There's so much to write about this that it's hard to condense into a short post. Here's what immediately comes to mind:

1. Generally speaking, your leadership does not care about you above the flight level. Hell, even at the flight level they may not care about you.
2. If manning sucks, your job doesn't stop, you just work more days and hours. Security Forces has lost a lot of manning in the past few years.
3. Working at northern tier bases. A lot of cops land up stuck in these places for years and years without any hope of leaving, and many who do eventually need to come back or go to another northern tier base. Most don't get to deploy because they're essentially "deployed in place." They sleep in a bed that is not their own for 4-6 months out of the year without any kind of incentive pay (tax free, HDP) like they would get while deployed.
4. 12+ hour shifts are a norm, 16 happens fairly regularly as well, and if relief doesn't come you still need to work. I pulled a 24 hour shift because a maintenance team got relief and mine didn't.
5. You're just a postable body. Your talents, skills and ambitions are mostly irrelevant.
6. There's a huge culture of making huge issues out of benign things. You may salute, give a reporting statement and offer a post briefing to a commander, only to have them decline and tell your leadership you didn't give them a post briefing. Then there's hell to pay for the whole flight.
7. There's some truly brilliant defenders, but there's also some really, really stupid ones.
8. The typical military fuck fuck games of showing up 30 minutes early to early to arm to be 30 minutes early to guard mount to be an additional 30 minutes early to post. tldr; Show up to work 1.5-2 hours before it starts? Yes, or there will be paperwork. Get off your (additional) 12 hour shift, stand in line for 30 minutes to an hour to turn in your weapon... SURPRISE! it's dirty and you need to block your ammo, then you can go turn in the rest of your equipment and wash your truck that's already clean, so that you can wait for debrief, so you can do it all again the next day.

Some pros: Most of the time you literally are getting paid to sit and do a lot of nothing. There was something special about getting paid to drive around the countryside and hang out there with some of the best friends I've made. Most people who leave the career field miss the camaraderie; I would include myself as one of those people. Many people who leave the career field miss the discipline; although there's a time and place for it, I'm not in that camp.