• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oo. Time for my “terrible recruiter” story. This was back in the 90s, so the issues then were not the issues now.

    My teacher (genuinely cool guy, but a veteran) brought in an army recruiter to talk to us. He ended literally every clause with “'n stuff.” Like this:

    “If you want to join the army 'n stuff, you gotta get real fit 'n stuff. You gotta get going with a good exercise program 'n stuff. But we’ll get your fitness to a new level 'n stuff, plus pay for college 'n stuff.”

    Basically, it made me decide that I wasn’t stupid enough to sign up.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m pretty certain that I made an entire recruitment office hate each other for a day. Walked into the Navy office and they had me take a “mini-asvab” Literally 5 minutes later, I called out “I think I’m done!” they replied “no you aren’t.” One of them came in and looked at my screen and said, “Um… Guys… He’s done.” They told me to go talk to the other branches first to make sure that I didn’t really want to be “Air Force, or something,” and finally got my signup bonus, since I knew I wanted to be Navy Nuke. I wanted a good paying rate.

      When I got sent to MEPS I was told that I was the highest testing applicant from that particular MEPS station since WWII. I probably should have taken that as a warning sign.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Ha. Same test thing happened to my dad in the UK when he was called up for selective service. Handled the easy test in 5 minutes, but he was told he had to wait until everyone was done. He said the questions were like: Which is the odd one out- square, circle, triangle, elephant. And he said an hour later, there were still people trying to finish in confused frustration.

        My dad got out of service entirely. He would never tell me how.

        • swab148@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          My dad got out by selling weed (allegedly). They couldn’t absolutely pin it on him, so he got a general discharge. (Years later he told me that he used to sell acid to a two-star general.)

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Dude I must have made way too good of a score on the ASVAB test in high school because the Army recruiters hassled me for years afterwards with calls and letters. I was never tempted to sign up though, and glad I didn’t because we started the whole War on Terror a few years later. Several of my friends went to war and came back very different, all of them with PTSD and some with physical problems too.

      • jasory@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Given that they have changed testing multiple times since WW2 this is almost certainly false. Additionally a perfect ASVAB score isn’t that rare, so your station probably recorded one before you.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Maybe they lied to me, I dunno. Lord knows that recruiters are well known liars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have a 99 since WWII, since that testing station is small and surrounded by hicks.

          • jasory@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Everybody is a liar. Have a casual conversation with someone, then thoroughly research every claim they make and you’re pretty much guaranteed to run into a falsehood.

            You should be less gullible.