Well, for one very few jobs in the "Civilian Sector" require you to appear at 0500 for PT. Then after 90 minutes of that release you for a shower and breakfast, and return to work at 0800 to put in your 9+ hour day.

And I have worked in the civilian sector. I have been in executives offices and found their Scotch while routing cables. I have been at TGI Fridays having a soda with lunch, as the bosses drink vodka across the room.

And on Monday morning, more then once I have found people with blurry eyes, drinking coffee like crazy to keep going. But that is also normally around 8-9am, hours after our work day has already started.

In fact, if "Private Kay" did not make an appearance until 0800, he probably would have been fine. The extra 3 hours would have been enough to eliminate most of the effects of his binge the night before.

And of course the civilian world normally does not require the employees to take random unannounced urinalasis tests. Far more are kicked out for drugs then anything else.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "Jail". In this, the military is unique fro any other legal system.

As punishment in the military, you can get up to 60 days "confinement" to the barracks. This means that you can be in your place of duty, the chow hall, the chapel, and your room. That's it. No going to the PX without a valid reason and an escourt. No going to the McDonalds on base. No going to see your buddies in another unit. No alcohol at all. When you are not at work, you spend the rest of the day in your room.

You can also get "Correctional Custody". This is for a period no more then 30 days. And it is not jail, it is "Correctional". You get up early, do PT, then spend your day doing things like picking up trash along the highway, breaking up rocks and bricks with a sledgehammer for decorative purposes, repairing drainage ditches, mowing grass, things like this. I only knew of larger bases having a "Correctional Custody" platoon, like Camp Lejeune and Pendleton.

And they can dock your pay also. This is something else the civilian sector can't do. They can take away 1/2 of your pay for 2 months. There is no way a civilian company can ever do that. Even if a court fine was made the same as a full month pay, you are given the option of paying it over time. In the military, it comes out starting immediately.

BCDs and Dishonerable Discharges are very rare. And it only comes after the equivelent of a Felony conviction. So they are about as common as felony convictions in the civilian world.

During my first enlistment, I served 10 years. In that time I had 3 Article 15 proceedings. And I still got out with an Honerable Discharge. Getting otherwise is a serious commitment to being bad.

My mistake then. All the places I've worked at involved professional organizations who don't tolerate drug use while being on the job. At least one person I know was fired immediately after failing a drug test. I suppose you are more familiar with lowbrow organizations where a stoned/drunk employees are common or the norm.

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Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

I was stationed at Fort Carson CO in the early 80's, they had a short-term detention facility for problem soldiers there, after all these years I have forgotten if you could be sent there on an art. 15 but I believe so. I used to get midnight chow there and literally used to have nightmares about being sent there.

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"I am no Martin Luther King or Ghandi motherfucker. I have no idea what those guys were talking about. You spit on my ass, I will knock you out. No motherfucking marching and singing in the street for me." - Jim Brown, NFL Hall-of-Famer and Cleveland Browns running back, 1957-1965

back in my day you got sent to Motivation platoon. And believe you me, you don't want to go there and I never met anyone who ever got sent back again.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

THe big difference is that the Military will not tolerate drug use at any time. Not do they tolerate alcohol crimes.

IN the real world, unless you are a cop or a politician, a DUI will have little to no impact on your career. But in the military, a DUI is a career ender. And it does not matter if you are caught on base of off. The military will find out in short order, and your chances to stay inuntil retirement fall drastically.

The same goes for drugs. Most companies do not have "0 warning" drug tests, where you are locked into a room until you give a sample. The only time I was ever tested as a civilian was before being hired at a few companies. I was never once tested after I was hired.

And the "lowbrow organizations" I worked for? Oh, they were companies like Boeing, Hughes Radar, Hughes Aerospace, Disney, US Borax, Chevron, CompUSA, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, and a few others.

And since this was California (with a "Medicinal Marijuanna law), I even knew of guys that popped positive, with no ill effects. Simply show them your "prescription" when you take the test, and it is unlikely they will fire you because of the threat of lawsuit.

The reality is that the VA and the military are pouring millions and millions of dollars into mental health treatment for soldiers and vets. More than they have ever put into mental health.

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And there are a great many reasons for that.

As you have heard myself and others state in here, the military has changed radically in just a few short decades. In many ways, it is so "touchy-feelie" that it is disgusting. Situations where before you would have been told to "suck it up", you now are sent to counseling, and group sessions, and people designed to help you through a problem.

Now I am not saying these are not always nessicary, but they are a huge change in a shor amount of time. When I came back in, I it made me think of the differences between Star Trek, and The Next Generation.

As everybody knows, Kirk often charged into a situation, phasers blasting and kicking butt. But in NG, Picard had Counsellor Troi, who would tell him people's feelings. How they felt, if they were mad or scared, and helped him find a gentler approach.

To me, this is often how it feels today. Oh we had our annual "Suicide Prevention" and "Sexual Harassment" and "Raceism". But today they are more like quarterly seminars, being held for longer periods of time on even more and more subjects.

I even had to attend a class on budgeting and how to be responsible for my finances, a class designed for 18 year olds. And more interesting was the mandatory "Pre-Marriage Counseling" I had to attend when I reconciled with my wife last year.

And since I am returning stateside next year, that will be an entire new series of classes by counsellors I am going to have to go through. "Reintegration" they call it. 3 months of dull classes I call it. Covering everything from readjusting to stateside life, motorcycle safety, and possible effects both mental and physical of this deployment.

And of course the mandatory drug, drinking, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, cultural diversity, race relations, and suicide prevention classes.

Ok. The military doesn't tolerate alcohol crimes. They just let several other types of crimes go a few times over...

Apparently showing up drunk off your ass isn't a big deal either


Unless you drive for a living.

No because if you refuse to take a drug test you're also fired on the spot.

Counsellor Troi was there to help the captain assist in manipulating someone's emotions in order to get a better result, not to find a "gentler approach". The two are not the same.

You clearly need some assistance in how the civilian life operates. I'm more than willing to help.

__________________
Is our children learning? -George W. Bush

"I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it's easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?"—Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

"[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

Well you know what 'they' say...denial is more than just a river in Egypt. PTSD may not be figuring in your life right now. But even WWII vets have had PTSD in their retirement years be cause they were busy and kept it buried until they reitired.


You would do well to embrace those 'boring' classes and learn what you can. When I went to Egypt in May there was a nurse there who is in the reserves and had been to Iraq. Her comment, 'we are all functional to some degree, but we are NOT OK.' When you awaken in the process of trying to choke your wife to death thinking she is the enemy you will see the wisdom of what the military and the VA are doing.

As a Viet Nam era woman, I saw my friends return to the states, get spit on and called 'baby killers.' There was nothing there for them. Nothing whatsoever. Almost 200,000 of them have suicided. http://www.suicidewall.com/SWStats.html So there may be something lurking without or within that calls for some help.

And let me not close without saying how much we appreciate what you are doing.

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I understand where you are coming from here. Though, I did not experience any of that (at least not the frequency) while I was in. That was the Marines though. If I remember right we had sexual harrassment/drug classes maybe once every year and they were treated with contempt by those taking them and those teaching. The more I hear about Army life from you the more I realize it is worlds apart from the Marines; even more than I originally expected.

When I returned from the invasion back in 2003 we had 'reintegration' classes. They were called something else but the idea was the same. They, IMO, were a waste of time. Every Marine knew that if they had a legit problem in dealing with what we did they could turn to their brothers.

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance

Shroom my son is an E-5, he tells me the babysitting he has to do for the guys in his squad, it has gotten ridiculous. It has gotten much worse in the past 10 years. At the risk of sounding like the old fart I am, back in my day, your squad leader made sure you showed up on time and in uniform, got your training done and had a few beers with you. he'd be there to come down on your ass if you screwed up. That was pretty much it.

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"I am no Martin Luther King or Ghandi motherfucker. I have no idea what those guys were talking about. You spit on my ass, I will knock you out. No motherfucking marching and singing in the street for me." - Jim Brown, NFL Hall-of-Famer and Cleveland Browns running back, 1957-1965

I believe that's the way it should be for the majority, having too many classes about each and every possible problem won't help much (imho).

At the end it's just another boring routine of endless boring jobs for a young soldier to get over with and so to forget as soon as he leaves the class-room.

I mean it's good that such information are available and e.g. cultural awareness preparations are needed for today's missions, but not on every subject.

Rather then wasting time on everyone, make sure that a soldier/family can easily approach help/information without superiors getting too involved, if they are truely unfit to lead/help their own comrades and as long as a soldiers can't use it as a tool to shy away from unpleasent duties.

As a side note, I believe many of the things nowadays "professionals" are teaching/are involved with, have been dealt with by good and careing NCOs and Officers in the past and probably less military bureaucracy was involved in it back then.

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"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

I know of people being fired due to such reasons as well; both in government and private business organizations.

On the other hand I know people who showed up totaly wasted in both kind of organizations and got away with it.

For example one of my former army buddies attended a wedding, celebrated and drunk till 7 am in the morning, went being totally wasted straight to his job in tax and revenue office, crawled under his desk and slept there until 5 pm without ever getting any trouble.

Things like this happen quite often and in general some get caught and fired and others get away with it and so it's not a special military thing.

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

You have to understand, to any Marine what I said makes perfect sense.

November 10th is the Marine Corps Birthday. It is also the day of the annual Marine Corps Ball. That is the one time a year that if the next day is a normal week day, showing up for PT is not expected. In fact, most units give their people the next day off, either officially or unofficially.

With the exception of my first duty station (a guard unit), I always had the 11th off. Since I was either Corporal of the Guard or Sergeant of the Guard, I always screened my people on that day, and made sure the drunk ones had an extra 6 hours to sleep it off before they had to actually be posted.

But make no mistakes, showing up drunk on any other day was a guaranteed article 15. And in my 4 years there, I only saw 1 individual show up drunk. And the only reason he did not get an Article 15 was because he was already being processed for an OTH for drug use. He was already an E-1, already loosing half of his pay, and he was gonna be gone within a month anyways. The command simply removed him from guard duty, and had him doing important work, like doing a "Police Call" of the base.

Yea, that is about what I remember from my time in the Corps also. Most of the time it was simply popping a tape in the VCR and letting it do everything. It was once every year or so, and largely taken as a joke.

And yes, the Army and the Corps are miles apart.

And I also have reintigration training in a few months, and am not looking forward to it. I already had 3 months of "seperation training" before I came over here, and this is not my first deployment.

Well, I know for sure it has gotten worse in the last 16 years. I went through quite a bit of "culture shock" when I came in the Army.

My experiences were in the Marines, mostly in the 1980's. The Army is almost amazingly lax in comparison from what I have seen. I have seen PFCs talk back to their Sergeant's that would get their block knocked off in the Marines, and nothing happened to them. And every other "Former Marine" I talk to says the same thing.

When I was an NCO, half of my job was covering up for those under me. Oh, they did not get off scott-free, I just made them work it off to me instead of making it an official infraction to the Command.

Here, if I tried that I would be in trouble myself. I had one PFC that was always late, so I told him I would hold him after work to make up for it. But when it was time to go, my SFC told me I could not do that. It was "quitting time", and I had to let him go for the day.