Since we’re all disclosing and all: This is pretty much hypothetical for me. My son’s scoliosis and spinal fusion are not things he can lie his way around, he’s disqualified and for very good and obvious reasons, although he’d make an excellent soldier like his father and his father’s father before him (X several generations). I dodged the Air Force recruiter after high school by getting pregnant (stopped those phone calls right quick!) and my only qualifications in this area are having an oppressive sense of ethics, a dim view of military logic and a cynical outlook on life.
One difference…as I recruiter I got nothing if a person joined or not except the one award I got for being top frecruiter in the battalion for a quarter. Whoopee. Out of all the awards I’ve gotten that one is the least. But I got it because I listened to what the applicants wanted, and busted my ass to make sure they got it.
And they’re not marks, they’re applicants. They have feelings, hopes, dreams, etc.
Basically a recruiter gets zip when a person joins…and I actually care once the person joins because they’re joining my organization. They might end up working for me one day whether its in an office or a foxhole.
And for me, its Hoo-Ah.
Maybe this will add something, maybe it will just muddy up the waters. When I went to MEPS many years ago the doctors that gave the physicals were civilian contractors. They are more interested in covering their own ass than making sure you are qualified. They will fail you on your physical for stupid shit because they don’t want to get accused of letting someone unqualified in. I see no problem with a recruiter giving advice as to how to navigate through that minefield. I also had no problem with my recruiter telling me ahead of time that if someone mentioned that they tried marijuana it would disqualify them from certain jobs. Not instruction, just information. Things may have changed since then.
When do you think we should pry the tit out of their mouths? They are adults, not kids. Some are more mature than others but they are not kids. They are at the age where we as a society have deemed it is time to make something of yourself on your own and they should.I would rather have a child of mine join the army at 18 than stay at home till they were 30. Get over it.
No its the same, at least of 2005 when I left recruiting.
Its also really difficult to pry those doctors out of their jobs. If anyone went to the Philadelphia MEPS (later moved to Fort Dix NJ) between 1989 and 2005 they’ll have seen the same doctor that I had…and this guy was Mister Burns/Prof. Farnsworth old when I joined! I’ve seen this guy DQ people for being too hairy. No lie. Sure, the guy looked like a freakin’ Wookie, but there was nothing wrong with him.
Fair enough. I should mention that I meant particularly bad recruiters, not to paint with a broad brush.
That said, is there a negative reinforcement for not getting appropriate numbers? I mean say you honestly filled out every form and gave real world descriptions of service, with probabilities of getting what they wanted, warts and all, and filled out the medical paperwork to the letter of the rules. If obeying every single rule and being scrupulously honest at every step lowered your numbers so that you got 20% of what the recruiter next to you got, would you get re-assigned?
In that case the relatively posh job of recruiter is the motivation, and not wanting to lose it to some guy that will cheat and sneak and omit so that his numbers shine. Also it’s human nature to be competitive. Nobody wants the dumb guy down the hall showing them up.
I would not be surprised if the doctors I had 20 years ago are still there. One of them looked like the emporer from Star Wars.
So if I get tired of boot camp and I guess it sucks, I have an easy way out if I have a million dollars, but no easy way out if I don’t have a million dollars? I must not be understanding this correctly.
Wow, that’s pretty drastic. It’s not like they were drafting women.
Very few recruiters target women at all, even today.
You can always get out. Getting out is not an issue. Getting out with an honorable discharge is. The easiest way to get out is to fail a drug test. Pop positive and you’re gone. There’s a price to be paid for that, though.
Something like inheriting a large amount of money can affect morale because what happens when someone gets money? That’s right, everybody’s their friend. People fall over each other asking for a hookup. The military doesn’t want that, so they let the guy go. No harm, no foul, thank you for your time.
But life is full of moral ambiguities. You want to be a nurse, right? Let’s assume that your patient asks you what she believes to be a binary question. You know it’s not that simple, and it’s left to you to decide what the patient ought to hear, which is where judgment and experience come in, so you give the patient a carefully measured answer that will help the patient make her own decision based on all of the facts.
The recruiter is in more or less the same position as the nurse. He knows what MEPS wants to know, and what will happen depending on the answer the applicant gives. So he gives the applicant all of the information, and leaves it to the applicant to make the choice. If the applicant is okay with admitting past medical issues and accepting the consequences, that’s fine. If the applicant decides the information is irrelevant and chooses not to tell MEPS, that’s fine too. If the applicant decides on some third way, fine. Any way you slice it, it’s not a big deal. The recruiter isn’t telling the applicant to lie. He’s simply laying out the options, consequences for each one, and leaving it to the applicant to make the decision on his own.
It’s not about “chain of command,” it’s about judgment.
Recruiters undergo a LOT of training about their job, about MEPS, and about what happens beyond that. They know the process inside and out, and they know how to work the system to make the system work for the people who are trying to join the military. Most recruiters will not allow an applicant to join who, in their judgment and experience, is not fit to serve; for example, someone who comes across to the recruiter as obviously mentally unbalanced will find a hostile reception. Even attitude comes into it; I went to high school with a guy who was perfectly qualified to join, but the recruiter felt that his attitude was not conducive to a successful military career.
But we’re not talking about the people who obviously shouldn’t join. We’re talking about the marginal cases: people who, but for a relatively minor issue, would be welcomed with open arms. Unfortunately, these people get caught up in the net of regulations meant to trap the people who shouldn’t join, and that’s the heart of the ethical quandary.
Antinor01, I, too, sell insurance. I would not tell an applicant to lie, and in fact, I would stress that the information on the application needs to be as complete and as accurate as possible, and I’d make it clear that there is no “wink-wink nudge-nudge” about it. My license and livelihood aren’t worth the single commission I would receive. However, I would not lose sleep if an applicant omitted information, especially after being warned not to do it. On the other hand, I have no qualms about an otherwise qualified military applicant omitting irrelevant information after having the consequences explained.
Robin
Although I am still in the military (part time) my knowledge of Basic Training is 19 years out of date. Back then it was not that hard to get out during Basic. It wasn’t the same as saying “I quit” but it could be done. You would have to be there for several weeks doing shit details but you could get out. You would get an administrative discharge. Nothing dishonorable but not enough service for an honorable. There were also several recruits that the Drill Sergeants realized didn’t have what it takes to be in the military. They were also adminstratively released. After training it is much harder to get out.
Absolutely…within the guidelines, rules and principals of my hospital and the patient’s personal physician. If I know that grated carrots on a seeping wound sometimes works better than Aquafor to promote healing, I’m going to bloody well keep that to myself when the physician’s orders are for Aquafor and nothing else. I might mention to the doc this crazy old home remedy, and she might decide it’s worth a shot, but I am not going to be a doctor. I am going to be there to carry out the doctor’s orders to the best of my ability and any judgment calls will be strictly within the scope of practice and the rules of the bosses I choose to work for. And if I find I can’t do that? Then I’ll get my Master’s and become a nurse practitioner and make my own diagnoses and treatment plans within the scope of that profession.
Not the same thing at all. No one is expecting the recruiter or the recruit to make a medical diagnosis. The fact is that MEPS is filled will old quacks that are afraid to make a decision because they are afraid that somehow it will come back and bite them on the ass. Unless you tell them you have never had any sort of medical condition then they will make you jump through a million hoops. Hoops that cost you a lot of money, especially if you don’t have health care. That is the reality.
You called? 
Well, I was fortunate in the aspect that my original Station Commander was a fun, honest and down to earth guy. He was a convertreed recruiter (meaning he volunteered to change his job from his original joining the army MOS to full time recruitingg) and they’re all sharks to some point, but he was a good guy. The guy before him was a bastard, i was told, but I was in recruiting school when he left. Plus, there was SSG S, who was so honest he should have been president. SSG S took it upon himself to school me on ways to avoid the “dark side”.
And hell yeah, there were negatives to not making numbers. They had what they called “Extra Training”. They would tell you to go to it and don’t dare be late. Then they’d schedule it on saturday around 8 pm or so as far away as possible. The idea was to make it so inconvienent and miserable that you’d do anything to NOT have to go. Because there was no training involved. They’d make you go, maybe tell you stuff you already knew (or not, maybe just tell you how crummy you were) and keep you there for a few hours so you didn’t get home until after midnight (considering the drive time and all). Do that a few times a week and it gets old fast. For me it got old, then I just didn’t care. I was alrready stressed out and working everyday except sunday so what did it matter?
Then there’s the phone calls. Recruiters hate making 'em as much as you hate getting them. They expected you to make at least 200 a day. 200! But if you were under the gun they’d tell you to make 300 or so…and you had to write all of it down.
Christmas eve, 2004. They wanted me to make phone calls. I told my boss he’d best start writing me up because I wouldn’t do it. On fucking Christmas Eve? We almost came to blows. We (the recruiters) had to sit in our office on Xmas Eve. Like someone was actually going to come in to join.
Or my personal favorite: For everyday you don’t put someone in you have to be at work an hour earlier and stay an hour later. So 8 to 8 becomes 7 to 9. Then 6 to 10. then 5 to 11. They gave up at 4 to 12 because I had to sleep in order to drive.
I passed out at my desk and had to go to the ER. Blood pressure was 201/110. They still made me work the next day. I passed out at the clinic getting medicine for Blood pressure the next day. Woke up in an ambulance. The doctor told me I was within a hair’s breadth of a heart attack. I got one day off.
So yeah, they basically torture you. But you see, the Station Commander is the only one with something to lose. He’s (or she’s) the one that volunteered to make a career out of recruiting. I only had to survive long enough to get out of there. Even if they gave me a bad eval, thats one in the other glowing 15. And they can’t arbitrarily write me up. All they can say on my eval is that I was a crappy recruiter, which only would give me more ammo to get out of recruiting. (for the record, I got great NCOERs from them.)
I could tell you some tragic tales of recruiting…the guy I sat next to committed fuckin’ suicide…but I hope you get the idea.
I got to be top recruiter for the quarter because I had a lot of applicants that had minor problems like ritalin, and childhood injuries. What I did was get the records. But it took a year and there was no promise they’d join anyway. They all did, and it was like dominoes. All the cases I’d worked for 18 months all kind of trickled in and i had the paper ready to counter anything the MEPS threw at me. It was freakin’ beautiful. By not cutting corners I actually made the quota for my entire station for a month.
But recruiting Command would rather have had all of those people right then right now. If I had disclosed that I had potential applicants to the SC that took over my mid way through recruiting he would have gone after them himself to make numbers. He was a shark. Because a converted recruiter gets promoted fast if they produce. Then they can get out of the stations and work at MEPS or at Company or Battalion level. Its a good ol’ boy club, and I don’t like it and I have no small amount of contempt for Recruiting Command. Ultimately, they create the bad recruiters themselves.
The only time I’ve even heard about recruiting being a posh job is from recruiters at stations where its easy. I’ve heard from veteran recruiters that in rural areas its all cake, because there aren’t many other jobs, etc. Whether its true or not I can’t say. They make it sound posh when they pitch it to you. Government vehicle, special duty pay, etc. I suppose if you have a personality suited to it, its great in some areas. But an extra 500 bucks a month didn’t really make a difference at least for me. I had to feed myself on the road and eat crappy fast food, people sicced dogs on me (true story) and I worked 12 to 14 hours a day. My wife said (and i agree) it’d be better if I was just deployed. funny thing is I almost volunteered for recruiting duty way back when I was in Basic Non Commissioned Officer School (BNOC). My Sergeant Major was a former recruiter and he told me how shitty it was and all, so I tore up my application. Then I ended up being assigned to recruiting 3 years later anyway. Here’s something they don’t want you to know about recruiters though…
You have to be in at least 10 years. Why? Because then they consider you a lifer. You’re more likely to stay for another ten years to get retirement. Then they hit you with orders for recruiting when you reenlist. You can decline the orders but you won’t be able to reenlist. So you have to choose between throwing years away towards retirement or doing a proposed three years in recruiting. I had an applicant that had a freaking masters degree. Really a smart and great kid. He joined up because he wanted to and got married right after boot camp. I knew he;'d make sergeant quick, so I advised him to have kids. (not that he wasn’t going to). Because you can decline recruiting duty if it would cause a stress on your family. Sadly for me, I only had my cats.
I’m sorry you had crappy recruiters. Really, I am. My personal policy was if a person says “no”, leave them alone. Give them a business card and maybe a pamphlet, but otherwise, heck, they said “no”. Some of them came back later some did not. But it’s their choice, not mine. It could be worse. In some countries they still conscript people.
Too bad you weren’t the recruiter that was after my boyfriend. He declined no less than 8 times and they didn’t quit calling until his he and his mother made it quite clear that he was gay.
Believe it, that pisses me off. I’ve had the SC tell me “They might have changed their mind! Call 'em again!”. I always thought that was stupid to do. The only thing you’re going to do is piss the person off. I can almost promise you the recruiter wouldn’t have called you if he had a choice.
I wouldn’t call people that made it clear they said no. Why? its a waste of my time and theirs. OPlus they’re only going to tell people that the Army is harassing them and sour any of their friends from talking to me. Thats why I always told folks “Ok, but if you ever want to get information about the army, give me a call or drop by my office”. and give them a card. I might send them a letter a year later or so, but other than that I left them alone. If I ran into them on the street I’d say hi, and maybe have a non-military conversation with them but that was it.
I’m not saying I can solve all of the recruiting problems, thats just what I did, because I don’t like being harassed as much as the next guy, whether its for killer premiums on insurance or Low! Low! Low! prices on my long distance bill. But I can see why a recruiter may have called 8 times having been there myself.
Theres also the thing that a lot of folks don’t realize that different branches are calling them. I’ve had people say “I told you yesterday, stop calling me!” when I never called them. It was the either the Marines or the Navy or the National Guard. They are all different branches with their own recruiters. I might not call you anymore, but that doesn’t stop the other branches.
If I take the option of getting out because I have a ton of money, do I get an honourable discharge or a dishonourable discharge?
What was the procedure involved?