My sister is married to a total shitbag, so I’ll just get that out of the way right now.
He was in the Navy, I know that much; I’ve seen his Navy picture next to some official looking document (I don’t remember what it was for). He told her when they first met on some personals website that he had been a SEAL, a fact I have never believed nor will I ever just by knowing the guy. I expect my former spec ops to be way more squared away and not so shitbaggy.
Last summer I started seeing this guy who likes target shooting from time to time, as do my parents, so I thought it would be a good way to get them all acquainted. The one local range I knew about had closed so I called my sister, who lived on something like 20 acres at the time, to see if we could go out there. Can’t, because Navy SEAL husband is all jacked up from his four years of service to our country and cannot handle so much as SEEING a firearm.
Long story short because I could sit and bitch about this guy all day: I saw his resume when he was applying for some crappy entry level job as a line cook or something. It did mention his Navy career (out in '94) but made no mention whatsoever about his training with the SEALs. When I mentioned this to my sister, she said maybe he forgot to include it. :rolleyes: He didn’t forget because he remembered that he had been in the Navy at all, and he listed his occupation there as “cook” and I swear I saw something with the word pantry or something but I don’t remember specifically what it said. I would recall if I saw it again so if you guys have any ideas, throw them out. Anyway, being a SEAL is definitely something you would want to include, right? Is there some reason that he wouldn’t include it?
My other question: Wasn’t there some website for military fakes where you could figure out if somebody was full of it? Or is there some other way I might be able to [del]find out if[/del] prove this guy is lying?
Call a “Coin Check” on the guy. If he gives you a blank look, he probably wasn’t a special ops guy. If he whips out a medallion/coin with military looking stuff on it, maybe he was.
Then again, I do not know for certain that SEALs do the coin thing. I know some other operators that do.
He is lying like most of them do and it should be easy to prove. Just do it casually and in front of other people. Start off by a softball like asking what ‘SEAL’ stands for and then make your own conversational style quiz based on the information in this handy post called How to Spot a Phony SEAL.
My experience with combat veterans is they they almost never talk about the combat, while fakers always do.
I hung out with my Dad and his WWII buddies down at the VFW. These were guys with chests full of fruit salad- Bronze and Silver stars, Combat Infantry, Presidential Unit Citations and so forth. Many stories about bad chow, sadistic DI’s, Boot camp, SNAFUs, sneaking off to get a beer, and so forth. Almost no combat stories at all. They did confirm that line in Big Red One- veterans tried not to learn much about any newbies as the newbies died too quickly compared to the veterans.
I have a few former SEAL friends, and if you ask they’re almost always happy to tell some truly hilarious stories from BUD/S or training missions, but I’ve never heard them say anything about actual missions.
For what it’s worth, most of the guys I’ve known also tend to be extremely casual and self-deprecating about their work- I know they’re extremely well-trained and work really, really astonishingly hard, but by the way they describe the comedy of errors that accompanied a lot of their training exercises, it often ends up sounding amazing that they managed to successfully complete the exercise at all.
Oh, and for the record, if I was a SEAL I would mention it on resumes, video store applications, and every other hilariously inappropriate place I could imagine. (“I’d make a good kindergarten teacher because I’m a qualified sniper, finished the medical sergeant’s college in the top half of my class, and received a commendation for my actions as platoon chief during the invasion of Grenada.”)
…come to think of it, there are probably multiple very good reasons why I’m NOT a SEAL.
If I were a SEAL and I were applying for a crappy entry level job, I might leave it off my resume. It’s hard to say, because I’ve had problems leaving my Master’s degree off my resume. Problems, as in, I feel like crap because I’m applying for a crappy job, now I leave off the thing which validates two years of not being employed so I could study?
At a higher level job, I probably would put it on the resume. Even if it wasn’t directly related.
I went thru OCS with three SEALs - we were all prior enlisted who got our commissions. Unless you knew these guys were SEALs, you’d never know. They didn’t talk about it, they didn’t swagger or brag. They were in incredibly good shape, and two of the three were fairly low-key family men. The third was single and he enjoyed himself. But none of them had anything to prove. They knew what they’d accomplished and when you met them, you knew there was something about them.
I can’t imagine putting something like that on a resume unless you were applying for a job teaching survival skills or for a SWAT team or something similar. I would also imagine jobs where your SEAL training would matter are probably heavily networked among SEALs.
I would agree that people who were actually in combat are very hesitant to talk about it, while those who were in the military but never saw action can’t stop talking about it.
You haven’t met many SEALS have you? I actually lived with one, and other than the douchebag - ness, he was no more squared away than any otehr military member I have lived with.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some really nice seals, but predominately more jerks and idiots, they have to survive a while and get the jackassitude knocked out of them.
There is a good link upstream on fake seals. Read it.
Though most service members know what a challenge coinis, not many units still give them out. MrAru has a nice sub service one though =) and I have my dads unit one as a pocket piece.
You really need to consider your own motivations and reactions, want would you want to happen, and why.
If you prove he is lying, what would it achieve for you? For your sister?
If he isn’t lying, what will it do?
I don’t know the answers, but do you think that somehow finding out the truth will change this person in a positive way?
To tell the truth, this guys a former navy cook right? almost seems to me like he has been doing too much Steven Siegal fantasising.
I know it is not impossible in theory to move from cook to SEAL, however, you do have to wonder since most of your genuine special forces type folk come from other backgrounds, from infantry to bootnecks, and field communications.
Also, seems strange to leave SEALs after just 4 years, that’s one hell of a training investment for the military to put in, 'cause it amounts to perhaps less than 2 years of active service and the rest would be in various forms of training. These type of folk will usually do a lot more service than that, unless they are incapacitated.
How long in total military service does he claim, usually spe ops will take three or four years before they even decide to apply, and it’ll take at least one more year beyond that to make it onto the lowest rung, such a person will generally do at least 7 years total, but its much more likely they will have over 10 years service, personally I have never met one with less than 14 years done, and almost all have done much more than that.
Imposters in any field are generally easy to spot. They just have an air of “I can’t tell you anything about what I do (other than letting you know that this is what I do).” If what you do is so secret then why mention it at all. IIRC, in the book Black Hawk Down DELTA operators tell people they are “government contractors” or something like that.
One of my girlfriend’s friend’s is dating a self-proclaimed FBI agent. Something about him (and her choice of men) doesn’t ring true. “Secret mission” this and “can’t talk about that” and all. How about asking to see his badge and FBI ID? How about the parking permit for his field office?
I agree with you that the story sounds sketchy but if she is making those kinds of lame excuses for him, then I don’t think there is anything you can do about it. To them you’ll just end up looking like “the bad guy” if you keep trying to prove he is a liar even if you are absolutely correct.
