Text 4469, 44 rader
Skriven 2010-02-03 07:38:54 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 4392 av Craig Gagner (781.fidfidnew)
Ärende: Britain -- England -- UK
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Replying to a message of Craig Gagner to Ward Dossche:

 CG> I'm getting real close to my retirement now so I most likely
 CG> wont be doing another tour, which would be Afgahnistan this
 CG> time. Even if I do I wont be doing any foot work as I have
 CG> been promoted into a desk job.

The US military in general and the army in particular have been infamous for
at least forty years for waiting until somebody is short and then picking them
for a sh*t overseas tour that will end *after* their enlistment expires or
after
their projected effective retirement date.

Right after I put in my retirement papers (in 1983) I received notification of
an assignment to Japan, in a career field I'd cross-trained out of eight years
earlier.  Fortunately it turned out that I knew the fellow responsible for such
assignments and was able to convince him he didn't want me (wasn't too hard)
and got the assignment cancelled (and the specialty code deleted from my 
computer personnel records).

They also scheduled me to test for promotion (would have been to E-8).  The
test date was 9 days past my retirement effective date and I simply declined
to test, noting that (a) I had *approved* retirement orders in hand and (b) the
test date was past my effective retirement date in that declination statement.
I *still* got a blizzard of letters from personnel and from my commander
admonishing me for failing to test for promotion - most said I wouldn't be
promoted (no sh*t, Sherlock - but I *was* in fact promoted, to PFC*).  Don't
ever try to use logic on a bureaucrat, they simply don't understand and it
therefore doesn't work.

Also note that the fact that on the previous cycle I was ninth or tenth from
the
bottom of just over 700 eligibles for E-8 (IIRC only about 50 are selected from
that list), which indicated I wasn't going to *make* E-8 in this lifetime - so
I
hit the ejection levers and bailed out, I already had my 20 in (20 years, 6
months,
11 days, 13 hours and 40 minutes at retirement).


* PFC = Permanent F*cking Civilian, for those unaware.

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 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)