My military experience – part 3 of 3

Here’s the last installment of my series about my military experience.

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I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “20% of the people do 80% of the work.” In the military, that proportion is more like 10-90. The reason is, incompetent people can’t be fired! Your supervisor can’t just hand you your pink slip and send you to the unemployment office if you prove, after all your expensive training, that you can’t do the job – because – you signed a contract, and you are filling a billet. Supervisors, literally, do not have the option of getting rid of people who are incompetent. Their only option is to shove those people onto the competent people, and have the competent people baby-sit the incompetent ones, and do their jobs for them. Competent people, alas, do not get paid extra for doing someone else’s job in addition to their own. If they did, I’d probably be a millionaire right now. Anyway, these useless people comprise a large portion of the people who stay in the military, because they know how limited their useless-person options are out in the real world – which means there is an excellent possibility you will be working for one of them. Another unfortunate aspect of this silliness is that competent but lazy people will choose to not work, because they know they can’t be fired. This second group is the most frustrating – they know that you are being forced to do their job, while they still collect their paycheck, and there’s nothing you can do about it. These people think they are a lot smarter than you, too. They think they are cheating the big, bad, faceless military, when all they are really doing is screwing you.

Choosing a service – When I first decided to enlist, I wanted to join the Navy or the Air Force. I had been in Air Force ROTC for two years, so I was familiar with the Air Force culture. I had no desire to join the Marines or Army (and the Army would have paid off my school loans, too). The Navy, however, really does have an adventurous feel about it, has the coolest-looking uniforms, has a long, colorful, often irrational history, and, in short, I wasn’t too unhappy when the Air Force recruiter never seemed to be in his office when I dropped by. My dad was also in the Navy, and he had told me a lot of sea stories, and I liked the rather sentimental idea of following in his footsteps in that manner.

I can tell you, though, that most people in the military, if asked, would recommend the air force (including myself). The air force appears genuinely committed to taking care of its people, and the contrast is considerable, if you have the opportunity to see an air force base and compare it to an army or navy base. Air force people get better barracks – private rooms when available (no other service has expressed serious interest in giving their enlisted people private rooms!), larger rooms than most navy and army rooms – and better chow. The chow hall here at Goodfellow is excellent, I’ve never eaten so well in a military chow hall. It’s comparable to a small family restaurant in quality. Air force is also committed to providing better base amenities, like hobby shops, exchanges (department stores), commissaries (grocery stores), and other base services.

If you are considering the Navy, the best advice I could give you, is that you should decide ahead of time what kind of job you want, and get a commitment in writing from the recruiter, that you will be sent to that A-school. This is standard procedure in the Navy, so this shouldn’t be difficult if your ASVAB scores are decent. If you are undecided, the recruiter may try to tell you that to go in as an undesignated seaman is a good option, but that’s not true unless you are really and truly incapable of deciding what you want. Undesignated sailors do a lot of mindless, crappy, dirty work on ships for at least several months until they strike for a rating, and you can avoid that by getting your A-school before you ever go to boot camp. They can’t guarantee where you’ll get stationed after school though – that generally depends on your rating, although you will be allowed to fill out a “wish list” of your desired duty stations. Some ratings, like medical corpsman or cook, can get stationed anywhere. Other ratings, like mine (linguist, CTI), have very few options.

The best general advice I could give you is to know what you want out of this experience before you commit to it. Talk to the recruiters, find out what kind of jobs are available, what benefits are available (college fund, bonuses – ask about bonuses!, pro-pay, etc.) and if anything really strikes your fancy and makes you excited, wait a few weeks and see if you feel the same a while later. You have a whole year ahead of you – there is absolutely no need for you to sign papers until you are positively sure that you know what you want to do.

I mentioned benefits – here are some more details:

- college fund – not the GI Bill, which everyone is entitled to, but Navy College Fund, Army College Fund, etc. This could add up to some serious college money if you know you will want to go to college later. I don’t think you have to pay to get one of the college funds. In order to be enrolled in the GI Bill, though, you will have to pay $1200, which will be taken out of your paycheck $100 a month for the first year. If you are planning to go to college, though, the GI Bill is a real bargain.

- bonus – certain ratings are more difficult than others, and sailors will be given a bonus once they complete their training. I received a bonus of $5000 when I finished my schooling. This is NOT the same as the Selective Re-enlistment Bonus, or SRB, so make sure the recruiter is not talking about SRBs if you discuss this with him.

- professional pay (pro pay) – this is pay you get for maintaining a certain skill level in some ratings. I get $200 a month extra for maintaining a certain level of competency in Russian. The rating, again, has to be one that is difficult to fill, and I really don’t know how common this is. This pay is intended to be an incentive to keep people in the rating, and keep their competency levels up.

You asked me, why I decided to reenlist. This was a very difficult decision for me, not nearly as straightforward as my original decision to enlist. I regret the decision often, and I don’t know if I would make the same decision again, knowing what I know now – my last tour was pretty miserable. I was out of the navy for several months after my first enlistment. I thought I was financially prepared to go back to college, which were my post-navy plans, and I wasn’t. I didn’t have access to reliable financial information about going back to college, particularly concerning financial aid, and that really hurt me. Something to consider – once you are faced with the decision to reenlist, make sure your decision isn’t based on money or some other desperate situation. There are a lot of people in the military who absolutely hate it, but they’re still in because they need the job, and they don’t have enough money in savings to risk getting out and starting over. [Note: the rest of my Navy career was great, so I believe now that staying in was a good idea.]

You asked as well, if I have traveled a lot. By military terms, no, I haven’t, but it’s not because I haven’t had the opportunity. In the eyes of your average small-town Midwesterner, though, I have gotten around quite a bit – Florida for boot camp, California and Texas for training, and Hawaii as my only duty station. (I could have traveled more if I had requested orders for someplace other than Hawaii – Hawaii is an expensive place to base personal travel out of.) Also, I got lucky and the Navy sent me to St. Petersburg, Russia, for some language training, and that was a wonderful and unique opportunity, indeed. If you get assigned to a ship, you will travel quite a bit. If you get stationed overseas, like Japan or England, you should have plenty of opportunities to explore your host country and surrounding countries. The Air Force and Army still have a significant presence in Germany. The military has an excellent organization called Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) whose sole purpose is to find cheap ways to amuse you. They organize lots of inexpensive trips and are one of the really good benefits of being in the military. You should have plenty of opportunities to travel, even if you end up with orders stateside.

The highlights of my military time have been meeting some really great people from all over the country. The lowlights have been working with some really nasty people. Overall, I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet the great people. Great people are all wonderful in their own cool, individual way, and a lot of fun to get to know. Nasty people are all pretty much the same, anywhere you go, and you’ll have to learn how to deal with them anyway.

Another highlight is, that being in the military, regardless of what job you do, you feel like you’re out there doing the job that needs to be done – some pretty good job satisfaction (in spite of the pointless stuff I mentioned earlier). When you see the American flag flying somewhere, you’ll feel a much more personal connection to it than you do as a civilian. This will be especially true if you ever have the opportunity to visit foreign countries.

On to other business – if you do sign papers, and later change your mind, you need to know that the recruiters can do nothing to you if you back out. They’ll give you a lot of grief and may make threatening legal noises, but I’ve already had a couple of recruiters tell me that there is really nothing they can do about people who back out of their signed commitments PRIOR to being sent to boot camp. Don’t step into this lightly, though – you’re messing a lot of stuff up if you back out after signing papers. And if you do back out, tell the recruiter in person, be firm, and take your lumps like an honest person. Don’t just not show up on the day you’re supposed to ship out. I personally wouldn’t have a clear conscience concerning the whole thing if I did something like that, and I hope you feel the same way.

As I said in my last letter, I knew at the end of my first enlistment, that enlisting had been the smartest decision I had made in my life up to that point. I had found out what I was capable of by successfully completing some very difficult technical training; by becoming very good at a job for which I had no natural liking or talent; and by living on my own so far from home. The military is a good option if you don’t want to go to college, don’t feel ready for college, have no immediate goals, or you just want to get away from home for a while. It’s a good option if you go into it with your eyes open. It’s also a good option if you are interested in certain types of training or work experience – some military training is very good. There are a lot of people who really like military life, and are dedicated to doing the best they can – but if you join, you will probably mostly be surrounded by people who do nothing but complain, because, you know, complaining is just sooo cool. Most of these people couldn’t hold down a minimum wage job in their hometown, so they’re not worth listening to anyway.

If you have any questions about anything in this letter, you can either ask me personally or you could take this letter to the recruiter and ask him to explain what I meant – in fact, I encourage you to do so. Don’t be afraid to ask him difficult or sticky questions. If he seems evasive or tries to deny something I’ve said, he is not the recruiter you should be working with. A good recruiter is dedicated to bringing only quality people into the military, and should be willing to be straightforward with you even concerning difficult issues. The military can be a great opportunity, but you have to understand what you are getting into, to the greatest extent possible.

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Well, that’s the end of the letter. I may do some more writing later on other aspects of my military experience, particularly the fun stuff I did after I wrote this letter in 2001. I actually enjoyed my third tour of duty so much, that I reenlisted in 2003, which I never would have guessed I would do in 2001!

Divine Mind

musings by Angel