Six years of my life in the fucking army.
Six years of dickheads telling me I know nothing because they have stripes.
Six years of working at some pretty damned unsociable hours.
Six years of working with some utter shits.
I've had to take courses in which we were told that "when a ball is thrown, two forces act on it, these are it's velocity and gravity." Any students of GCSE English Language and/or Physics, feel free to laugh. "As it reaches the top of it's trajectory," they told us, "velocity ceases to act on it and gravity starts to act on it."
I've been pushed away from a computer (yes, physically), by someone who thought I didn't know what I was doing, despite the fact I'd been doing the damned job for two years. When I tried to explain this he got angry. He then showed me a lot of stuff I already knew, then showed me how to do the job ... and spent half an hour getting utterly shite results, while telling me I would get good ones eventually if I persevered and learned from him. I went back to the way I'd been doing it before and got results five times better in half the time.
I've put up with verbal abuse and worse for years.
I've been seriously dressed-down for calling someone an immature little prick after months of highly offensive verbal abuse.
I've been falsely accused of deliberately withholding information from a colleague to make her look bad, and the sergeant who dealt with that accusation told me to my face that he didn't care how often it had happened or even whether it had happened at all and that my job was to get along with the others on my watch, including the one who told him that lie, and not cause any dissension that could make him look bad. He also sent a clueless little shit round to get in my way and go over work I'd already done in a highly irritating manner, causing us to miss out on reporting some high-priority events. Having recognised the events in question, an hour late and on the fourth attempt, he told me to "start switching on". Once upon a time I'd have killed him for that, right there on the office carpet.
...
Our new supervisor, however, doesn't {specific stuff} and knows fuck-all about {specific stuff}. He's quite happy to tell us this over and over again, and also quite happy to tell me who's good at the job and who isn't even though he knows, by his own admission, precisely fuck-all about it. Nice.
... and that left Charlotte, who couldn't have been more of a man-hating proto-dyke if she'd worn a dalmatian-fur coat and smoked through a cigarette-holder. She was full of shit and full of herself. She had no faith at all in anyone else and thought anyone in a green suit was stupid and men were all totally useless. She got put in charge of the section. The only explanation available is that of a former colleague: "Yes, but she does have a pussy." If you'd met our supervisor, you'd understand. He's a chauvinist, a bully, a lout, obsessed with his own rank and status and rather fond of brown noses.
...
I sent off a collection of one day's mistakes to the senior transcriber, who referred it upwards to the expert, who emailed me back, agreeing with every single thing I'd picked up, agreeing with what I said was wrong, agreeing with what I said was really going on, agreeing with me on whether there was enough evidence or not and saying he'd have to check up on everyone's skills because it was ridiculous that supposedly experienced operators were making such basic and fundamental mistakes. ... It would have been vaguely gratifying to have people all over the planet laughing at such a fucking ridiculous report. Such a shame it never went out. The thing is that it was obviously bollocks, but she flapped and panicked and jumped up and down and yelled and never thought and this is the ***** that our dumb bastard of a supe put in charge. Yeah. Me? Bitter? No shit, Sherlock.
...
You'd think six years in the regular army, including three and a half as an NCO in the Intelligence Corps, would count as valuable work experience even if you can't tell people what you did. Well, it doesn't. You won't get that promotion, you won't get to Cyprus, you won't go on those operations, you won't get any qualifications you can take away, you won't get any experience you can share, you won't get to go on any of the things they tell you about in the office, you won't get the cost of the hotel in which you had to stay while on a course you had to attend paid back to you, you won't get to keep the overseas-duty pay they've already given you, you won't get even a week's notice that it'll be deducted from your next pay packet, you won't get your payslips for six months, some of you won't get your pay some months, your boots are supplied by the lowest bidder and will give you blisters inside a mile if you don't run around in them so often your feet are one big callus, your trainers are supplied by the lowest bidder and you will suffer more lower-leg injuries in basic training than you have in the two decades preceding it and your rifle's twice as heavy as an M16 and half as reliable. The doctor prescribes yoga lessons for sprains, stress, diabetes and lesions on the testes. The only place to go other than your room or your mate's room is the bar. The nearest place to do something other than drink is ten miles away.
I wonder whether I could sue them for breach of contract. What a fucking waste of time. I don't even know whether I was correctly paid. Is "We can't find anyone to promote you" a valid reason for delaying a promotion?
When I left, they gave me a questionnaire to fill in. It said they wouldn't try to trace me. The first few questions included: gender, age, region of last posting, regt or corps, rank, time in post and time in service. One of the questions was "What advice would you give to someone thinking of joining the Army?" How about "Don't"? How about "Try prostitution instead"?
Twenty-eight years old and slightly less employable than most 16-year-olds. Marvellous.
Fuck the lot of them and any piece of paper I ever signed. What a load of shite. What a waste of the thousands and thousands of decent young men (and maybe even decent young women, although I doubt decent young women go off to join the army very often) stuck in that shitball.
