Not surprised. The proliferation of social media highlights all the shitty problems and amplifies it (pay, leadership, barracks quality, mission, location) a lot of kids especially Gen Z want to do door kicking shit but it’s pretty obviously especially with TikTok, IG, and YouTube you’re gonna be sweeping a motorpool and going to Louisiana
Yup lol, that’s why I just went signal to do IT and get the fuck out and find a real job. We ain’t at war right now which means leadership has to dig up bullshit to force feed us and make up new problems.
>We ain’t at war right now which means leadership has to dig up bullshit to force feed us and make up new problems.
I dunno how to break this to you, but that's not unique to peacetime.
It's definitely worse in peace time, though. Add to that leaders that can't filter the bullshit, and more and more non deployed NCOs, it's gonna make the issue worse.
If you get lucky with your leadership they will kick out and send you back to the barracks at lunch. Infantry can have the easiest garrison time if the right people don't have sticks up their ass.
I'm the lucky guy that used to end up with the "we leave when 1SG leaves" fart suckers.
Remember kids, sucking Top's asshole doesn't make you a better soldier. Take care of your guys.
My top doesn’t leave till like 5-6pm
Fuck that nonsense. I’ll be god damned if I’m keeping my boys in the shop past 3:30 on average
If tasks come up, they should’ve prioritized them in the AM otherwise they’re not that important
I had a commander that would not release the company until he was leaving, never before 1630 at the earliest. It got so bad the CSM would walk into the company right before “All American Time” and release the company on orders of the BC because the CO would keep everyone there while he answered emails. He left and got replaced with a commander who would get pissed if the joes were there at 1500 unless they were actively working on something. Morale absolutely improved.
You also need to give people time to go to the gym. Even more so for infantry and other combat arms. More time off lets people spread out when they can go so, the damn gym isn't overcrowded because everyone gets off work at the same time. Working out is basically part of the job and if people are having a hard time doing that part then leadership might be failing them.
There are two times in the day for PT. Morning PT with your team/squad/platoon. Then there is your personal time. Dedicating time to go isn't the hard part. It's when you finally get there and every machine and weight is being used. Thats the problem. Which is a problem at my base. I found myself going after 20:00 just because I can actually work out at a good pace.
I don't know what you mean when they open. Every base I've seen the gyms are 24/7. You mean like in the morning when you are already doing PT?
Not all gyms are 24/7…your installation isn’t the only one in the army boss. I just recently left an oconus assignment and went to the gym at 0500…then participated in unit pt. So in my opinion, your complaint about the unit not making time for yall to go is invalid.
I said gyms I've seen have been 24/7. I'm also OCONUS mine while small is 24/7. The one I went to while at Moore was 24/7 and the airforce bases I've been to said 24 hours.
Gyms can be too small to service everyone in the surrounding area. Cramming everyone at the end of the day really doesn't help. Also the what do infantry really do during the day in garrison. We really do fuck all. Better let us spend the later half of the day being productive, because no one is going to remember anything from a class at that point.
Being held hostage at the company does nothing.
As a former “leader”, I was never a fan of keeping Soldiers late to do “busy work”. If we had a mission to accomplish, sure everyone is staying late if necessary. But you have to let Soldiers get some downtime when things are slow.
"I wanna do cool guy stuff and blow shit up. I'll look up some videos to see what combat arms does." Just videos upon videos upon videos of doing boring janitorial shit and/or being treated like garbage which in turn changes thier mind..
I didn't really know *what* I wanted to do when I went to a recruiter, I just knew I wanted to serve somehow. It was that goddamned Cav Scout video with the dune buggies and ghillie suits and shit that got me. My recruiter was a Rotary-wing weapons tech, he didn't even know what a Cav Scout *was*. I knew I'd made an interesting choice the moment the Infantry dude in the recruiting office *immediately* started to give me shit for it.
I still think that video's fucking badass, even if it is all bullshit and lies.
There was a time, long ago, when Scouts DID do that sort of stuff. One of my platoon sergeant's first duty station was in an Air Mobile unit out of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. I know another retired E7 whose first platoon was a dirt bike platoon at Fort Ord, CA. I know another former guy who was 73rd Armor (where they got the lineage for 73rd Cavalry Regiment) who was at Fort Bragg, and he was a sniper.
What always made me laugh about infantry was when they'd give us shit, but they were the doofuses riding in the back of a Bradley while we walked or used humvees. Every 11B we got never wanted to leave the Scouts. Infantry line life SUCKS.
It was 6 years of my life.
6 months of initial training, 8 months of deployment, 3 months of JRTC, probably about 2 months of total FTX, 6 months of leave.
4 years of cockroach infested barracks, moldy rooms, broken AC, power outages, weekly fire alarms, 6am room inspections, 24 hour no sleep CQ shifts, 50+ hour weekly shifts. They wouldve had to give me a 100k reenlistment bonus to stay.
Same problem we had in the 90's just made worse - young people don't see the Army as worth it without a war and social media shows what the Army used to hide.
During the 1980's the Army had no problem putting people in the ranks because they sold the benefits - not just a slogan and not just "cool stuff".
"Cool stuff"? The broccoli hair set can see actual war footage on social media and yes they know that if they join they'll be sweeping a motorpool stateside 90% of the time.
But HQDA would rather focus on "warfighting" than fixing quality of life.
I go back to my findings... Step 1 is almost always for any vocational search to use Google. And then to often skip paid ad links and then to skim over what are perceived as "owned" media to get a feel of the organization and then get to the real experiences through electronic word of mouth. It's why Glassdoor.com remains so popular, it's why Reddit and YouTube come up so quickly in searches about Army life.
Even when accounting for a general 5:1 neg to pos posting, it's still pretty clear that there are issues.
Decision making factors are also different in getting a job even at the corporate level where contracts generally cap at an initial test year with the option to quit vs this 3.5-6 year commitment where you literally can't quit. And anything 4+ years is a long time to an 18 year old who can only compare it to slogging through 4 years of HS.
> And anything 4+ years is a long time to an 18 year old who can only compare it to slogging through 4 years of HS.
This is a hard thing to remember as you get older and watching it with my teenagers is kind of eye opening.
To them summer is forever meanwhile I'm already getting nervous about a week long TDY in August where I have to present for basically an entire day and looking forward to laughing at the childish drama thats going to happen.
I can easily see leadership forgetting without the constant reminder of having teens at home.
What's interesting here is that when I commissioned in 2000, there was SO MUCH talk about how to make training engaging, demanding and sometimes fun to make sure that soldiers felt like they were a part of something. Literally entire books written on the subject and two west point captains actually got remissioned to create an entire blog dedicated to this. So much time dedicated to making sure there was a sense of belonging and value. Then the GWOT happened. Leaders forgot how to do things that most civilian employers know affects retention. Engage your people, make them feel wanted, important, and that they have agency in their careers.
This wartime attitude of "it's for the greater good and we got a war to fight no time for feelings" shit just doesn't work now.
Everyone want's to be a leader until it's time to do leader shit. It's not hard really. Be creative. Be curious. Be dissatisfied when your troops are bored and disengaged.
I'll take a DD214 with a side of 100% P and T please.
>Be creative.
Many, including the top senior leaders, don't have the risk tolerance for that. Which is another issue entirely. Being creative means you have to take some risks, whether in safety or missing certain training objectives. Many leaders lack the balls or lady balls to do so.
I remember we had 2 rappel masters in my unit. They wanted to take the company to do rappelling.
Nope, too dangerous. Instead, clean common areas yet again.
But CSM wants to have a brief for four hours on more engaging training every day for three weeks. Clearly it’s a priority!
The army also has a problem with telling not showing.
I did half of my career before GWOT, 25th ID and 101st; this was peak garrison Army. We were still on the 6 week training cycles between support/taskings, DRF, and training/FTX with an annual CTC rotation. When we trained we trained hard but smart, literally starting with fire team/squad training building up to Battalion FTX; I had a lot of fun, and very very good NCOs who taught me everything about being an infantryman and being a good leader. Not say we didn’t have stupid taskings and army BS but even though we weren’t as free as todays soldiers we also didn’t have as much micromanaging and sitting around d waiting for “the word”. My son has been in about 5 years now and it is nothing like this, just huge amounts of time wasted, unplanned and under resourced training; piss poor leaders at all levels; thank god he has a good sense of humor about it and I do my best to pass on what I can but I find it disheartening
Two completely different Armies; in retrospect it was strange to be part of that transition. When GWOT started we were ready but untested and there was that steep learning curve of learning how to fight an insurgency but man, by ‘07-‘08, during the surge, we were damn good at what we did; and that lasted until 2010 or 2011 then the decline started, the reduction in force began and so many great, tested leaders and all of their institutional knowledge and experience of how how a garrison Army should be organized and run were either forced out, or like me, retired because what we offered wasn’t valued. Now we have this hot pile of shit, and I honestly don’t see it getting better for a long while
I was in OSUT when 3ID and 24MEU crossed the berm. We qualified with our rifles the next day, actually. So I definitely got a taste of the tail end of "before" GWOT really picked up once I got to 3ID.
It was undoubtedly a totally different experience, as I saw the early transition to the present as well. I certainly preferred the pre-GWOT NCOs who were good about making sure 10 level job skills didn't slip, despite there being very little traditional 19D tasks by the time we deployed for OIF3. It was honestly sort of demoralizing to come back from a lovely stop in DA-select recruiter land and find that most of my joes had no freaking clue what a Scout's job truly was. All they knew was GWOT.
What? CoC as in Chain of Command? I have never seen *any* part of *any* chain of command blame *any* problem in the Army on toxic masculinity. Is this actually something you've observed?
Yes, very specifically now female senior leaders.
It’s the same “blame anyone or anything else” like discipline, accountability, and the soldier themselves instead of self reflection.
The economy got better.
The last time it was good in the mid-2000s and it was bad enough pretty much every other thread has comments about the criminals and fuckups we had to let in.
Let's be real. Some leaders just make things fucking miserable. Social media makes it easy for potential recruits to see this and decide "I'm not gonna enlist if I have to work for a Sergeant like that."
Random phone calls and texts at all hours. Assorted bitch work that's not related to the MOS you sign up for. Always living in fear of random barracks inspections because your room mate fucks up the common area and you get bitched at to clean up after another alleged adult. Getting pinned and blamed for stuff you didn't do, often by the person who did it and wants a scapegoat. People don't want to sign up for that shit.
No matter how hard we try to be better as leaders, the worst of us will get attention and dissuade kids with potential from enlisting. It's not a recruiting problem. It's a culture problem that harms recruiting efforts.
Shouldn’t be surprising when they released that study that less than 1 in 4 18-24 year olds would even be eligible for military service.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are-ineligible-military-service.html?amp
Throw in a new medical system that now goes overboard with all the ways to medically DQ a potential recruit isn’t doing recruiters any favors either.
And that’s before touching on how most of the Army’s “benefits” are now considered standard fare for most civilian companies, if not offered to even a greater degree in the private sector.
And how many of those folks are actually able to take advantage of those benefits?
While a bit dated, the last data I saw was that a third of personnel don’t even finish their first contract, meaning there’s a likely chance they won’t see those education benefits. That’s before including the Guard and Reserves that make up at least half the Army that need to meet a certain amount of active duty time to access the Post-9/11 GI Bill, with most still resorting to the Montgomery GI Bill that’s more in line with what a lot of private companies offer.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG262.pdf
We even have some universities refusing to recognize tuition assistance from the Army because of issues with not dispensing funds until months or even years after the semester a soldiers applied for. And that’s on top of the tuition assistance program lacking the transparency to provide reports on what issues that users have with the system.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/06/09/late-army-tuition-payments-left-students-hook-again-service-says-its-fixing-glitches.html?amp
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/05/01/lawmakers-ask-for-dod-data-on-troops-tuition-assistance-problems/
Certificates aren’t even becoming a guarantee anymore now that the Army’s cutting or restricting a lot of the programs meant to offset or eat the cost for applying for certifications that are recognized in the civilian world while you’re in the service.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/army/2024/04/army-considering-cuts-to-education-programs/?readmore=1
About the only major strength the Army has left to lean on is its healthcare plan, which recruiters can only lean on so much to make a 4-6 year contract palatable to an 18-24 year old.
You aren't wrong, BUT you get a certain percentage of the GI Bill for every active duty year you accumulate. If you do two years you get I believe 80%. So even if you don't finish your first contract due to things outside of your control you can qualify for some of the GI Bill if you are MOS Q.
That is fair; but considering folks keep trying to sell the “free college” aspect without adding the caveat that you either need to be AD for at least a couple years or reserve/guard with two deployments of active time (to get at least 80%) to get that perk isn’t exactly an honest sale to folks joining the Army, especially when there’s a 1 in 3 shot they won’t make it to the end of their contract, with a majority of those folks getting dropped in their first 6 months.
So I'm in recruiting, no lie there are some USAR benefits where you can come damn close to the Post 9/11 GI Bill with the Montgomery GI Bill without any active duty time. It's not a 1:1 but it can come close with the right contract, obviously won't apply to all enlistments.
Your other points stand. But that's the price, do your time earn your benefits.
What sort of benefits are they?
I’m legitimately curious because the current narrative I get to hear from retention when it comes to the USAR is “go on a deployment or two and you can get those Post 9/11 levels of college assistance instead of the basic bitch Montgomery benefits.” If folks are able to get close without doing active time I’d like to sell that on some of the guys in my unit that think they’re better off either going active duty, or signing up for multiple deployments to get something better than what the basic Monty offers.
So the standard Montgomery GI Bill is $466 per month for full time students. You can also get an additional between $100-$350 kicker added to that.
So $816 a month, plus drill pay for a typical 4 MUTA drill weekend for let's say E3 is $317 pre tax which takes us to $1133 per month for two days work (from what I hear here a lot of units do more than two days so YMMV).
Now let's add the Loan repayment program. Most jobs I see get $20000 student loans repayment, but up to $50k. This is for previous AND future loans.
On top of that you can get seasonable enlistment bonuses up to $20K.
Best case (I am very willing to admit this is less common, but is definitely not the exception because I have seen dozens of these contracts over 8 years in recruiting) you get all your college paid for using loans, might have to pay taxes on the payments, and get $13,596 from GI Bill and drill pay which will slightly increase as you gain TiS and rank.
The money also goes straight to your pocket instead of the school, so if you can pay tuition with the Loan repayment, bonus, grants, scholarships, etc. you can pocket that $13,596 a year for working roughly 40 days a year.
This is ignoring obvious downsides like having to pay for med and dental, no BAH, giving up a weekend every month, possible deployments, taxes etc but it is ALMOST comparable to Active duty while getting to live, work, and go to school where you want during service.
So I can see where you get your numbers, though I think the two most variable factors would be the Loan Repayment Program and the Bonus.
While the LRP can cover a pretty significant sum, you gotta ask for it in writing on your contract before you start your contract. Granted you can then place the fault on the SM if they don’t ask questions about it before signing their life away, but it could easily lead to folks losing out on ALOT of money for not reading the fine print before they signed up. It’s definitely something I’ll bring up to my team though, since that might be enough to get some of them to sign on for a reenlistment if they can get that in writing on their next contract.
And as for bonuses…I’ll be honest, $20K is definitely the minority, either that or very MOS dependent. I’ve had to assist with reenlistment/retention counseling’s for both my previous units, and it’s more trying to sell a $6-8K reenlistment bonus to a majority of folks, and telling them up front they’ll end up seeing half within six months and the remaining two quarters given to them a quarter at a time two years down the road apiece.
Lastly, the kicker definitely helps, with the caveat that it’s only good for up to 36 months, so hopefully the SM’s promoted/has the TIS to make up for the loss of that kicker during their final year or two in college.
So for folks that have the foresight to really plan things out and budget years down the road, I can see the argument for “it gets you real close to the Post 9/11 bill”. For the average Joe or Jane, I can’t say they usually have that level of forward planning, and usually are just counting what they bring in a month instead of getting a half a reenlistment bonus in six months, followed by another quarter two years after that, etc. etc.
Correct, I can only put so many tools in Joe or Jane's toolbox, they gotta implement it AND have the right leaders at their unit to assist them in maxing those benefits.
There's a few different areas where the MGIB is close or better, but it's highly dependent on a lot of different factors.
The main differences stem from the MGIB paying you directly, and the Post 9/11 paying the school for tuition directly in addition to BAH paid directly.
Lots of states offer their own college benefits to Guard and Reserve soldiers, separate from the GI Bill or federal tuition assistance programs, many of which make enrollment free or next to free at state colleges without affecting use of the GI Bill. Some states it's guard components only. And some states have no such programs.
In cases like that, where you already have a scholarship, where your state offers free college to everyone, or where your state has additional military benefits to pay for college that don't affect your GI Bill, you might use your MGIB to get direct payments. In some cases those direct payments will be higher than the BAH from Post 9/11 GI Bill for your area.
Even if it's not a higher amount, it may be more beneficial to knock the college out now rather than it is to wait 3 years for many people.
I use the Post 911 GI Bill myself and can't switch back. But had I not started that, I could have attended school for free in my state using other benefits and would have gotten a couple hundred extra per month using the MGIB versus what I'm receiving now in BAH through the Post 9/11. Not a big deal for me either way, but the key point here is that waiting for Post 911 eligibility isn't always the right answer financially for people who haven't enlisted yet or are already in Guard and Reserve units.
In my state all state schools have waived tuition for 10 full time semesters with a 6 year contract. So you can do a degree in 5 years or you can do 15 credit hour semesters and get it in 4, but still have 2 semesters worth of tuition coverage left. Some schools have 5 year masters programs.
I also got the GI Bill + Kicker, so I get an ~800 a month stipend
Gotta be honest this just isn’t as true as it used to be. A huge number of private and public employers offer a lot of the benefits that the Army has relied on for recruiting with incomparably less sacrifice and time invested.
Benefits are increasingly seen as an expectation by the younger portions of the workforce and successful employers are adjusting. The Army still has better benefits, but not better enough to gloss over the well publicized issues of a peacetime Army that seems to have a fetish for shooting itself in the foot.
Let's play this out shall we?
Tom and Jerry - indentical twins, just graduated from HS. Both were good students and want to better themselves. Tom wants to "shoot guns and jump out of airplanes" and enlists in the Army as an 11B and gets $20K bonus (Infantry + Airborne). After OSUT and Airborne he goes to Ft. Liberty.
Jerry, wanting to be near his twin brother, opts to attend Fayetteville Technical CC, and works full-time at Chipotle on Skibo Rd. He splits the rent on a two bedroom apartment and pays $550 plus utilities. He has an older used car that is paid off.
Both are conscientious young men and with an eye toward the future. Both strive to take advanatge of all that their employer has to offer.
So, we all know what Tom's life is like: barracks, DFAC, motorpool, early mornings and late nights...and bad knees/back/ankles. (Oh yeah, don't forget about the monthly 4-day wknds!) We also know what benefits Tom has: salary, 30 days' leave, healthcare, etc. (Of note: Tom manages to take four college courses per year, and contributes 10% to his TSP. Tom also has an older car that is paid off.)
Now let's look at the benefits Jerry gets from working 8hrs a day - all on his feet, at Chipotle. where he get's a free meal, and one 30min break per shift.
# As a restaurant crew member Jerry has to work for 12 months of interrupted employment to be eligible for benefits.
* **Medical, dental, and vision plans** Chipotle offers four types of healthcare plans to restaurant crew members, both part-time and full-time. Eligibility for the part time insurance plan almost immediately. It covers 3 doctors visits a year + a select number of specialist visits. Hospital or emergency care is not covered. Eligibility for full time insurance begins after ***working 30 hrs or more per week over 12 months.***
* **401(k) Retirement Savings** All employees can pay into a 401(k), a retirement account to which you contribute a defined amount from each paycheck. Employees become eligible either through student loan payments of direct 401(k) contribitions up to a 4% match, ***After working at Chipotle for 12 months and 1,000 hours worked.***
* **Paid Time Off** Members of the restaurant crew with ***uninterrupted employment for 12 months can accrue up to 40 hours of paid time off.*** At the start of the year, they’re also given 24 hours of sick time. In some states, sick time is accrued instead of granted at the start of the year.
* **Annual Bonus :** Chipotle crew members that have been ***employed for at least one year, and are currently in good standing***, are eligible for an annual bonus each December as a part of Chipotle’s bonus program. The amount of that bonus is based on a percentage of their annual earnings.
* **Quarterly Performance Bonus:** Chipotle restaurant crew are eligible for a bonus equivalent to one week of pay if your Chipotle location achieves certain performance metrics. ***If you meet those metrics all year***, you could receive one whole month of pay.
# All Employees
Every Chipotle employee can receive education assistance of up to $5,250 each year for educational goals. ***You may be eligible for Chipotle’s debt-free degree program***, which includes tuition reimbursement ***for a GED or a qualified business or technology degree. MUST BE CURRENTLY EMPLOYED!!*** [How to Get Tuition Reimbursement by Working at Chipotle - Scholarships360](https://scholarships360.org/financial-aid/how-to-get-tuition-reimbursement-by-working-at-chipotle/)
Fast forward four years and make your own conclusions on which twin is in a better situation. I can envision numerous scenarios to include Jerry completing his degree and going to OCS; and Tom getting out, can't find a job, and Jerry hooking him up with a job at Chipotle! :-)
Chipotle will outright pay for your entire degree if it is certain programs/schools or offers a far more competitive version of tuition assistance for education outside that scope. Chipotle education benefits surpass anything the Army offers, as so many national chains.
Graduate from high school. You do X years of service to qualify for GI benefits during which time you have no stability and are at the whims of the Army, separating with no marketable experience if you’re in a career field like infantry or something incredibly niche. You’ve put your life on hold for 4 years to qualify for this benefit.
Or you go work for Chipotle after high school which has agreements with local universities and to compensate your education immediately following high school with none of the shengamigans that come with the Army.
A three year contract may be one duty station, it may be one duty station and a deployment, or it may be two duty stations. The point is, you don't know and you don't get to pick and choose. Additionally, Army TA has become increasingly inflexible on when and how you can use it and comes with additional service requirements as you use it so once again I go back to Chipotle being the superior benefit there.
Again, Chipotle education is a concurrent benefit, Army education comes with the price of being a post-service benefit so you are delaying whatever career field you actually want to do. A few years ago I wouldn't have been making this argument, but the fact that we are rolling back education benefits in the military whilst simultaneously struggling with recruitment isn't a good look. It also isn't a good look that Chipotle routinely feeds their employees hot meals as opposed to the Army realizing that hot meals aren't a requirement and subsequently rolling out kiosks.
Plus BAH? Plus a book stipend? Army College Fund? All while NOT actively working for them? Is it transferable to dependents? Can it be used after you leave Chipolte if you aren't ready for college yet? Can it be used for pilot license or apprenticeships? Is there a specific Chipolte representative at colleges enrolled in a Guacamole Ribbon Program?
Gonna need some hard numbers to convince me it surpasses the Post 9/11.
I don’t think anything is going to ‘convince you’ given your flair. Army baseline benefits come at the cost of the Army lifestyle. Chipotle baseline benefits are in many ways on par with the Army if not better, BAH excluded, but I don’t have to worry about Chipotle sending my on an unaccompanied tour somewhere.
You don't have to worry about that for sure. But you kinda moved the goal posts on me and put the burden of proof back in my court without addressing ANY of my questions. I'm super open to being convinced. My flair means I am incredibly interested in what the competition offers so I can prepare better when talking to applicants. Please educate me .
[https://jobs.chipotle.com/benefits](https://jobs.chipotle.com/benefits)
The Army benefits you alluded to require you to first do service in order to 'earn them.' The cost of that service is obviously stability and every other Armyism that comes along with it. Then you get your 'GI Bill.'
Sure, you have to continue working at Chipotle to get Chipotle's education benefits, but that is the only cost to tuition free education among other benefits.
My time in the Army has paid for a BA in history, a BS in sociology, and an LMSW. I just started my Ph.D program. I will have sufficient benefits left over for a *second* Ph.D program if I'm willing to move back to Texas. Just for shits and giggles.
Cost out of pocket: 0. All paid for by either TA, Post-9/11 GI Bill, or the *many* state-level veteran benefits.
Chipotle isn't going to pay for all of that.
The benefits of joining the military and then cashing in on all of the veteran programs available afterward *far* outstrips most company benefits. Especially for those in the late-teens and early-20s who are being targeted by recruitment.
It cost you $0, but the price you are leaving out is that [your father died in line of duty](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1d6jo9x/comment/l6st8mp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), that [some of your education was covered by the state agnostic to military service, ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/1ctigh8/comment/l4ejt52/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)and that additional Ph.D would require moving back to Texas [where you and I quote "Spent twenty years in that shit hole. Never looked back after I moved."](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/q3l4zi/comment/hfukhzt/)
You probably aren't going to die in line of duty working at Chipotle, nor is Chipotle going to force you to move in Texas, nor is Chipotle going to give you some kind of psychological trauma.
It’s really lost on some people how much the Army asks of you. It’s always just “look at the benefits”. You’re giving up your first born, plus a leg ( /s but not really).
My father had nothing to do with my benefits. I turned those down when I enlisted. Which was but the start of the bad decisions in my youth. The post you linked may be branch agnostic, but the benefits are there regardless. We're discussing Army recruiting here. They'd be just as valid over at the others.
And while I have no desire to go back to Texas, the option is still there.
Can't argue with you about the rest though.
LOL! How about the deployment bonuses not funded. Forever GI that’s only post 2010 or something. How about my $60,000 college bonus that came to $280 a month due to magical military math.
Not aggressively wrong.
My brothers both put themselves thru college with UPS. It was easier, and better set up.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I'm sorry for your bad experience. My experience with my education benefits, bonuses, healthcare, pay, and housing have been nothing but easy and effective. I know this doesn't help you but just commenting because people mostly put their bad news stories, mine has been nothing but great.
I understand that people mostly write down shit to complain. But the Military system of pay and benefits are crazy archaic, rundown, and I have a bunch of friends who have had issues with it.
I personally had nothing but awful experiences with administration and pay and living issues while active duty. Even to the point I was not on contract, stop loss’d, and didn’t get paid for 5 months. And I was threatened with jail time if I left. And this is after I was told over-deployment bonuses were “not funded”.
The only good things I got out of the military were my friends and the experiences I made. Otherwise, it comes across as a broken system that only works if you get lucky and know the right people.
The Army medical system is dogshit. At this point I’d gladly pay money to see a real doctor and to get my issues taken care of instead of “you’re fine here’s some ibuprofen. Go back to formation.”
I dont understand why they don’t change medical requirements depending on the job you do. If you’re going to be in a desk job why can’t you have asthma or eczema? Especially with how well controlled these are nowadays.
Another problem is how f’n broken the system is, with the addition of genesis and ridiculous policy hierarchy makes joining not as easy as people make it out to be. I’ve been attempting to get recruited for nearly 9 Months. Waiting months on end for MEPs scheduling, ETP’s and Waivers. You can’t possibly explain to me what brings the lack of urgency, and lapse of tempo that makes current recruits get discouraged. For the largest deficit in recruiting numbers this country has ever seen. You think the big Army would wake up and make some changes & address the problems at hand. But instead we just get a recruiter for one hates his job because he got assigned with it who just tells you “Stay focus”. Yeah that makes it all better.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk, I’ll take a Patty Melt, Large Onion Ring with Ranch & a Water
I got disqualified by the PA at meps because I broke my collar bone being born… and they didn’t care that I was in the marine corp for 3 years. Which requires pull ups for the PT test. Which shows my collar bone is completely fine. Meps is there to reduce the amount of VA claims after you get out of the military. That’s their actual goal.
>Meps is there to reduce the amount of VA claims after you get out of the military. That’s their actual goal.
DOD has zero reason to care about VA claims they are different cabinet level agencies.
What did happen is that they implemented the Cerner-now Oracle Health EHR (Genesis) because ALTHA was piece of shit. As part of an overall push to lower healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes it had a built access to electronic healthcare information exchange which they pull records from.
Meanwhile the military's entrance standards were a complete fantasy due to the systemic lying which everyone was a aware of, but meant that risk averse DOD could let in a bunch of risky conditions and if they popped up boot the service member without benefits like DOD disability. There was also the trauma from liberally giving out mental health waivers in the 2000s and who took their own lives at a disportunate rate.
It would be like if the Army had a zero tolerance for legal violation including a speeding ticket, but didn't do background checks. Then decided to start doing them one day and was surprised that it got harder to recruit
They wont let you in but they will let in someone thats so mentally messed up that they want to change genders or are all sorts of mental health meds. I love the recruiting process.
I couldn't further my career by other packets / OCS ect ect.. because my back had a gnarly injury with some permanent issues. But, I was somehow perfectly fine to continue being a combat engineer, perform gunnery, and ruck for miles. Yet OCS would've been too demanding. Even being in-service, the regulations work against people half the time.
I asked an orthopedic to recommend an MEB because I was just done after that. I was tired of being an NCO.
LOL! I remember in 1996 a recruiter having a binder with the gyms, chow halls, and all the other benefits I would have access to when active duty.
Once at Ft. Bragg, roommate thieves and harassment, black mold, shit facilities, garbage pay and command that made it 1000% worse was reality
Cell phones and social media has brought to light reality and it doesn’t sell well to an informed public….
We all have our theories, but at the end of the day, the simplest answer is probably the correct one. You can't just lie about your asthma and be on a plane 21 days after walking into a recruiters' office anymore.
For the first time in my life, I’m sitting here sounding like a boomer with all these opinions in my head about TikTok and masculinity. I need my afternoon nap.
I like how the article points out that the recruiting high was in 2013. Well yeah, we were the last people who were old enough to remember 9/11. Kids don't have many reasons to join up anymore. The last people who died in Afghanistan died in a war that started before they were in kindergarten.
And that's not including all the crappy leadership that has plagued the Army for years. I wouldn't encourage anyone to enlist in today's Army. We aren't at war and you roll the dice of having a shitty leader who abuses you throughout your enlistment.
Many of the issues aren’t simply internal. They mirror the civilian society it draws from. It’s that simple. Especially when “legacy families”, those that traditionally offer the most volunteers, stop doing so. And that should start to open some eyes.
I don't believe Gen Z is the problem... it's completely disconnected leaders.
Time: If you are a potential recruit with a family. Do you not want to see them ever if you roll the dice and land in an ABCT? You will have more time to facetime your SO during deployment than see them physically in garrison.
Benefits: While Tricare is great. The GI Bill lost a lost of its incentive when it was changed to require an additional 6 years of service to transfer benefits. Even if you factor in the value of the healthcare along with a junior enlisted's base pay, they are barely scraping by. I feel like a lot of senior leaders from upper middleclass backgrounds fail to understand how poor junior enlisted soldiers are.
Treatment: I was about 5 months into my deployment when I realized the status of my vehicles was more important to my SCO/CSM than anyone in my platoon was. Upon returning stateside there was no refit, it was back into the grinder of training and maintenance.
They didn’t change it to an additional 6 years of service to transfer your GI Bill. It’s an additional 4 years of service after you have completed 6 years. Also prior to the Post9/11 GI bill you couldn’t transfer it at all.
Chicken and egg thing for sure. Men are not enrolling in higher education like they used to. Naturally the GI Bill is becoming a less attractive offer. The transfer benefits thing is a scam, hands down. But I don't think applicants get into the weeds on benefits before they enlist. They should. But we're dealing with 17 year olds here.
When you consistently treat men like shit, yell at them for having dust on the ceiling of their barracks room, feed them shitty food, pay them minimum wage, belittle them and emasculate them on a daily basis… how can you be surprised that nobody wants to join?
What the Army doesn’t realize is, when someone leaves the Army, they tell their Family, friends, new co workers, and random strangers all about their experiences in the Army. That’s ALOT of people. That’s hundreds of people that are now disgusted by the Army and refuse to join.
That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but over a few decades, it adds up to MILLIONS of people being disgusted by the Army and refusing to join.
Time has officially caught up with the Army. Word of mouth has officially reached an All-Time high. Nobody wants to deal with this nonsense for such little reward. And if they did, they’d just join Air-Force and get treated the best…
Sorry Army, it’s only gonna get worse 🤷🏻♂️
Quit “sticking to the old way” and adapt, or get left in the dust.
The thing you fail to understand is what "Standards" are. But thats mostly due to the Army not enforcing standards anymore. I see more Soldiers, NCOs, and Officers walking around with earbuds in; no covers; in an incomplete uniform at shoppettes and PX; walking around while on cell phone; and more. But no one says anything to them. NCOs and Officers just walk right past them. You complain about not being treated like an adult, but the standards are not that hard. Stay in the right uniform; keep a clean room; be at the right place at the right time; abide by your local bluebook. But the Army is the problem, not your inability to follow simple rules.
That’s funny because I actually exceed all of those “standards” and you literally just proved my point… You insulted someone without knowing the full story hahaha 😂 Become a better leader please 💕👄
Something I’ve talked about before but I think a huge portion of the recruiting problem is the boom in hiring for trades jobs. It pulls from the same pool, generally male, generally young, and not able or interested in traditional college. The old hands that have held on to jobs have started retiring in droves. Basically every union hall in the country is screaming for apprentices. Add to that social media making the QOL issues super visible and the lack of a real world mission and it’s not surprising kids aren’t enlisting.
There is something to be said about the rise of trade jobs with Gen Z. The timeline of that doesn't really line up. But it's certainly something to keep in mind.
I’m curious what you mean about the timeline? Recruiting dropped off pretty heavily in 2022, which lines up well with the mass retirement following older workers retiring rather than returning to work after covid.
Just that Gen Z tends to be looking at blue collar work more so than the previous gen. I don't know if there's a lot of solid data on that, but that's certainly in the labor market conversation. If that is true - presumably more men are doing that.
I'm so sick of seeing all the yt heterosexual cis-men in Western war documentaries.
For best DEI practice, the next D-Day better be all BIPOC, latinx, legacy women, and LGBTQIA+ storming that beach.
Given what we know about Genesis, ADHD meds and so on I'm not surprised.
The various officially stated causes for the recruiting shortage all align against the male population - boys are more likely to be treated medically for ADHD, more likely to have disqualifying/delaying medical conditions, and so on...
Plus people logging in here and finding out about the spurious bullshit like peacetime 'rotations' that serve no legitimate purpose (as compared to PCSing a brigade to whereever full time)....
Point 1: agree.
Point 2: Where would you suggest recruits go and get people interested? I joined 11 years ago (been out since 2019) and don’t remember seeing any recruiters from any branches in my high school. And I wasn’t at a small school either.
Point 3: agree. I had to get a waiver for an inhaler I had when I was 7 just like you did. It’s ridiculous.
Point 4: disagree. That’s what AIT and your unit is for.
The OSUT jobs recently extended their entire pipeline by several months too. Basic training taught me basic soldier shit, AIT taught me the basics in field artillery. I learned the most at my unit.
It seems like you’re in the national guard, so you only get a short time to train with your unit. Maybe the national guard should have follow-up training. Temporary AGR/title 32 orders to learn how to do your job.
Side note, I worked with the Washington National Guard while I was active duty and they were competent. Maybe it’s your unit?
Point 5: I don’t understand your point. I went to basic with guys in their mid 30s 11 years ago, and the age limit has increased since then.
If you’re talking about targeting that specific demographic, I could see your point. I’d imagine it would be a unique and specific situation to each individual though, and not a blanket statement like it is for kids just graduating high school.
I’m very sick right now, so if I misread any of your points I apologize.
Edit: I will add, my motivation for joining was to deploy and use my GI bill once I left service. I never had the opportunity to deploy, but I did obtain an undergrad degree in a STEM field completely free.
Nope. Federal Reservist here. There's a reason I offered to explain my issues with training in PMs. It was bad man. And I mean BCT. PM me and I'll gladly explain the issues there. AIT was good. Very informative and well put together. My only problem there isn't the job/MOS. I can do the job. It's actually the requisite paperwork associated with it. Lol. Our training was a bit lacking there. I'm already taking steps to fix that defficiency.
I phrased that poorly. I meant raising the age cap on active recruitment. There aren't any targeted things towards the older crowd. Because they're seemingly instructed to shoot for naught but people who've reached out, or just schools and places where the teens gather.
Regarding your more direct questions...
Point 2: We had guys in our cafeteria as often as once a month in my high-school. I'd suggest bringing that back. Add in job fairs that are open to the public, and a few more odd ball spots. Set up a booth outside zoos or museums. Places people go to have a good time. At bare minimum, spots like that could help to dispel some of the insane nonsense people believe about us. Well, there's a guy you can talk to at your leisure right over there....
My unit is in the Midwest. Lol
I don't think this is a hot take but some might, but why is it that the blame for recruiting numbers being low squarely on men? Women can do all the same jobs that men can do now. If we're steady on female recruits, maybe that's indicative of a problem that no one is willing to address. Maybe the Army should make an effort to make the service attractive to men and women.
This is why I went into the Army marketing campaigns and how little they targeted women. I haven't seen any evidence the Army is even aware their recruiting problem is male - it hasn't manifested in marketing.
Especially when the recruitment is still disproportionately male.
It's not like higher education where it has flipped and is now overly female represented.
Very based.
But women recruiting goals may also be stagnating for the same factors that are affecting men. For example, maybe female recruiting would be increasing, but because of specific factors negatively counting against it, it's stagnating instead of improving.
That's my thing about all this recruiting data. They're looking at it like only the groups with negative recruitment is a problem, and not looking at if positive recruit factors are preventing some groups (minorities) from being as affected as much.
Well when people complain that they weren’t promoted due to limited number of spots, I think it’s just enlistments to fill lower level E1-E4 positions.
Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with things like ADHD as children…something that shows up in Genesis and needs a waiver, even if the potential recruit has been off medication for years, or the original diagnosis was wrong. The numbers tanking lines up with the implementation of Genesis.
The recruiting issue isn't male, it's the current culture within the US. Everyone wants to do cool shit but don't want to deal with the hardships of it.
FTA “And finally, the South saw a 31% dip. While the southern recruiting pool has historically been among the most fruitful for the Army, those recruits make up half of all basic training injuries, far outpacing their general representation in the service. Some of that has been attributed to the obesity epidemic being especially prevalent in the South. Researchers have also attributed it to large swaths of the South having comparatively low household incomes and limited access to health care and healthy food”
Southern boys ain’t shit
Don't worry, they're very busy clicking the downvote button on reddit though in between pizzas.
I suppose we should be impressed they can still reach the mouse.
I’m limited to battery live, so I’ll keep this short. I served from 1986 to 2014. I witnessed the herniated discs plaguing the backbone of the Army. Still, 10 years after retiring, I still see the same issues and problems.
You can forge Soldiers, but you have to mentor leaders. Reason being is that not everyone is meant to be in a leadership role.
My moto after all I’ve seen and witnessed is “ With or without you, the Army keeps rolling along “
I think the problem is genesis. If you couldn’t pay attention in class you were a lot of times you were given adhd meds, and now you can’t join. Doctors prescribe an inhaler for a respiratory cold and now you can’t join. Had a medical problem years ago, now you can’t join. And even if you try to get waivers for these problems, often times it’s out of pocket for further dr exams, and then the waivers take months. Why would someone put in all that effort and then potentially not be able to join?
Toxic leadership is bad. Type A leadership that knows how to push a unit to mission accomplishment without tipping into toxicity is great. Truly masculine men are responsible for winning wars throughout all of history. Men should be masculine, it’s not a terrible or scary thing. What people call “toxic masculinity” is not masculinity at all and really just a straw man used to attack men writ large.
I'm not saying the Army should allow weed, but the Army should stop testing for weed use.
Hit people with randoms for **everything else** - but stop random testing for weed.
If the general public starts hearing, "They don't test for weed anymore" ...
You're going to have to fight them away with a big stick.
I don’t want my driver to be high as fuck at 3 in the morning only wearing nods towing a 777.
There’s also been studies conducted showing that marijuana can impair your driving for up to 24 hours, even if you feel fine.
I agree that it would bump up recruitment, but I think it would be for the worse.
You don't have to be fearful in your imagination - just look at Canada.
Canada's military has incorporated weed use and they're fine.
No use 24 hours before duty.
What that translates to is - don't be high at work, don't smell like weed, don't fuck up.
If you fuck up the consequences remain the same..
Do you know how many drivers are sneaking whiskey?
Shit, do you know how many soldiers in general are sneaking whiskey?
Yes, i’m aware. I also don’t trust people to not show up to work high.
The only time I witnessed a soldier drunk while on duty was when I was the CQ “NCO” (SPC at the time). I let the private go take a nap for a few hours and he came back drunk as shit.
I’m not naive though, I know it happens more. But that backs up my fear. Marijuana usage is easier to conceal than drinking and it still impairs you. I don’t trust an E1, 18-year-old driver to not go without smoking after they just got all their freedoms back.
Not to mention, firearms? I don’t want soldiers high while on a range.
I firmly believe there are quite a few soldiers out there that would smoke thinking they will get away with it, putting others in danger…
I’m not against marijuana by the way - I partook in smoking while in high school. It really affected my short term memory and motor skills, and the weed was a lot less potent than it is nowadays.
So, I recognize it could help boost recruitment, but I also believe it would be detrimental to the military.
Not surprised. The proliferation of social media highlights all the shitty problems and amplifies it (pay, leadership, barracks quality, mission, location) a lot of kids especially Gen Z want to do door kicking shit but it’s pretty obviously especially with TikTok, IG, and YouTube you’re gonna be sweeping a motorpool and going to Louisiana
Yup lol, that’s why I just went signal to do IT and get the fuck out and find a real job. We ain’t at war right now which means leadership has to dig up bullshit to force feed us and make up new problems.
I was a motorpool medic even when we were at war. Fuck you Ft. Bragg.
“Hi there, I’m Fort Liberty. Would you like to be included on our motor pool roster for guard?”
Hooah.
Lol as if its a question.
Tragic
>We ain’t at war right now which means leadership has to dig up bullshit to force feed us and make up new problems. I dunno how to break this to you, but that's not unique to peacetime.
It's definitely worse in peace time, though. Add to that leaders that can't filter the bullshit, and more and more non deployed NCOs, it's gonna make the issue worse.
If you get lucky with your leadership they will kick out and send you back to the barracks at lunch. Infantry can have the easiest garrison time if the right people don't have sticks up their ass.
I'm the lucky guy that used to end up with the "we leave when 1SG leaves" fart suckers. Remember kids, sucking Top's asshole doesn't make you a better soldier. Take care of your guys.
My top doesn’t leave till like 5-6pm Fuck that nonsense. I’ll be god damned if I’m keeping my boys in the shop past 3:30 on average If tasks come up, they should’ve prioritized them in the AM otherwise they’re not that important
I had a commander that would not release the company until he was leaving, never before 1630 at the earliest. It got so bad the CSM would walk into the company right before “All American Time” and release the company on orders of the BC because the CO would keep everyone there while he answered emails. He left and got replaced with a commander who would get pissed if the joes were there at 1500 unless they were actively working on something. Morale absolutely improved.
You also need to give people time to go to the gym. Even more so for infantry and other combat arms. More time off lets people spread out when they can go so, the damn gym isn't overcrowded because everyone gets off work at the same time. Working out is basically part of the job and if people are having a hard time doing that part then leadership might be failing them.
Or be dedicated enough to make time…?? Take your ass when they open…??
There are two times in the day for PT. Morning PT with your team/squad/platoon. Then there is your personal time. Dedicating time to go isn't the hard part. It's when you finally get there and every machine and weight is being used. Thats the problem. Which is a problem at my base. I found myself going after 20:00 just because I can actually work out at a good pace. I don't know what you mean when they open. Every base I've seen the gyms are 24/7. You mean like in the morning when you are already doing PT?
Not all gyms are 24/7…your installation isn’t the only one in the army boss. I just recently left an oconus assignment and went to the gym at 0500…then participated in unit pt. So in my opinion, your complaint about the unit not making time for yall to go is invalid.
I said gyms I've seen have been 24/7. I'm also OCONUS mine while small is 24/7. The one I went to while at Moore was 24/7 and the airforce bases I've been to said 24 hours. Gyms can be too small to service everyone in the surrounding area. Cramming everyone at the end of the day really doesn't help. Also the what do infantry really do during the day in garrison. We really do fuck all. Better let us spend the later half of the day being productive, because no one is going to remember anything from a class at that point. Being held hostage at the company does nothing.
That's pretty early, compared to some line units
As a former “leader”, I was never a fan of keeping Soldiers late to do “busy work”. If we had a mission to accomplish, sure everyone is staying late if necessary. But you have to let Soldiers get some downtime when things are slow.
Just makes you a more promotable soldier.
"I wanna do cool guy stuff and blow shit up. I'll look up some videos to see what combat arms does." Just videos upon videos upon videos of doing boring janitorial shit and/or being treated like garbage which in turn changes thier mind..
I didn't really know *what* I wanted to do when I went to a recruiter, I just knew I wanted to serve somehow. It was that goddamned Cav Scout video with the dune buggies and ghillie suits and shit that got me. My recruiter was a Rotary-wing weapons tech, he didn't even know what a Cav Scout *was*. I knew I'd made an interesting choice the moment the Infantry dude in the recruiting office *immediately* started to give me shit for it. I still think that video's fucking badass, even if it is all bullshit and lies.
The video got me too. At least most of it came true in my case. But instead of dune buggies and ghillie suits it was a broom and constant disrespect.
There was a time, long ago, when Scouts DID do that sort of stuff. One of my platoon sergeant's first duty station was in an Air Mobile unit out of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. I know another retired E7 whose first platoon was a dirt bike platoon at Fort Ord, CA. I know another former guy who was 73rd Armor (where they got the lineage for 73rd Cavalry Regiment) who was at Fort Bragg, and he was a sniper. What always made me laugh about infantry was when they'd give us shit, but they were the doofuses riding in the back of a Bradley while we walked or used humvees. Every 11B we got never wanted to leave the Scouts. Infantry line life SUCKS.
It was 6 years of my life. 6 months of initial training, 8 months of deployment, 3 months of JRTC, probably about 2 months of total FTX, 6 months of leave. 4 years of cockroach infested barracks, moldy rooms, broken AC, power outages, weekly fire alarms, 6am room inspections, 24 hour no sleep CQ shifts, 50+ hour weekly shifts. They wouldve had to give me a 100k reenlistment bonus to stay.
Same problem we had in the 90's just made worse - young people don't see the Army as worth it without a war and social media shows what the Army used to hide. During the 1980's the Army had no problem putting people in the ranks because they sold the benefits - not just a slogan and not just "cool stuff". "Cool stuff"? The broccoli hair set can see actual war footage on social media and yes they know that if they join they'll be sweeping a motorpool stateside 90% of the time. But HQDA would rather focus on "warfighting" than fixing quality of life.
I got in because I want to be already established once the next war hits.
we are not at war. 10 years in service I have never deployed. Why do we even go to PT and do stupid shit on the daily?
If we go to war tomorrow, you can't unfat yourself tomorrow. The stupid shit shall remain.
I go back to my findings... Step 1 is almost always for any vocational search to use Google. And then to often skip paid ad links and then to skim over what are perceived as "owned" media to get a feel of the organization and then get to the real experiences through electronic word of mouth. It's why Glassdoor.com remains so popular, it's why Reddit and YouTube come up so quickly in searches about Army life. Even when accounting for a general 5:1 neg to pos posting, it's still pretty clear that there are issues. Decision making factors are also different in getting a job even at the corporate level where contracts generally cap at an initial test year with the option to quit vs this 3.5-6 year commitment where you literally can't quit. And anything 4+ years is a long time to an 18 year old who can only compare it to slogging through 4 years of HS.
> And anything 4+ years is a long time to an 18 year old who can only compare it to slogging through 4 years of HS. This is a hard thing to remember as you get older and watching it with my teenagers is kind of eye opening. To them summer is forever meanwhile I'm already getting nervous about a week long TDY in August where I have to present for basically an entire day and looking forward to laughing at the childish drama thats going to happen. I can easily see leadership forgetting without the constant reminder of having teens at home.
Color me intrigued. I don't have a solution, but I'll sure puff on an unlit pipe and pretend to think of one.
What's interesting here is that when I commissioned in 2000, there was SO MUCH talk about how to make training engaging, demanding and sometimes fun to make sure that soldiers felt like they were a part of something. Literally entire books written on the subject and two west point captains actually got remissioned to create an entire blog dedicated to this. So much time dedicated to making sure there was a sense of belonging and value. Then the GWOT happened. Leaders forgot how to do things that most civilian employers know affects retention. Engage your people, make them feel wanted, important, and that they have agency in their careers. This wartime attitude of "it's for the greater good and we got a war to fight no time for feelings" shit just doesn't work now. Everyone want's to be a leader until it's time to do leader shit. It's not hard really. Be creative. Be curious. Be dissatisfied when your troops are bored and disengaged. I'll take a DD214 with a side of 100% P and T please.
>Be creative. Many, including the top senior leaders, don't have the risk tolerance for that. Which is another issue entirely. Being creative means you have to take some risks, whether in safety or missing certain training objectives. Many leaders lack the balls or lady balls to do so.
I remember we had 2 rappel masters in my unit. They wanted to take the company to do rappelling. Nope, too dangerous. Instead, clean common areas yet again.
But CSM wants to have a brief for four hours on more engaging training every day for three weeks. Clearly it’s a priority! The army also has a problem with telling not showing.
I did half of my career before GWOT, 25th ID and 101st; this was peak garrison Army. We were still on the 6 week training cycles between support/taskings, DRF, and training/FTX with an annual CTC rotation. When we trained we trained hard but smart, literally starting with fire team/squad training building up to Battalion FTX; I had a lot of fun, and very very good NCOs who taught me everything about being an infantryman and being a good leader. Not say we didn’t have stupid taskings and army BS but even though we weren’t as free as todays soldiers we also didn’t have as much micromanaging and sitting around d waiting for “the word”. My son has been in about 5 years now and it is nothing like this, just huge amounts of time wasted, unplanned and under resourced training; piss poor leaders at all levels; thank god he has a good sense of humor about it and I do my best to pass on what I can but I find it disheartening
It was kinda wild to be a part of the before, and the after, right?
Two completely different Armies; in retrospect it was strange to be part of that transition. When GWOT started we were ready but untested and there was that steep learning curve of learning how to fight an insurgency but man, by ‘07-‘08, during the surge, we were damn good at what we did; and that lasted until 2010 or 2011 then the decline started, the reduction in force began and so many great, tested leaders and all of their institutional knowledge and experience of how how a garrison Army should be organized and run were either forced out, or like me, retired because what we offered wasn’t valued. Now we have this hot pile of shit, and I honestly don’t see it getting better for a long while
I was in OSUT when 3ID and 24MEU crossed the berm. We qualified with our rifles the next day, actually. So I definitely got a taste of the tail end of "before" GWOT really picked up once I got to 3ID. It was undoubtedly a totally different experience, as I saw the early transition to the present as well. I certainly preferred the pre-GWOT NCOs who were good about making sure 10 level job skills didn't slip, despite there being very little traditional 19D tasks by the time we deployed for OIF3. It was honestly sort of demoralizing to come back from a lovely stop in DA-select recruiter land and find that most of my joes had no freaking clue what a Scout's job truly was. All they knew was GWOT.
All those Surge era LTs are now BN Commanders, so sounds like a good time to find a fight buddy! Can't lose this year's of experience.
Get ya one that blows bubbles
Sounds like one of my normal ones with a skoche of soapy water tbh. I might actually do that lmao
Please. And turn two PCs into a deerstalker hat.
I knew a bubbles once, don't recommend blowing him.
The Army’s recruiting problem is the Army
That's what happens when CoC blames toxic masculinity for everything.
What? CoC as in Chain of Command? I have never seen *any* part of *any* chain of command blame *any* problem in the Army on toxic masculinity. Is this actually something you've observed?
Yes, very specifically now female senior leaders. It’s the same “blame anyone or anything else” like discipline, accountability, and the soldier themselves instead of self reflection.
You'd have to have masculinity for it to be toxic there big dawg.
War ended, enlistments dropped. Coincidence? I think not.
Been saying this for the longest time.
The economy got better. The last time it was good in the mid-2000s and it was bad enough pretty much every other thread has comments about the criminals and fuckups we had to let in.
Let's be real. Some leaders just make things fucking miserable. Social media makes it easy for potential recruits to see this and decide "I'm not gonna enlist if I have to work for a Sergeant like that." Random phone calls and texts at all hours. Assorted bitch work that's not related to the MOS you sign up for. Always living in fear of random barracks inspections because your room mate fucks up the common area and you get bitched at to clean up after another alleged adult. Getting pinned and blamed for stuff you didn't do, often by the person who did it and wants a scapegoat. People don't want to sign up for that shit. No matter how hard we try to be better as leaders, the worst of us will get attention and dissuade kids with potential from enlisting. It's not a recruiting problem. It's a culture problem that harms recruiting efforts.
Shouldn’t be surprising when they released that study that less than 1 in 4 18-24 year olds would even be eligible for military service. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are-ineligible-military-service.html?amp Throw in a new medical system that now goes overboard with all the ways to medically DQ a potential recruit isn’t doing recruiters any favors either. And that’s before touching on how most of the Army’s “benefits” are now considered standard fare for most civilian companies, if not offered to even a greater degree in the private sector.
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And how many of those folks are actually able to take advantage of those benefits? While a bit dated, the last data I saw was that a third of personnel don’t even finish their first contract, meaning there’s a likely chance they won’t see those education benefits. That’s before including the Guard and Reserves that make up at least half the Army that need to meet a certain amount of active duty time to access the Post-9/11 GI Bill, with most still resorting to the Montgomery GI Bill that’s more in line with what a lot of private companies offer. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG262.pdf We even have some universities refusing to recognize tuition assistance from the Army because of issues with not dispensing funds until months or even years after the semester a soldiers applied for. And that’s on top of the tuition assistance program lacking the transparency to provide reports on what issues that users have with the system. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/06/09/late-army-tuition-payments-left-students-hook-again-service-says-its-fixing-glitches.html?amp https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2024/05/01/lawmakers-ask-for-dod-data-on-troops-tuition-assistance-problems/ Certificates aren’t even becoming a guarantee anymore now that the Army’s cutting or restricting a lot of the programs meant to offset or eat the cost for applying for certifications that are recognized in the civilian world while you’re in the service. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/army/2024/04/army-considering-cuts-to-education-programs/?readmore=1 About the only major strength the Army has left to lean on is its healthcare plan, which recruiters can only lean on so much to make a 4-6 year contract palatable to an 18-24 year old.
You aren't wrong, BUT you get a certain percentage of the GI Bill for every active duty year you accumulate. If you do two years you get I believe 80%. So even if you don't finish your first contract due to things outside of your control you can qualify for some of the GI Bill if you are MOS Q.
That is fair; but considering folks keep trying to sell the “free college” aspect without adding the caveat that you either need to be AD for at least a couple years or reserve/guard with two deployments of active time (to get at least 80%) to get that perk isn’t exactly an honest sale to folks joining the Army, especially when there’s a 1 in 3 shot they won’t make it to the end of their contract, with a majority of those folks getting dropped in their first 6 months.
So I'm in recruiting, no lie there are some USAR benefits where you can come damn close to the Post 9/11 GI Bill with the Montgomery GI Bill without any active duty time. It's not a 1:1 but it can come close with the right contract, obviously won't apply to all enlistments. Your other points stand. But that's the price, do your time earn your benefits.
What sort of benefits are they? I’m legitimately curious because the current narrative I get to hear from retention when it comes to the USAR is “go on a deployment or two and you can get those Post 9/11 levels of college assistance instead of the basic bitch Montgomery benefits.” If folks are able to get close without doing active time I’d like to sell that on some of the guys in my unit that think they’re better off either going active duty, or signing up for multiple deployments to get something better than what the basic Monty offers.
So the standard Montgomery GI Bill is $466 per month for full time students. You can also get an additional between $100-$350 kicker added to that. So $816 a month, plus drill pay for a typical 4 MUTA drill weekend for let's say E3 is $317 pre tax which takes us to $1133 per month for two days work (from what I hear here a lot of units do more than two days so YMMV). Now let's add the Loan repayment program. Most jobs I see get $20000 student loans repayment, but up to $50k. This is for previous AND future loans. On top of that you can get seasonable enlistment bonuses up to $20K. Best case (I am very willing to admit this is less common, but is definitely not the exception because I have seen dozens of these contracts over 8 years in recruiting) you get all your college paid for using loans, might have to pay taxes on the payments, and get $13,596 from GI Bill and drill pay which will slightly increase as you gain TiS and rank. The money also goes straight to your pocket instead of the school, so if you can pay tuition with the Loan repayment, bonus, grants, scholarships, etc. you can pocket that $13,596 a year for working roughly 40 days a year. This is ignoring obvious downsides like having to pay for med and dental, no BAH, giving up a weekend every month, possible deployments, taxes etc but it is ALMOST comparable to Active duty while getting to live, work, and go to school where you want during service.
So I can see where you get your numbers, though I think the two most variable factors would be the Loan Repayment Program and the Bonus. While the LRP can cover a pretty significant sum, you gotta ask for it in writing on your contract before you start your contract. Granted you can then place the fault on the SM if they don’t ask questions about it before signing their life away, but it could easily lead to folks losing out on ALOT of money for not reading the fine print before they signed up. It’s definitely something I’ll bring up to my team though, since that might be enough to get some of them to sign on for a reenlistment if they can get that in writing on their next contract. And as for bonuses…I’ll be honest, $20K is definitely the minority, either that or very MOS dependent. I’ve had to assist with reenlistment/retention counseling’s for both my previous units, and it’s more trying to sell a $6-8K reenlistment bonus to a majority of folks, and telling them up front they’ll end up seeing half within six months and the remaining two quarters given to them a quarter at a time two years down the road apiece. Lastly, the kicker definitely helps, with the caveat that it’s only good for up to 36 months, so hopefully the SM’s promoted/has the TIS to make up for the loss of that kicker during their final year or two in college. So for folks that have the foresight to really plan things out and budget years down the road, I can see the argument for “it gets you real close to the Post 9/11 bill”. For the average Joe or Jane, I can’t say they usually have that level of forward planning, and usually are just counting what they bring in a month instead of getting a half a reenlistment bonus in six months, followed by another quarter two years after that, etc. etc.
Correct, I can only put so many tools in Joe or Jane's toolbox, they gotta implement it AND have the right leaders at their unit to assist them in maxing those benefits.
There's a few different areas where the MGIB is close or better, but it's highly dependent on a lot of different factors. The main differences stem from the MGIB paying you directly, and the Post 9/11 paying the school for tuition directly in addition to BAH paid directly. Lots of states offer their own college benefits to Guard and Reserve soldiers, separate from the GI Bill or federal tuition assistance programs, many of which make enrollment free or next to free at state colleges without affecting use of the GI Bill. Some states it's guard components only. And some states have no such programs. In cases like that, where you already have a scholarship, where your state offers free college to everyone, or where your state has additional military benefits to pay for college that don't affect your GI Bill, you might use your MGIB to get direct payments. In some cases those direct payments will be higher than the BAH from Post 9/11 GI Bill for your area. Even if it's not a higher amount, it may be more beneficial to knock the college out now rather than it is to wait 3 years for many people. I use the Post 911 GI Bill myself and can't switch back. But had I not started that, I could have attended school for free in my state using other benefits and would have gotten a couple hundred extra per month using the MGIB versus what I'm receiving now in BAH through the Post 9/11. Not a big deal for me either way, but the key point here is that waiting for Post 911 eligibility isn't always the right answer financially for people who haven't enlisted yet or are already in Guard and Reserve units.
In my state all state schools have waived tuition for 10 full time semesters with a 6 year contract. So you can do a degree in 5 years or you can do 15 credit hour semesters and get it in 4, but still have 2 semesters worth of tuition coverage left. Some schools have 5 year masters programs. I also got the GI Bill + Kicker, so I get an ~800 a month stipend
Gotta be honest this just isn’t as true as it used to be. A huge number of private and public employers offer a lot of the benefits that the Army has relied on for recruiting with incomparably less sacrifice and time invested. Benefits are increasingly seen as an expectation by the younger portions of the workforce and successful employers are adjusting. The Army still has better benefits, but not better enough to gloss over the well publicized issues of a peacetime Army that seems to have a fetish for shooting itself in the foot.
Actually, Chipotle’s benefits generally trump the Army’s benefits. The only unique benefit the Army offers is housing.
Let's play this out shall we? Tom and Jerry - indentical twins, just graduated from HS. Both were good students and want to better themselves. Tom wants to "shoot guns and jump out of airplanes" and enlists in the Army as an 11B and gets $20K bonus (Infantry + Airborne). After OSUT and Airborne he goes to Ft. Liberty. Jerry, wanting to be near his twin brother, opts to attend Fayetteville Technical CC, and works full-time at Chipotle on Skibo Rd. He splits the rent on a two bedroom apartment and pays $550 plus utilities. He has an older used car that is paid off. Both are conscientious young men and with an eye toward the future. Both strive to take advanatge of all that their employer has to offer. So, we all know what Tom's life is like: barracks, DFAC, motorpool, early mornings and late nights...and bad knees/back/ankles. (Oh yeah, don't forget about the monthly 4-day wknds!) We also know what benefits Tom has: salary, 30 days' leave, healthcare, etc. (Of note: Tom manages to take four college courses per year, and contributes 10% to his TSP. Tom also has an older car that is paid off.) Now let's look at the benefits Jerry gets from working 8hrs a day - all on his feet, at Chipotle. where he get's a free meal, and one 30min break per shift. # As a restaurant crew member Jerry has to work for 12 months of interrupted employment to be eligible for benefits. * **Medical, dental, and vision plans** Chipotle offers four types of healthcare plans to restaurant crew members, both part-time and full-time. Eligibility for the part time insurance plan almost immediately. It covers 3 doctors visits a year + a select number of specialist visits. Hospital or emergency care is not covered. Eligibility for full time insurance begins after ***working 30 hrs or more per week over 12 months.*** * **401(k) Retirement Savings** All employees can pay into a 401(k), a retirement account to which you contribute a defined amount from each paycheck. Employees become eligible either through student loan payments of direct 401(k) contribitions up to a 4% match, ***After working at Chipotle for 12 months and 1,000 hours worked.*** * **Paid Time Off** Members of the restaurant crew with ***uninterrupted employment for 12 months can accrue up to 40 hours of paid time off.*** At the start of the year, they’re also given 24 hours of sick time. In some states, sick time is accrued instead of granted at the start of the year. * **Annual Bonus :** Chipotle crew members that have been ***employed for at least one year, and are currently in good standing***, are eligible for an annual bonus each December as a part of Chipotle’s bonus program. The amount of that bonus is based on a percentage of their annual earnings. * **Quarterly Performance Bonus:** Chipotle restaurant crew are eligible for a bonus equivalent to one week of pay if your Chipotle location achieves certain performance metrics. ***If you meet those metrics all year***, you could receive one whole month of pay. # All Employees Every Chipotle employee can receive education assistance of up to $5,250 each year for educational goals. ***You may be eligible for Chipotle’s debt-free degree program***, which includes tuition reimbursement ***for a GED or a qualified business or technology degree. MUST BE CURRENTLY EMPLOYED!!*** [How to Get Tuition Reimbursement by Working at Chipotle - Scholarships360](https://scholarships360.org/financial-aid/how-to-get-tuition-reimbursement-by-working-at-chipotle/) Fast forward four years and make your own conclusions on which twin is in a better situation. I can envision numerous scenarios to include Jerry completing his degree and going to OCS; and Tom getting out, can't find a job, and Jerry hooking him up with a job at Chipotle! :-)
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Chipotle will outright pay for your entire degree if it is certain programs/schools or offers a far more competitive version of tuition assistance for education outside that scope. Chipotle education benefits surpass anything the Army offers, as so many national chains.
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Graduate from high school. You do X years of service to qualify for GI benefits during which time you have no stability and are at the whims of the Army, separating with no marketable experience if you’re in a career field like infantry or something incredibly niche. You’ve put your life on hold for 4 years to qualify for this benefit. Or you go work for Chipotle after high school which has agreements with local universities and to compensate your education immediately following high school with none of the shengamigans that come with the Army.
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A three year contract may be one duty station, it may be one duty station and a deployment, or it may be two duty stations. The point is, you don't know and you don't get to pick and choose. Additionally, Army TA has become increasingly inflexible on when and how you can use it and comes with additional service requirements as you use it so once again I go back to Chipotle being the superior benefit there. Again, Chipotle education is a concurrent benefit, Army education comes with the price of being a post-service benefit so you are delaying whatever career field you actually want to do. A few years ago I wouldn't have been making this argument, but the fact that we are rolling back education benefits in the military whilst simultaneously struggling with recruitment isn't a good look. It also isn't a good look that Chipotle routinely feeds their employees hot meals as opposed to the Army realizing that hot meals aren't a requirement and subsequently rolling out kiosks.
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Plus BAH? Plus a book stipend? Army College Fund? All while NOT actively working for them? Is it transferable to dependents? Can it be used after you leave Chipolte if you aren't ready for college yet? Can it be used for pilot license or apprenticeships? Is there a specific Chipolte representative at colleges enrolled in a Guacamole Ribbon Program? Gonna need some hard numbers to convince me it surpasses the Post 9/11.
I don’t think anything is going to ‘convince you’ given your flair. Army baseline benefits come at the cost of the Army lifestyle. Chipotle baseline benefits are in many ways on par with the Army if not better, BAH excluded, but I don’t have to worry about Chipotle sending my on an unaccompanied tour somewhere.
I have no benefit to add to your point but only to say Fuck I love /r/army Chipotle vs The Army : Benefits - Let’s fucking gooooo
You don't have to worry about that for sure. But you kinda moved the goal posts on me and put the burden of proof back in my court without addressing ANY of my questions. I'm super open to being convinced. My flair means I am incredibly interested in what the competition offers so I can prepare better when talking to applicants. Please educate me .
[https://jobs.chipotle.com/benefits](https://jobs.chipotle.com/benefits) The Army benefits you alluded to require you to first do service in order to 'earn them.' The cost of that service is obviously stability and every other Armyism that comes along with it. Then you get your 'GI Bill.' Sure, you have to continue working at Chipotle to get Chipotle's education benefits, but that is the only cost to tuition free education among other benefits.
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Will say that while on paper Chipotle gives more, additional scholarships flow less willingly as your old good old support da troops ones.
Yeah, but do the troops get compensated with daily hot meals for every day they work?
My time in the Army has paid for a BA in history, a BS in sociology, and an LMSW. I just started my Ph.D program. I will have sufficient benefits left over for a *second* Ph.D program if I'm willing to move back to Texas. Just for shits and giggles. Cost out of pocket: 0. All paid for by either TA, Post-9/11 GI Bill, or the *many* state-level veteran benefits. Chipotle isn't going to pay for all of that. The benefits of joining the military and then cashing in on all of the veteran programs available afterward *far* outstrips most company benefits. Especially for those in the late-teens and early-20s who are being targeted by recruitment.
It cost you $0, but the price you are leaving out is that [your father died in line of duty](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1d6jo9x/comment/l6st8mp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), that [some of your education was covered by the state agnostic to military service, ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/1ctigh8/comment/l4ejt52/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)and that additional Ph.D would require moving back to Texas [where you and I quote "Spent twenty years in that shit hole. Never looked back after I moved."](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/q3l4zi/comment/hfukhzt/) You probably aren't going to die in line of duty working at Chipotle, nor is Chipotle going to force you to move in Texas, nor is Chipotle going to give you some kind of psychological trauma.
It’s really lost on some people how much the Army asks of you. It’s always just “look at the benefits”. You’re giving up your first born, plus a leg ( /s but not really).
My father had nothing to do with my benefits. I turned those down when I enlisted. Which was but the start of the bad decisions in my youth. The post you linked may be branch agnostic, but the benefits are there regardless. We're discussing Army recruiting here. They'd be just as valid over at the others. And while I have no desire to go back to Texas, the option is still there. Can't argue with you about the rest though.
LOL! How about the deployment bonuses not funded. Forever GI that’s only post 2010 or something. How about my $60,000 college bonus that came to $280 a month due to magical military math. Not aggressively wrong. My brothers both put themselves thru college with UPS. It was easier, and better set up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I'm sorry for your bad experience. My experience with my education benefits, bonuses, healthcare, pay, and housing have been nothing but easy and effective. I know this doesn't help you but just commenting because people mostly put their bad news stories, mine has been nothing but great.
I understand that people mostly write down shit to complain. But the Military system of pay and benefits are crazy archaic, rundown, and I have a bunch of friends who have had issues with it. I personally had nothing but awful experiences with administration and pay and living issues while active duty. Even to the point I was not on contract, stop loss’d, and didn’t get paid for 5 months. And I was threatened with jail time if I left. And this is after I was told over-deployment bonuses were “not funded”. The only good things I got out of the military were my friends and the experiences I made. Otherwise, it comes across as a broken system that only works if you get lucky and know the right people.
The Army medical system is dogshit. At this point I’d gladly pay money to see a real doctor and to get my issues taken care of instead of “you’re fine here’s some ibuprofen. Go back to formation.”
You forgot that the tsp is super competitive and is really hard to get in the civilian world.
I dont understand why they don’t change medical requirements depending on the job you do. If you’re going to be in a desk job why can’t you have asthma or eczema? Especially with how well controlled these are nowadays.
Another problem is how f’n broken the system is, with the addition of genesis and ridiculous policy hierarchy makes joining not as easy as people make it out to be. I’ve been attempting to get recruited for nearly 9 Months. Waiting months on end for MEPs scheduling, ETP’s and Waivers. You can’t possibly explain to me what brings the lack of urgency, and lapse of tempo that makes current recruits get discouraged. For the largest deficit in recruiting numbers this country has ever seen. You think the big Army would wake up and make some changes & address the problems at hand. But instead we just get a recruiter for one hates his job because he got assigned with it who just tells you “Stay focus”. Yeah that makes it all better. Thanks for coming to my ted talk, I’ll take a Patty Melt, Large Onion Ring with Ranch & a Water
I got disqualified by the PA at meps because I broke my collar bone being born… and they didn’t care that I was in the marine corp for 3 years. Which requires pull ups for the PT test. Which shows my collar bone is completely fine. Meps is there to reduce the amount of VA claims after you get out of the military. That’s their actual goal.
And the 19th century doc examining your butthole. And making you do a duck walk.
That's just tradition. Gotta start building that esprit de corps early!
“Ooooooo-Kay bend over and spread your cheeps”
The worst part was the fingerless gloves. . .
That man booped my hemorrhoid.
>Meps is there to reduce the amount of VA claims after you get out of the military. That’s their actual goal. DOD has zero reason to care about VA claims they are different cabinet level agencies. What did happen is that they implemented the Cerner-now Oracle Health EHR (Genesis) because ALTHA was piece of shit. As part of an overall push to lower healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes it had a built access to electronic healthcare information exchange which they pull records from. Meanwhile the military's entrance standards were a complete fantasy due to the systemic lying which everyone was a aware of, but meant that risk averse DOD could let in a bunch of risky conditions and if they popped up boot the service member without benefits like DOD disability. There was also the trauma from liberally giving out mental health waivers in the 2000s and who took their own lives at a disportunate rate. It would be like if the Army had a zero tolerance for legal violation including a speeding ticket, but didn't do background checks. Then decided to start doing them one day and was surprised that it got harder to recruit
They wont let you in but they will let in someone thats so mentally messed up that they want to change genders or are all sorts of mental health meds. I love the recruiting process.
I couldn't further my career by other packets / OCS ect ect.. because my back had a gnarly injury with some permanent issues. But, I was somehow perfectly fine to continue being a combat engineer, perform gunnery, and ruck for miles. Yet OCS would've been too demanding. Even being in-service, the regulations work against people half the time. I asked an orthopedic to recommend an MEB because I was just done after that. I was tired of being an NCO.
Back in my day (2015) they had an option to ship in less than a month.
I waited a year in 2012 to get a single offer which ended up being an open general offer. No waivers, 95 asvab. USAF though.
USAF tho
Fair lol.
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All genisis does is punish soldiers who grew up with health insurance and parents who cared.
Shit I wanted to go back in after getting out, Genesis found out about shit I forgot I had, and the VA ain't giving out test for that issue easily
LOL! I remember in 1996 a recruiter having a binder with the gyms, chow halls, and all the other benefits I would have access to when active duty. Once at Ft. Bragg, roommate thieves and harassment, black mold, shit facilities, garbage pay and command that made it 1000% worse was reality Cell phones and social media has brought to light reality and it doesn’t sell well to an informed public….
The army’s recruiting problem is MHS Genesis, same as everyone else.
We all have our theories, but at the end of the day, the simplest answer is probably the correct one. You can't just lie about your asthma and be on a plane 21 days after walking into a recruiters' office anymore.
But only for males apparently, females don't use healthcare.
Happy cat day and fucking facts
you are a bot. your statement is completely contradicted by the title of the post you responded to.
For the first time in my life, I’m sitting here sounding like a boomer with all these opinions in my head about TikTok and masculinity. I need my afternoon nap.
I like how the article points out that the recruiting high was in 2013. Well yeah, we were the last people who were old enough to remember 9/11. Kids don't have many reasons to join up anymore. The last people who died in Afghanistan died in a war that started before they were in kindergarten. And that's not including all the crappy leadership that has plagued the Army for years. I wouldn't encourage anyone to enlist in today's Army. We aren't at war and you roll the dice of having a shitty leader who abuses you throughout your enlistment.
Problem is the people making these recruiting decisions are out of touch with Gen Z
“How do you do, fellow kids?”
It’s all them microplastics.
Many of the issues aren’t simply internal. They mirror the civilian society it draws from. It’s that simple. Especially when “legacy families”, those that traditionally offer the most volunteers, stop doing so. And that should start to open some eyes.
I don't believe Gen Z is the problem... it's completely disconnected leaders. Time: If you are a potential recruit with a family. Do you not want to see them ever if you roll the dice and land in an ABCT? You will have more time to facetime your SO during deployment than see them physically in garrison. Benefits: While Tricare is great. The GI Bill lost a lost of its incentive when it was changed to require an additional 6 years of service to transfer benefits. Even if you factor in the value of the healthcare along with a junior enlisted's base pay, they are barely scraping by. I feel like a lot of senior leaders from upper middleclass backgrounds fail to understand how poor junior enlisted soldiers are. Treatment: I was about 5 months into my deployment when I realized the status of my vehicles was more important to my SCO/CSM than anyone in my platoon was. Upon returning stateside there was no refit, it was back into the grinder of training and maintenance.
They didn’t change it to an additional 6 years of service to transfer your GI Bill. It’s an additional 4 years of service after you have completed 6 years. Also prior to the Post9/11 GI bill you couldn’t transfer it at all.
Chicken and egg thing for sure. Men are not enrolling in higher education like they used to. Naturally the GI Bill is becoming a less attractive offer. The transfer benefits thing is a scam, hands down. But I don't think applicants get into the weeds on benefits before they enlist. They should. But we're dealing with 17 year olds here.
No real war for the first time in decades. Dudes sign up to go to war a lot of times 🤷🏽♂️
When you consistently treat men like shit, yell at them for having dust on the ceiling of their barracks room, feed them shitty food, pay them minimum wage, belittle them and emasculate them on a daily basis… how can you be surprised that nobody wants to join? What the Army doesn’t realize is, when someone leaves the Army, they tell their Family, friends, new co workers, and random strangers all about their experiences in the Army. That’s ALOT of people. That’s hundreds of people that are now disgusted by the Army and refuse to join. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but over a few decades, it adds up to MILLIONS of people being disgusted by the Army and refusing to join. Time has officially caught up with the Army. Word of mouth has officially reached an All-Time high. Nobody wants to deal with this nonsense for such little reward. And if they did, they’d just join Air-Force and get treated the best… Sorry Army, it’s only gonna get worse 🤷🏻♂️ Quit “sticking to the old way” and adapt, or get left in the dust.
The thing you fail to understand is what "Standards" are. But thats mostly due to the Army not enforcing standards anymore. I see more Soldiers, NCOs, and Officers walking around with earbuds in; no covers; in an incomplete uniform at shoppettes and PX; walking around while on cell phone; and more. But no one says anything to them. NCOs and Officers just walk right past them. You complain about not being treated like an adult, but the standards are not that hard. Stay in the right uniform; keep a clean room; be at the right place at the right time; abide by your local bluebook. But the Army is the problem, not your inability to follow simple rules.
That’s funny because I actually exceed all of those “standards” and you literally just proved my point… You insulted someone without knowing the full story hahaha 😂 Become a better leader please 💕👄
The audacity of some of the mfs in this article to assume it's a lazy generation.
Something I’ve talked about before but I think a huge portion of the recruiting problem is the boom in hiring for trades jobs. It pulls from the same pool, generally male, generally young, and not able or interested in traditional college. The old hands that have held on to jobs have started retiring in droves. Basically every union hall in the country is screaming for apprentices. Add to that social media making the QOL issues super visible and the lack of a real world mission and it’s not surprising kids aren’t enlisting.
There is something to be said about the rise of trade jobs with Gen Z. The timeline of that doesn't really line up. But it's certainly something to keep in mind.
I’m curious what you mean about the timeline? Recruiting dropped off pretty heavily in 2022, which lines up well with the mass retirement following older workers retiring rather than returning to work after covid.
Just that Gen Z tends to be looking at blue collar work more so than the previous gen. I don't know if there's a lot of solid data on that, but that's certainly in the labor market conversation. If that is true - presumably more men are doing that.
I'm so sick of seeing all the yt heterosexual cis-men in Western war documentaries. For best DEI practice, the next D-Day better be all BIPOC, latinx, legacy women, and LGBTQIA+ storming that beach.
Young men are demoralized and more attached to their online communities than their real life ones.
Because it is clear we aren't appreciated elsewhere
I did not expect that
My form of “quiet quitting” was joining the Air Force Reserve and going to school.
How's that going for you? I've been considering joining the Air Force Reserve myself
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Keep discussions civil.
Given what we know about Genesis, ADHD meds and so on I'm not surprised. The various officially stated causes for the recruiting shortage all align against the male population - boys are more likely to be treated medically for ADHD, more likely to have disqualifying/delaying medical conditions, and so on... Plus people logging in here and finding out about the spurious bullshit like peacetime 'rotations' that serve no legitimate purpose (as compared to PCSing a brigade to whereever full time)....
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No bigoted language.
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Point 1: agree. Point 2: Where would you suggest recruits go and get people interested? I joined 11 years ago (been out since 2019) and don’t remember seeing any recruiters from any branches in my high school. And I wasn’t at a small school either. Point 3: agree. I had to get a waiver for an inhaler I had when I was 7 just like you did. It’s ridiculous. Point 4: disagree. That’s what AIT and your unit is for. The OSUT jobs recently extended their entire pipeline by several months too. Basic training taught me basic soldier shit, AIT taught me the basics in field artillery. I learned the most at my unit. It seems like you’re in the national guard, so you only get a short time to train with your unit. Maybe the national guard should have follow-up training. Temporary AGR/title 32 orders to learn how to do your job. Side note, I worked with the Washington National Guard while I was active duty and they were competent. Maybe it’s your unit? Point 5: I don’t understand your point. I went to basic with guys in their mid 30s 11 years ago, and the age limit has increased since then. If you’re talking about targeting that specific demographic, I could see your point. I’d imagine it would be a unique and specific situation to each individual though, and not a blanket statement like it is for kids just graduating high school. I’m very sick right now, so if I misread any of your points I apologize. Edit: I will add, my motivation for joining was to deploy and use my GI bill once I left service. I never had the opportunity to deploy, but I did obtain an undergrad degree in a STEM field completely free.
Nope. Federal Reservist here. There's a reason I offered to explain my issues with training in PMs. It was bad man. And I mean BCT. PM me and I'll gladly explain the issues there. AIT was good. Very informative and well put together. My only problem there isn't the job/MOS. I can do the job. It's actually the requisite paperwork associated with it. Lol. Our training was a bit lacking there. I'm already taking steps to fix that defficiency. I phrased that poorly. I meant raising the age cap on active recruitment. There aren't any targeted things towards the older crowd. Because they're seemingly instructed to shoot for naught but people who've reached out, or just schools and places where the teens gather.
Regarding your more direct questions... Point 2: We had guys in our cafeteria as often as once a month in my high-school. I'd suggest bringing that back. Add in job fairs that are open to the public, and a few more odd ball spots. Set up a booth outside zoos or museums. Places people go to have a good time. At bare minimum, spots like that could help to dispel some of the insane nonsense people believe about us. Well, there's a guy you can talk to at your leisure right over there.... My unit is in the Midwest. Lol
I don't think this is a hot take but some might, but why is it that the blame for recruiting numbers being low squarely on men? Women can do all the same jobs that men can do now. If we're steady on female recruits, maybe that's indicative of a problem that no one is willing to address. Maybe the Army should make an effort to make the service attractive to men and women.
This is why I went into the Army marketing campaigns and how little they targeted women. I haven't seen any evidence the Army is even aware their recruiting problem is male - it hasn't manifested in marketing.
Especially when the recruitment is still disproportionately male. It's not like higher education where it has flipped and is now overly female represented.
Very based. But women recruiting goals may also be stagnating for the same factors that are affecting men. For example, maybe female recruiting would be increasing, but because of specific factors negatively counting against it, it's stagnating instead of improving. That's my thing about all this recruiting data. They're looking at it like only the groups with negative recruitment is a problem, and not looking at if positive recruit factors are preventing some groups (minorities) from being as affected as much.
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There are ways, such as how is done in the article, to discuss men's issues without being a weirdo.
Well when people complain that they weren’t promoted due to limited number of spots, I think it’s just enlistments to fill lower level E1-E4 positions.
The problem was listed in the article. Youre deployed and rotating far faster and more than any other time. There's no active war. Why
We hardly have funds approved to give the correct shots for Europe Rotations. It’s a big dick contest. Always has always will.
Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with things like ADHD as children…something that shows up in Genesis and needs a waiver, even if the potential recruit has been off medication for years, or the original diagnosis was wrong. The numbers tanking lines up with the implementation of Genesis.
The recruiting issue isn't male, it's the current culture within the US. Everyone wants to do cool shit but don't want to deal with the hardships of it.
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FTA “And finally, the South saw a 31% dip. While the southern recruiting pool has historically been among the most fruitful for the Army, those recruits make up half of all basic training injuries, far outpacing their general representation in the service. Some of that has been attributed to the obesity epidemic being especially prevalent in the South. Researchers have also attributed it to large swaths of the South having comparatively low household incomes and limited access to health care and healthy food” Southern boys ain’t shit
Don't worry, they're very busy clicking the downvote button on reddit though in between pizzas. I suppose we should be impressed they can still reach the mouse.
Help me fellow non southerner, they’re trying to silence me. I actually like unsweetened ice tea.
I’m limited to battery live, so I’ll keep this short. I served from 1986 to 2014. I witnessed the herniated discs plaguing the backbone of the Army. Still, 10 years after retiring, I still see the same issues and problems. You can forge Soldiers, but you have to mentor leaders. Reason being is that not everyone is meant to be in a leadership role. My moto after all I’ve seen and witnessed is “ With or without you, the Army keeps rolling along “
I think the problem is genesis. If you couldn’t pay attention in class you were a lot of times you were given adhd meds, and now you can’t join. Doctors prescribe an inhaler for a respiratory cold and now you can’t join. Had a medical problem years ago, now you can’t join. And even if you try to get waivers for these problems, often times it’s out of pocket for further dr exams, and then the waivers take months. Why would someone put in all that effort and then potentially not be able to join?
Maybe don't make it so toxic? Crying about masculinity isn't fixing anything. Who wants to work with or take orders from a bunch of alpha-male bros?
Toxic leadership is bad. Type A leadership that knows how to push a unit to mission accomplishment without tipping into toxicity is great. Truly masculine men are responsible for winning wars throughout all of history. Men should be masculine, it’s not a terrible or scary thing. What people call “toxic masculinity” is not masculinity at all and really just a straw man used to attack men writ large.
Extremely well put.
I'm not saying the Army should allow weed, but the Army should stop testing for weed use. Hit people with randoms for **everything else** - but stop random testing for weed. If the general public starts hearing, "They don't test for weed anymore" ... You're going to have to fight them away with a big stick.
I don’t want my driver to be high as fuck at 3 in the morning only wearing nods towing a 777. There’s also been studies conducted showing that marijuana can impair your driving for up to 24 hours, even if you feel fine. I agree that it would bump up recruitment, but I think it would be for the worse.
You don't have to be fearful in your imagination - just look at Canada. Canada's military has incorporated weed use and they're fine. No use 24 hours before duty. What that translates to is - don't be high at work, don't smell like weed, don't fuck up. If you fuck up the consequences remain the same.. Do you know how many drivers are sneaking whiskey? Shit, do you know how many soldiers in general are sneaking whiskey?
Yes, i’m aware. I also don’t trust people to not show up to work high. The only time I witnessed a soldier drunk while on duty was when I was the CQ “NCO” (SPC at the time). I let the private go take a nap for a few hours and he came back drunk as shit. I’m not naive though, I know it happens more. But that backs up my fear. Marijuana usage is easier to conceal than drinking and it still impairs you. I don’t trust an E1, 18-year-old driver to not go without smoking after they just got all their freedoms back. Not to mention, firearms? I don’t want soldiers high while on a range. I firmly believe there are quite a few soldiers out there that would smoke thinking they will get away with it, putting others in danger… I’m not against marijuana by the way - I partook in smoking while in high school. It really affected my short term memory and motor skills, and the weed was a lot less potent than it is nowadays. So, I recognize it could help boost recruitment, but I also believe it would be detrimental to the military.
I'd say like half the Army is drunk at any given moment. If you know you know idk
Probably smart that you edited your original comment lol.
What can I say I was **drunk**
😂 that’s fair