Maybe I just don’t hang around with enough heroin users to know what I’m looking for, but I agree that those arms look well within the range of “normal” to me.
I think that poster was being snarky. I do see where you’re coming from.
Is a 77 on an ASVAB concidered good? I was required to take one of those in HS and got a 98. I filled in my name as John F. Kennedy but didn’t know the address for Arlington Cemetery off the top of my head and just filled in my real address. The Military didn’t take the JFK thing as a clue towards the level of a fuck I gave about joining, looked up my real name, and subjected me to months of recruiters harassing me on the phone to join.
I don’t know about today, but when my grandfather joined the Army in 1942, he was in for only 8 months before being given a section 8 because he couldn’t read. (If only Klinger had known…) Seems like a time the military wouldn’t have wanted to toss away a warm body lightly, so reading must have been a skill that they considered pretty darn important.
Whatever you’ve got going on is going to get caught fairly early on when they examine you. Your arms look completely and utterly normal, but the way you’re obsessing over them indicates that something is really off in your thinking, and it’s going to come through when they’re screening you. You need to get treatment before you try to join the military, I suspect that if you lie and manage to make it in you will crash and burn.
Wow, wish the mods were paying attention to keep this thread on-topic.
Any ways, with my previous eight years in the Navy, what Monty said is correct. However, the reality is that plenty of people join the military with a wrecked background and it’s the recruiters that usually push them in via waivers. Also, the MEPS examination is pretty stringent and is designed to exclude people who have medical issues, etc. If they don’t pick up on the track marks then, more than likely they won’t get picked up later on.
Will they charge you? Probably not. A lot of people fail MEPS or the subsequent drugs tests and the are simply cut loose. The effort to charge all these people via Federal prosecutor would be massively time-consuming and expensive. Within bootcamp it’s a little different as you’ve already been accepted into the military so there is a lot more paperwork, but, will they send you to the brig or something like that? No, they don’t bother with it as before. A lot more paperwork, takes a little longer to get out, and then they’ll be a forever paper trail on you that’s sent to whatever agency handles personnel. So, say you apply for a job ten years from now and you sign away to have them probe your background and they submit an FOIA to the National Guard for you, that paper trail will pop-up.
But, will they find it in bootcamp, probably not. I had the less than fantastic experience of encountering people with similar backgrounds when I was in the Navy for eight years. However, that was between 2002-2010, the operational temp was higher (especially in the beginning) and the Army was allowing felons in (depending on the crime). It’s different now, so, the manning desire might not be as high and they’ll be more selective. But, once you are “in” and take that flight/bus to bootcamp they’ll keep you unless you have some prevailing medical condition or actually fail a drug test.
Is anything done about recruiters that tell potentials to lie about their background and/or faults?
I don’t know what the military does but certain types of Top Secret clearances require them, junk science or not. The polygraph topic came up in the context of needing a security clearance for some military jobs.
If it’s proven, the recruiter is removed from recruiting duty and punished via court-martial or non-judicial punishment.
Then that’d be like all of them. Problem is that they primarily recruit out of HS, and as the amount of people who smoke pot is rather high and within that probationary period (forgot if it’s two or three years) than almost no one would be able to join.
So, they bend the rules and tell everyone to say you took drugs once, if you ever did.
Will they ever find out? Maybe, if they do a full-scope background check and start enumerating through your friends from HS or acquaintances then they might come across someone you pissed off. If they do a poly, as regardless of the public opinion, as they accept poly results as part of the process, then you’ll be screwed.
I STILL get calls from recruiters from time to time, offering me a GREAT DEAL! My service ended 6 years ago.
Even so, I kind of like this guy - one of the better new posters I’ve seen in a while.
Former Recruiter here:
Without bothering to read the rest of the thread: Do. Not. Lie. Not even by omission. Not to your Recruiter, and not to MEPS. Not even if your recruiter is one of the sleazy ones who tries to con you into lying.*
You WILL get caught - The docs in MEPS and the docs in Rectruit training know what trackmarked veins look like. Recruit Quality control at induction is also VERY good at ferreting out any omissions or lies - They KNOW the tricks the recruiters might use to get you to lie - they’ll get you to confess even innocent things that aren’t actually lies. When they do their intake QC session, something like 95% of recruits stand up and come forward to confess something. and they do it without even once getting in your face.
Now - Why does it matter? Well, if you need blood drawn (common!), or an IV set, compromised veins are an issue. Integrity is an issue, too.
If you confess your drug use, are you done forever? Maybe. Maybe not. My mentor and best friend in the Nav was a recovered heroin addict. I sailed alongside former pot smokers, and former pill-poppers.
What matters is this: 1) how badly does the service need someone of your basic abilities? Your ASVAB isn’t stellar, but it’s not bad, either. There are probably a lot of jobs they can slot you into. 2) under what circumstances were you using? “Experiemental” very frequently gets a waiver. Heavy use, rather rarely. 3) How long ago did you last use? If you’ve been clean for years, that’s in your favor. If you shot up last week, go home, they don’t want to know you. 4) What kind of narrative can you assemble that will paint you in the light of someone the service wants and can trust? There WILL be an interview. If you present an image of earnest contritoin and eager service, you’ve done most of the recruiter’s work for him (or her) in getting you in the door.
So: Be honest. Blow the Recruit Quality Control Team’s mind by being one of the few that has nothing to hide. It’ll feel a LOT better, when you don’t have to look over your shoulder, and when someone questions your waiver, you can look them in the eye and say: “I was a civilian then - I didn’t know any better.”
*Recruiters are invariably under a great deal of pressure - And some will cut corners, and try to convince you to cut corners. They’re salesment - GOOD salesmen - and they know a lot of tricks to influence you. Don’t. Let. Them. Ruin. Your. Chances.
It’s middling. Usfeul academic preparation, but nothing that’s going to turn you into a Nuc or Crypto Tech. That’s fine - the services need a lot of mid-skills. Mechanics and electricians and gunners and riflemen.
Standard BS line. If, indeed, the recruiters were so corrupt as you claim, NO one would be a recruiter because the Congressional nvestigations and IG investigations would shut everything down. You don’t have to trust me on this - you can ask your local US Representative - They LOVE to investigate recruiting inrregularities. It gives them instant credibility in their districts. And the service HAS to answer up. I’ve seen a few, and you have NEVER seen an administrative nightmare like a Congressional Inquiry. It arrives like a thunderbolt, and only grows worse the longer it drags on. Commanding Officers HATE them - and are immediate on passing the pain and terror down the ranks, because their careers now hang on what some E-5 asshole may or may not have done.
Are there corrupt recruiters? You betcha. I know a few. Bad things happen to their careers. Usually. The REALLY smart ones may be able to sleaze long enough to slither back out to the fleet, but they’re fortunately quite rare (I’m looking at YOU, Senior Chief T!).
The problem is this: Kids in the target demographic (17 to 21) very frequently don’t hear what they’re being told, and YES, some things do get given the once-over-lightly, so if you’re not listening, you can miss it. If you’re not listening with sophisiticated ears, you might not understand it when you hear it, even if you were paying attention.
So - they didn’t hear, or they didn’t understand becomes “My recruiter lied.” That’s not true (most often), but you can see where it came from. Caveat Emptor and due dilligence applies, as in any sale.
What we were taught in Recruiter Orientation was this: “Sell a Blue Shirt, a White Hat, and a Grey Ship.” If you get your applicant to expect, and be willing, to go to sea chipping and painting, then any job they get other than Bosun’s Mate is a bonus to them. And if they do wind up being a deck ape, well, they’re not let down. That’s a tough sell, but that’s the ideal.
I know this isn’t a GQ answer but I wanted to share my years of experience with you rider56AK907.
I have no military experience (aside from growing up in a military family and working for the military as a contractor) so I can’t give a factual answer to your question. But I’ve been in situations where I felt I had to lie to get accepted for employment.
Do not do it. As one human being to another, I urge you not to. Not just because it’s bad to lie (that’s another topic) but specifically if you misrepresent yourself to get accepted, it will not end well. I’ve made that mistake before. You will sweat every day panicking about being caught even if you’re lucky enough to get away with it. It’s not worth it.
Be up front and honest. If that disqualifies you then so be it.
Think how stressed and anxious you are now. If you try to lie your way in it will feel ten times worse. Those fears you have aren’t cowardice, they’re a wise part of you warning you not to. I don’t have many true regrets but I do regret every time I tried to be deceptive to get hired and especially the one time it worked. Be honest and be yourself.
Agreed (mostly). The poly is an investigative tool for helping to pull a confession during the post-poly interview.
In my own experience:
Polygrapher: “Looks like you’re being deceptive on your drug history.”
Me: “I work for a counter-narcotics agency. I’m around the stuff constantly.”
Polygrapher: “Looks like you’re being deceptive about mishandling classified stuff.”
Me: “I work in a SCIF. Once or twice I forgot to lock the vault overnight, but the vault is in a room that is, itself, a vault.”
More to the point, I think the OP has a bit of a paranoiac tendency based on his postings. That doesn’t bode well in a poly.
They do - heck, most government polygraphers are trained at DoDPI (DoD Polygraph Institute). However, it’s usually only if during the background investigation serious question about your history and reliability arise, you’re accused of a crime, or you’re assigned to a Special Access Program (SAP). Otherwise, it would be incredibly expensive to poly everyone getting cleared.
Here’s a link
I’ll admit, I exaggerated. 9/10 recruiters do a stand-up job of not being corrupt but being way worse than a used car salesman. Do they do IGs for recruiting? I wonder what would precipitate that, maybe an overwhelming amount of people that get kicked out of boot camp from one particular area?
Honestly, the requirement of a HS diploma, not GED without some junior college experience, and a lot of other restrictions has really helped the military out. I remember when they added that HS diploma requirement, totally saw the change over a six month period within the influx of new people.
Any number of irregularites could set it off - anything from a substantiated Congressional inquiry, to a number of unsubstantiated ones in a short window, to a credible parental complaint, to yes, a large number of Recruit Quality Control failures or other forms of Bootcamp rejection - And beyond. Really, the only requirement to start an IG would be the suspicion of a superior command level that something was squirrelly was going on.
Can’t speak for now, but the #1 competitor for recruits when I was ‘On the Bag’ was not the other services - it was higher education. Colleges and Universities. We were all aiming for the same demographic. Of course, the attrition rate in College is WAY high, but once they’re that far along, the potential applicant often has sufficient debt that they won’t fit the Financial Stability test. Or they’ve indulged seriously in drugs, or are otherwise no longer ‘mentally, medically, and morally fit’ for service.
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If so, s/he has been snarky on the same subject a number of other times. Only time I’ve ever noticed the name has been on posts with that exact sentiment.