Help me...

I really hate this job. My boss is a control FREAK! Sergeant Pokey-slow decides that it's OK to volunteer us to work this sunday...our ONE DAY A WEEK OFF! Anyway, he asks us if we want to help him out. I politely tell him that I really do not have the time, that I will stop by to help for a few hours, and that's it. I have to use my ONE DAY A WEEK OFF to get ready for the rest of the damned week: shine my boots, iron my uniform, etc. It's not like I really get to RELAX. The overwhelming nature of this horrid job looms over me like a cancer eating at my soul. I almost never sleep on Sundays anyway. Anyway, Sergeant Pokey-slow talks to the boss and tells him that he has spoken to us and that we have "volunteered" to help him with this shindig. Boss automatically assumes that means we intend to be there for the duration. This comes up in conversation last night and I plainly state that I have a lot to do, but I had said I would stop by and help for a few hours...which should be fine, since it was (emphasis added) voluntary. Well, boss starts talking today about the event on Sunday, and lo and behold, it now has become mandatory. Big surprise. Yep, he said that he didn't think he "had to make it mandatory", that "we're all NCOs" and he "though /we/ would have the initiative to sacrifice necessary to be successful". This begs the question, has he tallied up the hours we spend at work every week? 13 hours a day monday through friday, and ten on saturday!! DO THE MATH, IS THIS A BIG ENOUGH SACRIFICE, GENIUS? Over 70 hours a week, and now he wants more. Why the hell not? You know, We don't need sleep, we don't need time to ourselves. There are 168 hours in a week, why not use them all to try to convince people that they should be in the Army(this is called sarcasm, lest a senior recruiter see this and get any funny ideas). Hell, recruiting sure makes me love the Army life. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot, this isn't the Army life; that life is pretty good. I keep forgetting what the real Army life is like. How quickly one forgets. I can't tell you what I did last week without checking my precious planning guide. I am going to go get drunk now, it's the only way I can escape.

Conversion incentives

USAREC offers like a 20K bonus to soldiers who elect to convert to 79R (Career recruiter). By and large, these are your salespeople. These are the people who get out to USAREC la-la-land and do fairly well. These are the Army's actors; possessing no real core personality of their own, they are malleable enough that they can assimilate themselves into any culture well enough to get "in" with whatever market they are speaking to. These are the white guys who can feign interest in Jay-Z's latest offerings, then turn around and listen to Led Zeppelin with the quasi-rocker/stoner crowd, and the black guys who can throw on a ten-gallon hat, take some dip, and babble NASCAR while listening to Kenny Chesney with the hicks, then put on the chains and black t-shirts and grind with the goths. Not that these are bad people, just that they don't hold anything close enough to themselves to have any real personal identity. They are doppelgangers, and they give most people that same slimy feeling that one gets when talking to a smarmy used car salesman. You know, the feeling like you're talking to someone who's totally disingenuous by nature; they can't help it. Where am I going with this? Well, read on, dear fan(s) (in case I have more than one).

The way detail recruiters are treated is abysmal. The 79R culture expects detail recruiters, who are mostly not salesmen, to be able to do the same things they can do. When we cannot, we get stuck with extra training, we get told how awful we are. In some of the more extreme cases, we get punished (usually vicariously through the things associated with the job other than actual production--they can't "punish" one outright for not producing). It is never the fault of the community for them not supporting their Army (take ownership, America--this is YOUR ARMY), it is the fault of the individual recruiter, who although he has worked his tail off, has not managed to get anyone to enter the fold. It's not the market's fault that we cannot produce, we must not have been working hard enough. Our tools are messed up. It has nothing to do with the fact that DOD averages 5 people a month in an area where they want the Army alone to get 8. Sorry USAREC, not everyone can be a good salesman. I couldn't sell Kirbys, I couldn't sell cars, hell I couldn't even sell candy bars. Pouring on the pressure doesn't make us any better, it just makes us burnt out.

Something good...

A good friend of mine, who is enjoying his life in the ROK right now, asked me to think of something good about recruiting. Initially I had told him that the only good thing about recruiting was this: Special Duty Assignment Pay. Well, I thought about it a little bit more and came to this conclusion: there is one more thing that is good about recruiting. I now have a much deeper appreciation for the real Army. I used to complain about everything, particularly all of the silly little things; i.e., the battalion runs, wearing a kevlar, getting called up to do a whiz quiz, the field, etc. I always held the notion that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". Now I know how mundane those things truly were. There was always a light at the end of the tunnel: vis-à-vis now, where that light is nowhere in sight. Well, it's nearly three years from now, but still, that's a long way off.

We have a gentleman in our office who needs some help. He's a nice enough guy, but he's well on his way to getting stuck out here. He's WAY overweight, and they will use that against him when the time comes for him to return to the Army ("Sarge, you're flagged. The Army doesn't want you back, but USAREC loves you. You can make it out here. Hell, we'll overlook your flag if you'll convert."). We try to help him, you know, and give him pointers and such, but his personality is such that it makes it difficult. He's so friggen' standoffish! Not only that, but when the time comes to leave the orofice, the M-Fer is never ready. Last night, Sergeant Pokey-Slow took an extra 20 minutes to get ready to leave. My ass was stuck in the office until 9:20 because that dude took so damn long!! Twenty minutes that I could have spent with my family!!!

How it went...

Yesterday was my 5 month board. It went ok. I keep things in pretty good order, so although I have not really put too many people in the Army, they couldn't hammer me too badly. It went OK. I can't complain too much, though I was hoping that I could be sent back to the real Army now. It's not that I want to fail, it's just that the cost of the job is too great. I want to be successful so that my three years will be as painless as possible. It's still funny that anyone could think otherwise. I also put my third person in the Army yesterday, so things went well for me as a whole. Now, if only I could shake this cold.

Still sick...

To my one or two loyal fans, I apologize. I have been sick all this week. This has precluded me from doing much of anything besides working and sleeping. Heck, I haven't even been to the gym in ten days, I feel like such a fatbody.

Well, I'm flooring two people tomorrow: one to join, one to re-phys so we can put together her OCS packet. That should make things a little better when I get to talk to the panel of senior recruiters about why my production sucks so bad. No, I'm sure it has nothing to with people saying "no". I am inferior because I cannot convince people to join as well as they can. It's a different environment now than it was when I joined. Hell, when I joined, I didn't even realize I was joining until I'd raised my right hand and left MEPS. Nowadays, we can't do that. We have to convince the individual, then we have to convince their family, then their friends, then their friggen' cat! And if that doesn't work, we have to pester, woo, and otherwise stalk the individual until they either join, or get a restraining order. We want people to want to join the Army. I can't see myself doing anything else at this point in my life. If I take the Army out of my life, I really don't know what I'd be doing. It's so frustrating when I meet a young person with no clue what he/she is going to do his/her life, and he/she isn't willing to give up three to five years to accomplish something and become somebody; it drives me nuts. Let me clue you in out there: THERE IS NOTHING IN THE GOD-AWFUL STATE OF NEW YORK WORTH LIVING WITH MOM UNTIL YOU ARE 40 Y/O FOR. There really is a much larger world out there, if you only had the courage to reach out and grab it, you could do anything. The Army could be a means to that end; for many it could be more than just a stepping-stone. If the Army were so bad, there would not be so many people who want to make a career of it. Chew on that for a while.

The Runs...

Well, to my faithful few followers I must apologize for the lack of posts this week. It has been a busy week, people actually seem to want to join the Army. We had a fellow go down and join yesterday, and we've got about two projections for next week. In fact, today I get to go to one of my senior's houses and build his packet so that he can go down and join next thursday and friday.

Anyway, I am sick today. The idiot cashier at the commissary thought it would be OK if she continued to work even though she was ill...and put her hands all over my groceries...and now both I and my kid are sick. Friggen' cold. Last thing I need in this job.

OK, here's my daily rant. We had a battalion run yesterday. Yes, I know that they are part of the Army; the problem is this: IT'S A BUNCH OF FAT, OUT OF SHAPE RECRUITERS. Not to disparage my brethren, but you've never seen a larger collection of overweight soldiers. Anyway, the Battalion Commander takes of like a bat out of hell, and within the first ten minutes a third of the battlion is in the rearview. Then he REALLY nails it on the back stretch of the run, and three-quarters of what was remaining falls out. There were only about eight people in my company (self included) who made it. What is the point? They know most of these guys hardly have the time to do any real PT. It's like they're rubbing lemon in a papercut, "Nyah, nyah, you're just a recruiter, you can't keep in shape." These are, for the most part, top-notch NCOs who've simply been placed in a difficult position for a few years. There's really no need to rub our faces in it once a month. Maybe I'm missing something, but there's no honor in that. There's no esprit de corps when most of the corps can't hang.

Mission Monday...

It's Mission Monday!!! Yayyy!!! Okay, so maybe my mock enthusiasm wasn't as sincere as I would've liked. It's not my fault; I am not a good liar. Anyway, this is the end of the month, the day where "anything goes". My boss will most likely be out of the orifice for most of the day (that's "office" for those of you who don't get my sense of humor).

I could not sleep at all last night. You know the scene in The Matrix where Smith has Neo on the train tacks? "Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability...that is the sound of your impending doom." This scene played over and over and over in my head last night as I tried to sleep. No, I don't dread work at all. I think I got around two hours of sleep...yup, I is TIRED.

Ooh, the local commies put up a new flier. Apparently, they seem to think that America wants a communist revolution. Yeah, the only reason communism didn't work was because the wrong people were in charge. If only they would approach communism the way our good buddy Fidel does it. You know, his people pretty much get just enough to get by--not quite abject poverty, but close--and he and his cronies live in opulent splendor. Oh, and let's not forget about the commies' good ole folk hero, El Che. Yeah, he was a wonderful human being. How many thousands of so-called bourgeosie did he and Fidel kill during the Cuban revolution and aftermath? I don't recall the exact number, but it was WAY more than the 1900 or so servicemembers who've died in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was something else about this I wanted to mention too...what was that? Oh yeah, their victims were OVEWHELMINGLY civilians. So much for "fighting the good fight". Che the hero, MY ASS. My GOD these people are so ignorant.

"I'm going to college..."

There are two things I am going to talk about today. First, as my title would suggest, I am going to talk about the number one complaint I run into out here: "No, not my kid; he's going to college.", and all of its variations. This begs the question:,do these people realize that better than half of all college "students" don't make it past year two? Are they so ignorant that they totally discount this statistic? "No, my kid's going to make it. He's not going to fail."--sorry, college is not for every one. If you only scored three digits on the SAT (old scale), YOU'RE NOT COLLEGE MATERIAL! If you hardly paid any attention during your senoir and junior years in high school or barely cut a "C", YOU'RE NOT COLLEGE MATERIAL! College is for people who have a plan. College is not for people who have yet to "figure it out". We run into these people all of the time who "tried" college, and now have a few law violations, or have done other stupid things to disqualify themselves from the Army. Guess what? They show up in our office wanting to join the Army several years later...AND THEY CAN'T! We, unlike most of corporate America, have standards. "Woulda' Coulda' Shoulda'! But ya' didn't, son!" Part of our job is to try to catch these SOBs while they're still young enough...i.e. before they ruin their lives. Here's a message to you all out there: THE ARMY IS NOT A LAST RESORT FOR MORONS AND THUGS WITH NO OTHER OPTIONS!!!

Lemme tell you about what happened to me today. I went to visit old girl at work, 'cause mom wasn't too happy about her talking to us. I walked into the restaurant and old girl was at the register. As soon as she realized who I was, she booked towards the back of the restaurant, screaming for someone to "cover for her". I noticed that one of my applicants was sitting down at a table nearby, so I sat down to chat with him. No sooner than I had sat down then the manager approached me, "I don't appreciate you coming here to harass my employees. She's working. I don't care what you do outside of here, but while she's here, she's here to work." (in a snotty tone). This woman didn't know me from Adam! I was sitting down talking to a guy who could just as easily've been some dude I was hanging out with! I could've even been patronizing her store, and yet she thought it was within her place to accost me! So I told her that I was sure the young lady would be much happier and more successful working her way up the corporate ladder at that dead-end job!! Love this place!! Love this job!!

Another day, Another dollar...

Today we have a couple of guys coming back from MEPS, hopefully with contracts in hand, and another going down to test and physical to join. This eases the burden a little bit; unfortunately though, next week it starts all over again. The monthly pressure-cooker is drained, refilled, and the heat is turned on again...here we go. Really though, if it was just about putting people in the Army, it would not be such a drag. What exacerbates recruiting is all of the other stuff we have to do, updating planning guide, maintaining computer database, filling out paperwork, and not to mention that we have to make a couple of trips per month to the flagpole for this, that or the other. Putting people in the Army is difficult enough in itself, but the head-shed feels the need to further complicate our lives by mounting on all of this extraneous baloney. ARRGGHH!! I hate this crappy job. I swear when I return to the real Army I will never complain about the silly stuff again. "You want my team to burn shit, 1SG? In the 140 deg. heat of Iraq? No prob, Top! We'll get it done!"

No wonder no one wants to join!

If I were on the outside looking in, I would not want to join an organization that kept its workers in the office until 9pm or later five days a week. There's something sooo attractive about a 13 hour per day job, especially one where you spend all day on the phones getting cursed out by random strangers who neither understand, nor appreciate your job.

Right now my boss is out with an applicant trying to get some paperwork signed...lovely. So I get to spend an extra few minutes in the office. Sure would be nice if I could get home to see my kid before night-night time.

A few days off

Can you believe it? I am actually getting a 4-day weekend. Astounding. Amazing. Outrageous. Superlative. Etc.. The USAREC gods have deemed us worthy. Hold on a moment...ahhh...I'm just basking in it.

Anyway, it's just nice to have a little time to spend with the family. Time to ponder and reflect. Here's something I have been thinking about a lot lately, how will I feel if someone I put in the Army dies in Iraq or Afghanistan? I mean, it's different if it's your soldier. You train and prepare them, so if something happens to them while you're out there, you have no one to blame but yourself; vis-à-vis enlisting them and sending out. You have no control over what happens to them, yet ultimately, because you enlisted them, you will be at fault. Not that I don't believe that what we are doing overseas has validity, because I do; I simply wonder how I will ultimately feel about a soldier I put in the Army, making that sacrifice. As a recruiter we spend so much time getting to know people as individuals, we meet their families, their kids, their friends, and so on. It's not an impersonal thing. I know to the civilian world we seem like overblown salespeople, but many of us actually care about those we enlist.

Enough of this. I'll write again on tuesday the 6th. Enjoy your weekend, you can believe I will be enjoying mine.