Lol yeah 35k to sign your life away to the government. Ill just smoke weed in my duck costume thank you very much.
I think nowadays it's more like "35k to join the World Terrorism Organisation ©®™"
I'd choose the duck too
They sent a recruiter to my place of employment back when I was in retail. They asked me if I ever thought of joining the armed forces, and I gave them a polite but firm no.
So then they asked "are you happy with where your life is going?", trying to take advantage of me being a teenager stuck in retail.
Even if they werent asking you to throw your life away in some oil war to protect corporate interests, even if they weren't asking you to sell your morals away, they're aggressive assholes. So fuck them they're getting the treatment they deserve.
Had a recruiter stop by my desk about two years after I enlisted, and tried to pitch the navy to me.
I started laughing at him, then when he got all offended and mentioned me "working in a dead end job in the middle of nowhere" I shot back with "beats DYING in the middle of nowhere, where nobody above your CO will even bother reading the casualty report let alone care" , and that if the navy REALLY wanted me they should have returned my calls after I got a medical discharge for having emergency surgery in basic, then denying my reenlistment due to having a surgery in my adult life.
Of course at this point in my life, with the knowledge and ideals, I wouldn't touch the MIC with a 899.16cm pole.
Thank you for your take.
Completely unrelated to what you said, I appreciate seeing so many star trek fans around here. It really makes lemmy feel like a home.
I'm a huge trek nerd so this place is basically like A Little Piece of Heaven.
I'm slowly getting my wife into it, but she's still learning the basics so it's great to have a place to read and discuss the finer points.
Like how much RICK FUCKING BERMAN sucks ass, and how Captain Jellico may be a good starfleet captain but he's still an asshole and not a great enterprise captain
My high school made us take the ASVAB. I ended up with an 88, and it took threats of harassment charges to stop all 3 major branches from just showing up at my house unannounced.
They also straight up lied when trying to get me to join the reserves, saying I'd never be called to active duty. But, they had already been calling reserves to active duty in Afghanistan/Iraq. Idk why they thought I'd be dumb enough to believe them, considering they wanted me because of my test score.
I got something stupid like a 96 on the ASVAB and I just told the first air force guy I smoked a lot of weed and I never heard from any military again lmao
It was tempting when they offered me to go right into a program to become a satellite operator starting off making $125k/year immediately after boot camp... but I don't regret not taking that offer. Who knows what would have actually materialized, anyways. Probably would have been 6 years deep dreaming of hopefully seeing 6 figures one day while I end up managing logistics or something.
Idk why they thought I’d be dumb enough to believe them,
It's literally their job to lie and there's a good chance this is a lie they were successfully sold when they joined.
The US Military is basically just an MLM that ends with your kneecaps blown off in a friendly fire incident.
Idk why they thought I’d be dumb enough to believe them, considering they wanted me because of my test score.
I think therein lies your answer. Their own test scores were low enough to think you might eventually join.
35k in 2022 is not a living wage.
It's not the wage. It's an enlistment bonus for shipping out to basic within a short time frame of enlisting. Meant to help fill vacancies in the Army.
Nobody wants to join the military because people are tired of going to fight strangers in foreign countries they have no beef with. We're figuring out that our military is actually more of a terrorist organization with veto power in NATO.
Plus you know, people are worried about the impending climate crisis and the future water wars more than the geopolitical dick swinging the military is used to enforce.
plus all we ever hear about from vets is how this country refuses to take care of them... the abysmal state of veteran care in this country has broken the line in many traditionally long running military families. like, if big papa breadwinner of the traditional southern family comes back broken and unable to work that family just ends up on the street. that alone breaks that chain of what may have been 10 generations of military men. now think of every less extreme scenario and how common they are and how they affects the minds of those children that may have previously been gung-ho to sign up.
veterans these days have little pride over what they accomplished or failed to accomplish, the war stories are hard to make glorious sounding, they all have some severe medical issue caused by the military that the military refuses to acknowledge and/or help them with, so very many homeless veterans...
I'm not at all pro military, but even I can see how ridiculously fucked it is that a man can sign his life away to fight for a county and for that county to not even have the decency to pick him up out of the fucking dirt after...
Meant to help fill vacancies in the Army.
I thought it was to help boost sales of Dodge vehicles
Same thing.
Not to mention clothing, housing, food are all taken care of too. Not to mention perks of military base discounts and programs.
Plus, you abandon all bodily autonomy and you might be wounded or killed.
And even if you're not, the chances of PTSD are astronomical! Not to mention the likelihood of having to do something morally reprehensible.
All bonuses in my book
It is when you are in the military and housing, food, and healthcare are paid for. At that point all you REALLY need the 35K for is to buy a V6 Camaro (or Mustang).
That's the sign on bonus. The salary is around $22,000 a year starting. Abysmal, but you don't have to pay for much. Food, and housing and insurance is covered.
Army wouldn't be my choice, but my best friend did his 20 and out in the air force and climbed high enough in the ranks that he was making six figures. He got to retire at 38 with free Healthcare the rest of his life and gets like $60k a year and got to go to a lot of cool places (as well as shit ones, of course). AF or coast guard be about the only ones I'd consider.
$18.50 is all they can offer? They can indeed fuck right on off. In this economy?
18.50? Not even close. You're working way more than 40 hours a week!
Yeah you're not clocking out and getting stoned/drunk watching old Cartoon Network shows if you work for the military.
Once you sign, you're living that life for a chunk of years.
And if you really fuck up, military courts are brutal compared to civilian court.
You're on the clock 23 hours and 59 minutes of the day. That hourly rate is MUCH lower.
Don't 🦆 join 🦆 the 🦆 armed 🦆 forces 🦆
"Hey duck sign guy, you want a $10k signing bonus so you can be right back here in five years minus working legs?"
Alternative storyline:
be sign spinner
Hate your Job
Sign up for military
Get assigned to color guard
Military sign spinner
"We know 35k won't get you far, but PTSD is forever. Imagine blowing your brains off because you can't sleep at night!"
The people have spoken and the military listened - they lowered enlistment standards. Lol.
Hate your shitty life brought to you by the system?
Come kill people for the system!
Depending on where this was and how long ago, this is pretty close to minimum wage in some us states. If they get paid as much to wear a duck costume, at no risk except their pride, why wouldn’t they?
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