How’d she make it through basic? Did her big brother tell all the drill instructors to leave her alone as well?
Comment on Anon manages the impossible
cobysev@lemmy.world 6 months ago
When I was serving in the US military, we were given extremely strict official regulations to live by, which included dress and appearance. There were rules for how long your hair could be, how to properly button/zip/Velcro your uniforms, no wearing of dirty or torn clothing items, must be clean shaven at all times, always be clean and presentable, etc. All aspects of our lives were maintained by an extremely strict protocol.
One year, we got this brand-new young lady in our unit. It was her very first assignment in the military. At first glance, she was kinda cute. Had kind of the shy Violet from The Incredibles vibe going for her. But when she got close to you, you suddenly realized you could smell her. She reeked of feces and B.O., her breath was like death, and her hair was super greasy and clumped into thick strands. Her pale skin had a greasy sheen to it as well. Also, her hair was out of regulations. She wore it hanging straight down, no bobby pins, no buns or ponytails or braids. It was heavily brushing her shoulders; way too long for women’s hair. Hair that long (at the time) was required to be up in a tight bun while in uniform. Also, her uniform hat had very visible grease stains along the edges.
She was pulled aside by our commander and chewed out for not adhering to military regulations, then told to go home, shower, fix her hair (or get a haircut; her choice), and put on a fresh, clean uniform. She left crying.
Soon after, our commander (a Major) got a call from a Colonel at another base. The Colonel proceeded to chew out our commander for “targeting, harassing, and destroying the reputation” of his baby sister. Oops. A Colonel outranks a Major, so our commander couldn’t do anything but take the ass-chewing.
From that moment on, that young girl proceeded to be gross and filthy 24/7, and anyone who complained got an earful from her big brother. No one could reason with him; he absolutely refused to believe his darling baby sister would be such a pigsty. And he was stationed in a completely different country from us, so it’s not like we could drag him over to give his sister a welfare check. We were forced to leave her alone and suffer from her horrid stench. She was given a job in the back corner of the office, away from other coworkers, and FAR away from the customer front desk.
That was about 9 years ago, and I only worked with her for just under a year before I was reassigned. I wonder where she is now? I’m curious if she was ever forced to acknowledge her awful hygiene habits and change. Or perhaps she couldn’t tolerate the “abuse” of bosses and coworkers trying to correct her and decided to leave the military.
Like I said, she was pretty cute, if you could look past all the grime. There was a theory floating around that maybe she had been abused and/or raped in the past, and so she decided to protect herself by making herself as filthy and unappealing as possible. If that’s true, it worked. Everyone gave her a wide berth.
MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
tux7350@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Believe it or not… it’s actually not particularly difficult to make it through basic. The military puts a lot of time and money into getting you there and they want to recoup that. If they kick you out, there goes their investment. For a period of time, they accepted ASVAB waivers. For those unaware, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery is the intelligence test your given to make sure you’re mentally fit to serve. We had a gunny that we found out scored in the 26th percentile. The man could hardly form a coherent sentence. Making it into the military isn’t as difficult as people would believe (barring medical and criminal records, can’t escape those).
SupraMario@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Didn’t they drop a bunch of the physical requirements as well during the two wars we had because of how low recruitment was? I remember hearing about it.
cobysev@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I can’t speak for the other branches, but the Air Force’s physical requirements actually got harder in 2010.
When the Iraq War kicked off in 2003, they opened the floodgates and recruited everyone they possibly could. As far as I know, physical requirements didn’t change then. I actually signed up a month before 9/11 happened, so when I was processing through MEPS in late 2001, everyone was gung-ho about serving and fighting terrorists to “protect America.” And our medical evaluation was pretty standard.
About a year later, when things started to settle down over there, the federal govt realized they were way over their federal allotment for service members. The Air Force specifically had an excess of 14,000 members they needed to get rid of. And so began many programs over the next decade to cull our numbers and get back to our federal limit.
At first, they gave us the option to nullify our contract and walk. But when people tried to take that option, commanders wouldn’t release them because they didn’t want to lose manpower. So the federal govt had to change the program, saying that no one - not even commanders - could deny you if you wanted to leave.
A lot of people left, but that didn’t get rid of the numbers they wanted, so other programs went into effect. They started cutting people by overmanned career fields. They also started denying tons of reenlistments. I almost didn’t get to stay in the Air Force because they were only approving like 10-11 reenlistments per month, and I was #252 on the waiting list, with only 4 months left until I either reenlisted or got the boot. But at the last minute, when my final month was up, they said they hit their quota for the year and everyone else on the waiting list was automatically approved.
We started calling it the Air Force Hunger Games, because you never knew if your job was safe. Officers had no chance; it was rationalized that, since they already have a bachelor’s degree (a requirement before becoming an officer), that they will do fine on the outside, so they were just cut without warning. Lists of officer names would drop each month, and if your name was on it, your career was over and you had to go home.
I was enlisted, not officer, so they usually gave us a better chance of sticking around. But I remember one year, I barely missed the cutoff for promotion to Technical Sergeant (E-6) and shortly after, all E-6’s in my career field with my time in service got the boot.
In 2010, the Air Force decided that our PT (Physical Training) requirements were too lax, so they changed the annual test practically overnight. The new policy saw people failing like crazy, and subsequently getting kicked out. That helped reduce our numbers greatly.
They also added a waist measurement to our PT test, justifying that people over a certain waist size were at greater risk of heart disease and other health complications. That was the hardest component of our test, because if you failed, you had a month to get in shape and pass.
You know how hard it is to lose inches on your waist in only a month? Almost no one passed after failing a waist measurement. It was a hotly debated topic for the next decade, and they finally removed it from our tests about a year or two ago. I never had to worry about it because I was always a scrawny kid, so I got max points on the waist measurement component every time.
I will say, I stopped hearing about the Air Force Hunger Games sometime around 2015 or so. I think the Air Force finally made it to their quota. Heck, around 2018 or so, the Air Force changed our enlisted HYT (high-year tenure), allowing lower ranks to stay in longer before being forced to separate. A Staff Sergeant (E-5), the lowest of the leadership roles, can actually stay in for 20 years and qualify for retirement now. They said we needed more technical experts/lower leadership roles to stick around longer, as they were what kept us functioning smoothly. The higher ranks (E-7 through E-9) were strict upper management, and the Airmen (E-1 through E-4) were just workhorses. It was the middle ranks (E-5/E-6) that were experts in their field, managed the Airmen directly, and implemented the projects passed down the ranks.
Long-winded story short, I’ve never heard of the Air Force specifically dropping physical requirements to get people to join. Heck, they always stressed how important it was that we were in the best shape we could be in, because you never know when you’ll find yourself behind enemy lines with a 100 lb ruck sack, and the nearest military base is 10 miles away. You need to be able to handle some extreme physical situations in order to survive. And the team is only as strong as their weakest member.
cobysev@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We were all greasy and nasty in basic training. There was practically no time to shower. They implemented a thing called the “car wash.” There were 8 shower heads; 4 on each side of an open bay. We all lined up naked, then walked under each shower head, pausing for maybe 8 seconds before moving on. You had until the last shower head to soap, lather, and rinse before you were done. You weren’t allowed to get back in line.
Suffice to say, nobody got a proper cleaning and we all reeked.
MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Damn, that’s crazy.
TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Given that each year 30,000 or 8% of US military women experience abuse and your first reaction to this person working as a professional killer with you was “she’s cute”, it sounds like her ploy worked perfectly.
cobysev@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We were Air Force, not Marines. Specifically, we worked as IT professionals. So if anything, we were professional nerds, not professional killers.
I deployed with Marines once. My Marine boss said she hoped to god that she never saw an Air Force member with a gun. That would mean the planes are down, the base is overrun, and the Marines are dead. She said we were the absolute last resort. So she told me that if shit hit the fan, I should hand my weapon to the nearest Marine and hide under my desk until it’s over.
Still, you’re correct. There was a surprisingly high rate of abuse and harassment of women across the military. My wife also served, and she got plenty of harassment from her peers. Even some guys that didn’t think being married prevented them from trying to date her. And there were always stories of people cheating while on deployments. Guys got especially horny on deployment because they were trapped on a military base for 6+ months and there were very few women deployed with them, if any at all.
Early in my career, the guys would joke about the 2-10-2 rule: while at our home station, women they worked with might be only a 2 on the hotness scale, but when you’re deployed and had no other options, they’d become a 10. Then you return home and they’re back to a 2. They also referred to this as "deployment goggles " (like beer goggles).
The Air Force specifically made great strides in cutting down on abuse of women. We sat through training courses annually, talking about abuse and harassment and how to respect your peers. The culture shifted greatly from when I signed up in 2002, to when I retired in 2022, and we were at a very good place when I left.
I hear the worst branches to serve as a woman are the Marines and Army. They also made great strides over the years, but they still have a much more toxic culture than we do. Heck, there was big news in 2020 about an Army woman being murdered and dismembered because she didn’t accept advances from a co-worker. They actually made a Netflix special about her. So they still have lots of work to do. But their culture in general is very toxic, not just against women, but everyone. They abuse the hell out of their members, treating them like govt property, not human beings. So until they can shift their mindset and start respecting their people as living, breathing people and not tools to be utilized, I don’t see them improving their respect of women anytime soon.
exocrinous@startrek.website 6 months ago
Hired gun, even.
At least she ruined all the other thugs’ days. Most patriotic person in the whole barracks.