Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stindoor
Let me be the "buzz-kill." Your recruiter lied to you. Once you've signed the enlistment contract he has no need to get you an airborne or ranger assignment. Best of luck.
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To no surprise, you were right. Apparently, they never planned on getting it for me in the first place. I got all the way to the liaison who threw a contract at me and told me to sign it; luckily I read it, option 4 (airborne) was nowhere on there.
Tell him I need it to be in the contract, he goes "You want option FOUR?! That's hilarious. Hey! (signals to other guy at desk) this kid wants option 4 in his contract!" That set off every guy at a desk in that office telling me I could go to airborne school at any point in my career, all I'd have to do is apply, and how I'm letting a good oppurtunity go to waste by refusing to sign bla bla bla...after politely declining their increasingly aggressive demands that I sign (one guy said "Look kid, I don't know how to put this...you're bein a dumbass right now. Listen, you don't have shit goin for you in your life right now anyway." I reply, "Excuse me?" he goes on, "Kids like you don't come in here unless they don't have shit goin for you. If you were makin 100 grand a year, why would you even consider joining the Army? Just sign the fucking paper. Alot of guys have worked hard to get you here." THAT set my blood boiling. The pretention of some guy who looked more like Michael Moore than anything sitting behind a desk in MEPS telling me about how my life was fucked, and then including apparently every service member into his pathetic waste of an existence, I mean come on...) I was told to "Get the hell out of our office. We don't want kids like you in our Army anyways."
I went out and sat down where I was waiting before, wondering what I'd do from there. One guy comes out and says to me "You can't stay here. You need to go to the other side of the building." And directs me outside and to the right, telling the woman at the desk to make sure I'm let back in. I follow his directions, and find a guy in uniform at the end of the strip waiting for me with a door open. He has this disgustingly sympathetic look on his face, and puts his arm around me saying "Don't worry, you haven't messed anything up yet. Master Sergeant (I dunno if I should use names here or not) Rush wants to speak to you."
I go into his office and this guy who reminds me of a Baptist preacher goes into this long sermon about how the Army is made up of decision makers, who have to be able to make life changing decisions in split seconds, and how if I can't decide today to further my career, I'd be giving up a great thing. He tells me how life is made up of disappointments sometimes, and that by giving up Airborne, I'd be still making a step towards it. I tell him that I have absolutely no reason to trust anyone that's spoken to me today, that I compromise for no one, I came for one reason, and that was to get a 68W job with an Option 4 and that if they weren't willing to put out, I'd move on and find something else to do. He then the went into this diatribe about how it's time for me to make a decision, shakes my hand and looks me in the eye and says "can I count on you to make the right decision today?" I laughed and said "I'll figure it out."
I get back, and waiting for me is my recruiter. Immediately, I thought of the character of the devil from the play / movie Damned Yankees. He looks at me like a father would look at his son who has gotten into trouble, concerned, yet sympathetic. He starts out in a very kind tone, "So what's wrong? tell me what's goin on..." I relay to him basically that they're not offering me what I came to get, that I am willing to make no compromises, and that if he can't get me what I want, that he'd might as well take me back to my car. He goes "Yeah, I didn't know this before. Apparently, you can't get option four at all, because you had PRK done, and you needed a waiver to get into the Army." That one blew me away, either way if it's true or not, I dunno, but I told him that I would need to consider everything before I'd sign, and that I wanted to wait to think about it. That apparently pissed him off as we were going back into the liasons, everyone there started tearing me apart at once, I just tuned them all out and waited for it to be over, the recruiter in whom I once confided started telling them how I wanted to go SF, to which they started laughing and carrying on about how that's a crock of shit, which I sensed was more them venting out their broken dreams, so I didn't really care and walked out.
Moral of the story is, kids who are reading this, take no prisoners when you go to MEPS. They will start throwing everything they can at you to take their deal, and compromise your life. Don't be one of the poor saps these guys seemed so accustomed to pressuring into signing their lives away. How much would it suck if you took a job they wanted you to take, and you end up getting killed b/c you end up working in a place you don't even want to be? Think about it. They will try putting you down and making fun of where you are in life to get you to sign it, STAY STRONG. Get what you went for. You may not get it yet, at this point, I have no idea what I'm going to do. My recruiter won't even speak to me. But I trust that whatever I do, it will be better than if I had caved in, sacrificed myself and signed my life away to satisfy the whim of a bunch of low life losers wondering what the fuck happend to their lives.