Curses Again!

It seems my secret identity is being slowly peeled back. Another recruiter in my company, not in my station, managed to find this site and figured out who I am. He didn't have a hint from the Army Times piece either. He just stumbled upon it. Way to go SSG Sherlock. I would have gotten away with it too if hadn't been for those meddling kids and their dog.

I was out of the station today visiting SSG Sherlock's place. Went well. Got one pretty solid commitment and one that's a lot more flakey. Ever since my first appointment no-show I've adopted a "we'll see" approach to my recruiting. Between being no-showed, low-EST, low-ASVAB, physical issue, moral issues, commitment issues so many things can go wrong that I, just cannot, get excited about a prospect until they walk through my door with an Army backpack over their shoulder. And even then until their background and drug screen come back I'm still not happy.

USAREC stands for US Army Recruiting Command. My biggest problem with the PATRIOT act has always been it's name. The act itself has some very, very useful and important authorizations for law enforcement officials to pursue terrorists. However, it's a name straight out of Orwell. If they simply called it The Anti-Terrorism Bill I honestly believe that a lot of the critism of it would fade away. KISS... Keep it Simple Stupid. That applies to acronyms too.

I bring this up because I think the job would suck a little, miniscule, pico-sized bit less if the pronounciation for the command wasn't "you-sa-wreck". Or, as I'm fond of writing USAwRECk. As in Recruiting will USAREC your life. Recruiting will USAREC your marriage. Etc etc.

I know, even naming it USAHAPPYFLUFFYBUNNYCOM wouldn't alleviate the suck of having to complete a 128 slide Excel workbook detailing how badly you suck as a recruiter, and thus a NCO, and thus a Soldier, and thus a human being, but maybe it would suck a bit less to be assigned to a command that an onomatopeia for what it will do to you. But that's just my opinion.

I didn't mention this yesterday, but I remember it today and thought I'd share.

SSG Rage, George, and myself did a set-up on our local community college. Now, this particular CC occupies a strange, parrallel universe. A universe where people attending Community College are actually attending an institute of higher learning, like a Harvard, Yale, Brown, MIT, Berkley, etc rather than a community college. Maybe things have changed in the 10 years since I graduated HS. But back in my day the kids going to the local community or junior college were going their for one or multiple of the following reasons:

Couldn't afford tuition for a local, in-state 4-year college
Didn't get good enough grades to go anywhere else
Parents were going to kick them out of the house and make them get a job if they didn't go to some college
They had plans to take a couple years of CC and then move on to a real school

Now, I consider these to be the reasons for recent HS grads to go to CC. I know that older individuals, people with jobs, professionals will go to CC for resume padding, career-enhancement or changing, or whatever. I'm not concerned with those people. I'm concerned about the numbnuts in my target market.

At the new student orientation for this CC they must use some sort of freaking mind-control device on thse kids. They are convinced that going to CC is the best thing EVER. I kid you not, we have multiple comments in our LRLs and ALRLs that read "Not interested- college; plans to go to Yale or CC". It is amazing to me the... cluelessness that pervades this campus. And that brings me back to Rage, George, and I standing at a table.

It was not looking like a good month for Rage. He's the best recruiter in the station. Without qualification. Puts in the most volume, quality, everything. This was not going to be a good month for him because he's getting close to leaving, his funnel is empty, and he'll be on leave for most of the RCM. He needed appointments and he needed them bad. He had a young man walk up to the table and express an interest. The kid's mom is in the Army and it's something he'd thought of doing. Rage starts to get the kid's info when two punks walk by and start yelling "Don't do it! They lie!" and kept walking.

Rage kept doing his thing, but George and I called for the punks to come back to the table. That is what I love about these set-ups is punking out numbnuts who come up and try to look cool by talking smack to the Army guys. Of course the kids kept walking. I shout something about how they're just hating "because they were told they were too freaking fat to join the Army." Low blow, I know, but true. Well, about 30 minutes later one of them comes walking back by the table. We all call him over to the table and ask him what the hell his problem was. He proceeds to tell us how the Army lied to his brother.

Turns out his brother wasn't lied to. Turns out his brother had really, really false ideas about what he was going to be doing. His brother was also just recently out of basic and hadn't yet learned that the Army isn't like basic training. Basic is meant to take you from being a civilian to being a Soldier. You are going from being a dumbass high school student to being a guardian of freedom. It isn't an easy change to get people to do.

Anyway, Tubby gets antsy and loud again since we're showing him how he's wrong. I go from being "logical" to being "emotional" and suggest he rush off to McD's so he can take advantage of the Extra Value meals. Honestly, all-in-all it was a good day. All three of us came away with an appointment, Rage's even managed to commit to take the ASVAB, and we got to make fun of stupid people. If I'd found a dollar it would have been the best day I'd had that day.