Friday, March 30, 2007

A Reason I Got Out Of The Military

The Marine Corps has decided to limit tattoos more then they already do. They are not going to allow tattoos that are past the elbow and knee...wow. These men can go into combat, but can't do what they like with their bodies. Half the recruits may go into another service since they won't be allowed in the Marine Corps with those tats.

This is my problem with the military today and from what I understand, it has been a problem since Desert Storm. The military cares more about appearances then it does about performance. The person who looks the part gets the promotion over the person who can actually accomplish the job. Promotion is out-dated in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. I think, though I could be wrong, that Air Force is the only service where your knowledge of your ACTUAL job affects if you get promoted or not. In the Army how competent you are at your job has no effect, you're only tested on general army knowledge.

Over half the military winds up with tattoos, it's a foregone conclusion. You know what you will find outside almost every military base in the US? Tattoo parlors and car lots. I'm not talking down the road either, we're talking a few hundred feet from the gates. In Germany you can replace the car lots with red light districts. I began getting my tattoos when I was in training and it has continued on to this day. I understand banning gang, racists and the like tattoos, but to ban ink that is almost always covered, fucking ridiculous.

For educational knowledge, here is my latest ink which was mentioned in yesterday's post.

2 comments:

Michael Wales said...

You are correct on the Air Force promotions - which is one of the reasons we are the slowest promoting branch.

We are tested on our job as well as on military sciences (we call it the PFE, it has stuff like dress & appearance, Air Force history, promotion system, just professional stuff).

Those 2 scores combined with our EPRs, time in service, and time in grade are used to come up with a total score.

Then, in lay-mans terms, they line everyone testing for a rank up, highest to lowest, say they're taking the top X amount and that's that.

Jack Gonzo, MD said...

Which is far better then the Army who merely cared about appearance and your knowledge of general knowledge which usually meant the folks who didn't know their jobs for dick, couldn't do it, just ended up spending their time studying the basic bullshit and got promoted. Meanwhile, those of us who actually did work got shit. The day they got rid of Spec-5 and above was a bad bad day.