Is it true that in boot camp in the Army, etc., trainees are limited to daily hot showers of just three minutes, or is that an exaggeration?
3 minutes in the shower is about all I ever take, does not include drying off and shaving. I figure less than 10 min for the entire operation. If all this was included I would consider that a super rush.
If you want to eat you better shit, shower, shave and get your ass in formation before Sarge gets there.
edited to add: that’s in the morning. You can clean up again later if you want.
In Navy boot camp, yup, 3 minutes. However, as someone else said, that’s being wet. Getting undressed, standing in line, drying off, and getting dressed are not part of it. We also had the water already up and at a nice temp before we started. We used to kinda walk in a slow circle. Get wet, suds on, rinse.
It took awhile after that to actually take a long shower since I felt like I was just wasting my own personal time.
My daily shower is less than three minutes. That is a long time. It should not take anyone longer than that to wash from their hair to their feet. I even have to shave my face before I ever get in the shower. My total time between waking up, eating breakfast, shaving (45 seconds to one and a half minutes at most), taking a shower, getting dressed and walking out the door is always less than 20 minutes. That should be enough time for anyone if you have the routine down.
I was in ROTC and it is not unreasonable at all for the military to demand that. After all, seriously, do you think you are you doing to be living in a Hilton if you get deployed? You need to wash up as fast as possible and get out to make space for the next person using scarce resources.
High school kids have to routinely change into gym clothes, work out, take a communal shower and then change back into regular clothes again within 50 minutes. It isn’t that difficult. A three minute shower is more than enough for anyone that is paying attention to what they are doing.
When I was in Army BCT, there was no explicit time, but after a pretty short time the drill sergeants would start yelling at us to wrap it up. In practice I got about 3-5 minutes.
Quick showers are not all that challenging. No one needs more than 3 minutes anyway unless you shower for the enjoyment of it. There are far more difficult time management issues in boot camp to deal with. Such as when to do laundry or shine your boots. The bootshining I could do during fire guard, laundry I never pulled off.
If I had a Marine haircut, I could take 3-minute showers.
My normal shower routine used to be a fair bit less than 3 minutes including washing my hair and shaving in the shower. A while back I started doing a series of isometric exercises for shoulder and neck problems I was having. Without planning to I ended up tacking them on the end of my shower. Because I really enjoy doing them that way, under the running water, I have kept it up. They take longer than the actual showering.
No exaggeration. You wash hair, face, pits, bits, and feet. That only takes a few minutes. Your calves don’t get all that dirty anyway, as a matter of course. A true Navy shower involves shutting off the water as you suds the above.
It’s been many years, but I still feel a bit decadent actually sudsing every last bit with the water running…
Marine Corps boot camp 1969 is a while back, and I do not recall a specified time limit, but there was nothing leisurely about it.
Again, not timed, but 27 women needed to shower, five stalls, and you had 30 mins to shower, dress, last minute clean - including the showers - and line up for inspection.
So, basically, you passed through the shower and cleared out for the next one.
The guys had it worse since there were about 175 guys.
My daily shower before work lasts 7 minutes. I could probably cut that in half if I wanted, and was in a major hurry.
Navy Showers at sea. Hollywood Showers in port.
Navy Shower - Turn on water and get wet. Turn off water. Soap up. Turn on water and
rinse. Done.
Hollywood Shower - Turn on water. Adjust temperature. Stand under stream for 10 minutes saying “Ahhhhh”
Thanks for the replies.
I’m quite the undisciplined civilian; I’m very much in the habit of long showers. For me, a shower less than 10 minutes long is a short shower - and I mean 10 minutes under the running water.
Im forced to take longer showers because I have to use an in-stringent on my face so I don’t get zits; and in the winter a special body wash because I get very dry skin, neither are products I’d use in my hair. Its a major pain in the ass.
Well, don’t confuse boot camp conditions for real Army/Navy/etc conditions. And situations can be different depending on where you’re stationed. Either way, you’d be surprised at what you can get used to when you have no other choice.
3 minutes is plenty of time to get cleaned up, but not nearly enough for good skin care, imo (which doesn’t necessarily have to be an everyday thing, but should definitely occur).
Seeing as people in boot camp are usually teenagers or in their early 20s, it’s not as if they take that good care of their skin anyway.
I did this at home for a while after we switched to metered water and we weren’t sure of the cost impact. Turn on the shower and get wet. Turn off and lather up. Turn back on and rinse. Done.
Perhaps for a man. A woman in the civilian world needs much more time than that. I have to wash hair then apply conditioner. Soap up with a sponge, shave everything that needs attending to, exfoliate, rinse my body off , then rinse the conditioner out of my hair. 12-15 minutes.