of excess.
By the end of the shift I had decided that would be how I would lose a hand or if I'm lucky just a finger. I never went back.
I worked at a couple other places after that. By the middle of January I was standing in a Army Recruiting Office again and by February I was back in.
I decided that being in a tier one combat unit was safer than working in a US factory. Turns out I was mostly right.
