Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24077689-20140319055058/@comment-24077689-20140331171508

GraydonL wrote: Why is this thread so small? It is kind of sad, really.

My name is Graydon Lancaster, but I also go by Gray or on the internet, GraydonL. I am an aspiring artist, and have nearly exsausted my schools art classes from painting, to drawing, to working with clay. I also enjoy writing, but I am much less adept at this. I am currently working on a short story titled "Porcelain". I am an avid gamer, with my favorite games being the Souls series produced by From Software. I have recently beat Dark Souls II, and am quite proud of that fact. Personality wise, I am quite passive, and extremely accepting. However, don't get me wrong, if you harass me or someone I care about, I will do anything in my power to defend myself. Once I graduate from high school, I will be enlisted in the national guard and going the the South Dakota school of Mines and Technology. Later in life I am planning on a military career as an engineer. Word of advice: Don't let the recruiters bullshit you.

My second year of college I decided to try to get into the Air National Guard, hoping to do some search and rescue because that was my specialty when I was involved with the Civil Air Patrol. First of all, he fed me this big story about there only being 2 SaR squadrons in the U.S. Which is technically true.

So quick back-story, my recruiter was bragging to me about how he got drunk one night, tripped over his dog, and fucked up his ankle. He reported it as a training accident and is now pulling military medical benefits. Also, I was in the Civil Air Patrol for 7 years as a cadet, I was trained in and went out to Pennsylvania for their SaR school there. It's a huge interest of mine and I'm highly trained in it. Should have been easy.

So he tells me that he was a refueler and that there were 15 open refueler positions with an added 15k bonus if I were to sign up for it. I told him this would have no benefit for me at all. So I signed up for the tracked vehicle mechanic (8 positions open) and the diesel mechanic (12 positions open) radio communicator (6 positions available, also I was highly qualified for this position with Basic Radio Operator and HAM radio licenses), and I mistakenly put down the refueler position as a far-cry had-to-put-down-something last place position.

I was set to go to MEPS the next day, I got a call from the recruiter. Magically every available position in everything had disappeared in 8 hours. Everything but the refueling position that he'd been pushing me to take. So I got on the phone with him and let him know that I wasn't going to MEPS because he fucked me over, refueling wasn't going to be a good fit for me and it's basically a dead-end job for fuck ups like him. So he pushed and pushed then told me he was going to have his "boss's boss" call me to speak with me.

This prick called me, yelled at me for "Wasting their time", which the work they did for me up to that point wasn't wasting any less time than they would have wasted on anybody else. I kept telling him that I wanted them to put everything he was saying in writing, signed, notarized. He laughed at me, told me that I must be talking to some idiots because "nobody puts things in writing anymore". He asked who I was speaking to. I told him my father, who doesn't have military experience, my Civil Air Patrol colonel who had 35+ years in the military, and my cousin who is currently enlisted.

What he said next made me angry and it's genuinely amazing I didn't cuss him out, if not for my wife I probably would have. First of all, he kept calling me "bro". He told me that my cousin doesn't know anything, my dad is an idiot, and that my col. is "a dinosaur". He word-for-word said "shit, bro, you're listening to these fucking dinosaurs when you should be listening to me, I'm the new kid on the block".

Basically, they tried to bullshit me and push me into a job that wouldn't benefit me, that I didn't want. Undoubtedly my recruiter and his "boss's boss" get a bonus if they send people there because they were both refuelers. The only time jobs have high bonuses for signing up is when nobody wants to work in them, it's an incentive. When I didn't buy their snake oil, they tried to bully me, which is a common tactic they use and according to my cousin, it often works.

Listen, man. I'm not trying to tell you to not join. I think the military can open up a lot of doors for people. There are great opportunities. But make sure you're not being taken for a sucker. Do your research, learn as much as you can, and don't let these fuckers push you.

With my experience in search and rescue, with my many awards in Civil Air Patrol, with my knowledge and experience with radios, and with my college education I was waaaaaaaaayyyyy over-qualified for the refueling job. I scored a fucking 75 on my ASVAB, which is good enough to get any job I want. I scored the highest out of a group of 10 that tested with me. One guy got a fucking 25. This coupled with my Mitchell Award automatically qualifies me for OCS. Had I just blindly accepted what they were saying I'd be stuck in a shit job that I'm overqualified for. Bent over taking a nice hard reaming from the fucking system.