Now, I myself was only in the military for three months, and mostly on a technicality, at that. But I grew up in a Navy family, so the military was the institution I felt most at home in for a long time. And the military was the first paid job I ever had, at 18.
The title of this thread is pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll just throw in my contributions:
I was genuinely surprised to find out that, in the world of civilian employment, loudly speculating on how much your coworkers’ wives/sisters/mothers/girlfriends would enjoy various illicit and degrading sex acts with you is not only not encouraged, but often frowned upon.
I expected that civilian employers, who generally have to turn a profit unlike military and government agencies, would not tolerate a problem employee for long. It still shocks me just how often that is not the case.
Civilians just don’t talk about their genitalia at work that much.
The specific incident that made me think of starting this thread was when my boss at the coffee shop I worked at for most of this year mentioned his wife getting a facial (the cosmetic thing women pay for at salons), and I took that as an opportunity to expound on how much his wife might or might not like the other kind of facials. That did not go over as well as I thought it would. :smack:
Frankly, that’s still the hardest part for me, even though it was nice not to have to explain the cysts I had on my scalp at the time. I’m thinking of going back to basics. (It’ll be fun to walk into one of Gilbert Castellano’s concerts as a perfect mimicry of his hairstyle, too. )
One of the things that was a splash of cold water for me was not being able to take health coverage for granted anymore. What do you mean I have to PAY for this? Doctors are free, man. Insurance? What is that?
And that in itself is only a subset of the larger situation of a less externally-structured everyday life. Back to civilian life you realize that there are now many things you are expected to figure out for yourself w/o authority telling you, but which you’re still responsible for getting right (e.g. the already mentioned limits on sexually-oriented conversation).
Civilian life was so much better than being in the Navy, but then I was the guy on a 4 year hitch that started counting down from 1000 days left.
I think the only big adjustment, is that it is extremely unlikely any civilian would spend as much time hanging out and working with friends as you do while in the military. I think friendships are easier and stronger in the military then in the civilian work force.
Additionally, the military does cushion its service people from most normal responsibilities, especially if they are single. No matter how broke you were, you knew there was food, shelter, medical care and no real responsibilities to the outside world.
You know how you always thought that your bosses were jerks and that bad leadership would never be tolerated in the private sector? Well, you were wrong.
Ya know a habit I still hang on to? I carry things with my left hand because I had to be free to salute with my right hand. Stupid I know but I still do it.
Also it was weird to me I could wear dangly earrings and it was ok; ditto for dress shoes in colors other than black; also that I didn’t have to wear panty hose any more. Although that was a good change.
Ex-wife’s best friend married a guy who was in the process of finishing up his time in the RAF (he didn’t fly planes, he did, um, whatever people who’re in the air force but don’t fly planes do). He was pretty clueless about stuff that we’d been dealing with for years. An example would be that when they went apartment-hunting, it had simply never occurred to him that the landlord would not pay utilities, local taxes etc. He’d never heard of a TV licence. A British anachronism, I realise, but we all know it’s there and has to be paid. What surprised me even more was that there are loads of ads on TV warning of the dire consequences of not paying it. Don’t RAF bases have TVs?
Another time I worked with an army officer who had secured some sort of “soon to be a civilian” work release type thing. He was pretty cool, actually - he learned things fast (IT related stuff) and was very methodical in solving problems. I’ve no doubt that he has been successful in his civilian life. But boy, he could not get his head round a lot of the office politics or corporate culture. In many ways he seemed surprised that we didn’t treat our bosses as military superiors - if they were being stupid we told them so, albeit not in so many words.
That was the biggie for me when my 11+ years of active duty ended. I still remember the first time a doctor gave me a prescription, I had to ask what to do with it. Wow - I got to pick whatever pharmacy I wanted?!? I can chuckle about it now, but it was quite the culture shock then.
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