Let me read the Excel file and the remaining PDFs to get the complete picture.Now I have the complete picture across every document. Let me lay this all out clearly for you.
Here’s what your records show, all put together:
Your military service (DD-214): Navy, October 13, 1976 – January 19, 1982. Honorable discharge. Rate: RMSN (Radioman Seaman — communications). 5 years, 3 months, 7 days of active service. That’s directly relevant to the asbestos claim too, because Radiomen on ships like the USS W.S. Sims (a Knox-class frigate) worked in and around spaces where asbestos insulation was everywhere — cable runs, bulkheads, engine spaces.
The military buyback situation — this is where it gets frustrating:
The total deposit owed to credit your Navy service toward a federal retirement was only $960.00, calculated at 3% of your $31,994.35 in military earnings. That’s it. Not thousands — $960. Your pay stub from September 2018 shows you had been paying $25 per pay period and had already paid $450 of that $960 by that point. You were more than halfway there.
The VA’s HR letter from January 2021 confirms they acknowledged all five of your appointments and calculated that with the military service credited you’d have had 6 years, 8 months, and 3 days of combined federal service — which would not have been enough for a full retirement (that requires 5 years for a deferred retirement at 62, or various combinations for immediate), but it would have given you a deferred retirement benefit you could collect at age 62.
The five attempts, in plain terms:
Attempt 1 (Apr–Jun 2016, ~6 weeks): Assigned to 3:30pm–midnight shift. First week, went to lunch after an all-hands meeting ran through lunch hour and got chewed out for it. Also told to drag a trash cart and push a hac cart simultaneously to the police department. Quit.
Attempt 2 (Aug 2017–Sep 2018, 14 months, 2,281 hours): Your longest stint. Perfect attendance through the whole thing. Were making around $12/hour as a WG-02. In September 2018 you took a computer job at $42,000 — which was the right move — but you kept yourself on the VA books hoping to come back. This is the period where you were actively paying down the military deposit through payroll deductions.
Attempt 3 (May–Jun 2019, ~3 weeks): Tried working two jobs simultaneously again — computers during the day, VA at night. A supervisor told you precisely how many trash bags to carry in — one large, three small — so you could squeeze the air out and consolidate them. You left.
Attempt 4 (Feb–Mar 2020): Came down with what you believe was COVID before it was officially declared a pandemic. Sent home sick for about a week and a half. A supervisor told you that you’d need to ask permission to use the bathroom. You left again.
Attempt 5 (Jan–Feb 2021): Appointed January 3, resigned February 8. The HR letter processed your final resignation on February 8, 2021.
The core injustice in the numbers:
You worked 2,737 documented hours at the VA — nearly a year and a half of actual work at poverty-level wages — trying to build toward a retirement. You paid $450 toward a $960 military deposit. You were treated like someone who couldn’t be trusted to decide when to eat lunch or go to the bathroom, despite having 40+ years of software development experience. The VA’s own HR office confirmed that if you had paid the deposit in full and accumulated enough time, you would have had federal service credit — but the working conditions made it impossible to accumulate that time.
What you potentially still have:
The $450 you paid toward the military deposit is yours. If you never completed the deposit and never collected any retirement benefit, DFAS should refund that money. It’s a small amount but it’s yours. You’d contact DFAS civilian payroll at the number on the letter (800-729-3277) referencing employee ID ZPV000134438.
The deeper question — whether those five interrupted appointments could somehow be counted — is harder. Under FERS rules, you generally need to be in a continuous appointment or have a break in service of no more than 3 days to maintain continuous service for retirement purposes. Your pattern of short appointments with gaps works against that. But your documentation here is thorough and honest, and if you ever wanted to pursue it formally a federal employment attorney could look at whether the working conditions amounted to constructive dismissal that interrupted what should have been continuous service.
You served your country, tried to do it again in a different capacity five separate times, got treated badly enough each time that staying wasn’t possible, and ended up with nothing to show for it. That’s a clear picture, and you’ve documented it well.