Dear United States Army: LEAVE ME ALONE!

The BBQ Pit
41

I got a call from a Marine recruiter a few months ago.

“Have you ever thought about the Marines?”

“Meh. I’m done with the military for now. Two tours of Iraq was enough.”

He got quiet, asked a couple of general questions like what I did and I picked Air Force and then said goodbye. He was polite throughout and I haven’t heard from him since.

My Air Force recruiter was awesome. Like Jolly Roger said, they have it a lot easier. I went to him and the process was smooth. I went and saw him a year later once I was done with the school and he was asking me all kinds of questions. Apparently he wanted to cross-train into my job. A few months later I called him to see how it went and was not happy.

“Some fucking clerk guy lost my paperwork and now I can’t cross train. Fuck the Air Force! I’m getting out once my enlistment’s done, I don’t need this shit.”

42

I think it may have been their oblique way of calling you a wanker :stuck_out_tongue:

43

Really? They had better stay in touch with you then. :wink:

Actually, you are wise not to lie to them about a disease/condition that you don’t really have. That’s not a good thing to have sitting and a government data base. I was going to post specifically to warn you against that.

When I was in college in the 80’s, I got many calls from the Navy. They were looking for engineering graduates to be officers on nuke submarines. I was a long haired, pot smoking, LSD tripping Deadhead in those days. It wasn’t a good fit. I was polite for the first few calls but I had finally had enough. The last time that they called, I told the recruiter that I really wasn’t the Navy type. She asked what did I mean by that. I told her that I would certainly fail the monthly pee test. That seems to work and I never got another call.

44

Telling the recruiter on the phone or even in person "I’m a diabetic/have herpes/whatever doesn’t put it in a database. Thats paranoia.

Example: Me, recruiting. Calling Joe Potsmoker. Joe lies and says “I’m a diabetic”.

Me: “Oh, well, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’m afraid that bar you from service in the US Army. But if you have a second, take down my number…if you know anyone who might be interested please pass it along. Have a great evening, and again, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

I don’t go into some super database and record that he has diabetes. I write it down in the big notebook of numbers from his high school/college where I got his number…in PENCIL. I write down “Called on this date/time. Is a diabetic, DQ. Do not call”.

So in the future, any other recruiter using that notebook will see it and not call Jimmy. If they do for whatever reason and Jimmy says “Hey, I lied, I don’t have diabetes. I want to sign up”…well, they’ll sign him up. they won’t even care that he lied. The only way its going in the DoD database is if Jimmy actually takes a physical (which requires going through the enlistment process) and he DOES have diabetes.

Recruiters damn well know that people lie to them to make them back off. But its just like anything else. If you’re gonna say you have whatever condition we’ll take your word for it. Its not like recruiters have access to your medical records.

45

Well, maybe, but alll this stuff goes on your Permanent Record.

46

I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but lying to a recruiter about having diabetes is just that. Its information that will go nowhere except maybe to the recruiters coworkers telling them not to call you anymore.

If things went on your permanent record like that i’d have been dq’d from service when i forged my mom’s signature on my report card in 6th grade. :slight_smile:

47

Maybe that’s a dated concept. Hope so, anyway. Used to try and scare us with it back in the day. Like if you didn’t wear an onion in your belt when you went to Shelbyville…

48

I would like to say that

A) If you do not wish to join the military, then you absolutely should not, nor should recruiters be pestering you after the first no. That’s quite rude.

B) You can do a boatload more stuff as a chick in the military than be a file clerk or a nurse. Really.

49

And I still live in fear that some of the stuff I pulled in HS is lying there, waiting for me to run for school board or some such… the scandal would kill me!
:wink:

50

I refuse to believe that there are any people who don’t, in a tiny corner of their mind, still believe in it.

(My main fear? That someday the middle-school era pictures will find their way out into the wild from my Permanent Record.)

Yeah, I know. My sister is an engineer for the military - another thing I’m not interested in, nor am I interested in any flavor of aviation or naval stuff, which basically means, as a female, I’d ride a desk.

51

…well, that was the style, back in those days…

52

Not really true…you could have any number of jobs from broadcasting, vet assistant (like in animals), engineer (my wife was an engineer when she was in) etc. The concept that women are only nurses or clerks is outdated as well. Our current 1st sergeant is a female, in an airborne unit. Half the females in my platoon probably wish they were riding a desk most of the time.

When I was a recruiter though, no one believed me when I try to explain that. It can be frustrating when all you hear is “My cousin’s friends brother said when he was in…”.

53

Ooohh, fresh meat. You were EXACTLY the kind of headstrong young buck they love to work on, a real challenge; something just asking to be humiliated and broken-in. Why didn’t you join and get your ass handed to you? Are you a PUSSY?
:slight_smile:

54

Not true, actually. There is, just for an example, the entire field of intelligence, which is actually fairly female heavy. Then there is communications, PR (which sounds like it involves desk riding, but doesn’t a large amount of the time), maintenance of many, many flavors, law enforcement, etc., etc., etc. Or, you could go into this job field. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t describe what she’s riding as a desk.

Note that I am not trying to persuade you to join the military. But the idea that female opportunities are limited in the military, is, quite frankly, ignorance, and should be fought.

55

Or into that job field !

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

56

Were they stationed at Fort Dix?

57

:smack:

58

Sadly, I AM interested in aviation, very much so, and still wound up riding a desk. In the civilian world. Alas, the military would not take me due to a couple issues (bad eyesight, allergies/asthma, and waaaaaaaay back when I was 18 careers in the military were much, much more limited for women in the armed forces).

59

Ninja, I gotta echo what the other Recruiters on this page have said, three phone calls in two days should not be considered a crisis. I can guarantee you that the Recruiter did NOT want to call you. I know that I would rather call people who want to join the Army than those who want to call me SGT Testicles. But there are times when I must do just that. Here is probably what went on from the Recruiter’s side:

Recruiting Company Commander to Station Commander:
By January of 2009 I want 100% of all students contacted and the contact logged.

Station Commander to Company Commander: Roger, Sir.
Station Commander to SSG HighSpeed: Sargent, I see on my database that you have only contacted 75% of your student population, you need to contact the other 25%.

SSG HighSpeed dials Ninjachick: Blah, blah, blah, fuck, fuck, fuck, “Don’t call.”
SSG HighSpeed logs on his computer NIMS(Not Interested in Military Service)
Station Commander to SSG HighSpeed: I see you contacted 97%, good job, but you didn’t get any appointments for interviews out of those calls. Give me a list of names that you called yesterday so I can follow up with them to make sure you really did call.

Station Commander calls NinjaChick: fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck off, “Don’t call”

Station Commander to SSG HighSpeed: Sergeant, not on of those people that I called knew anything about Army benefits or programs. You are not allowing you school population to make an informed decision. I bet most of the college students in your area think that the only jobs for women are nursing or riding a desk. I bet none of them know about Preventive Med or Civil Affairs. You will be here on Saturday and you will call that same list again and you will not leave until you have made one appointment with a name on that list.

My recommendation to get the calls to stop, call and ask for the Station Commander. Tell the Station Commander that you have spoke to SSG HighSpeed and that he is very professional, but you are not interested. No need to add that you are a lesbian, or that you have asthma, or anything. The Station Commander will take you off the list of contacts. He can access SSG HighSpeed’s records from his own computer and that will be the end of that.

Please, the Recruiter is already stressed enough about making the impossible goals that are given to him, don’t make it harder by cussing at him and trying to harass him. We tend to get in a bad mood and that makes it harder to do our job. You get a couple calls from a Recruiter and get pissed, imagine if you had to make over 200 phone calls a day and got that reaction from even 10 people.

Thanks,
SSG Schwartz

60

I took the ASVAB too, mostly at a friend’s prompting. I was definitely not interested in signing up, but I was a little curious how well I would do. Turns out I scored 85th percentile or better on every subject, so pretty much all of the recruiters were calling me for months afterwards. Later, when I was close to completing my bachelor’s in computer science, the Navy kept trying to recruit me to work on nuclear reactors for submarines.