Sammy Sandbag
19 October 2003, 15:59
I’m sure most of you have been wondering; “Why the hell hasn’t the home page been updated since September 16?” Well I’ll tell you, just wait. You are probably used to my normal “I’ve got many updates ready to go” type of rhetoric by now. And to be honest, I do have a lot in store for the site. Will you be seeing any of these great and wonderful things in the near future? Outlook is doubtful.
For those of you who don’t know already, I’ve been in a state of limbo since 09AUG03. That’s right, thanks to Cadet Command, I’ve been wallowing in Second Lieutenant Purgatory for months. And if everything goes according to plan, I’ll still be here till December. For all you young cadets and future cadets, let me burst your bubble. You’ve probably gone through your meaningless existence in ROTC thinking that the Army had a guaranteed job for you just as soon as you pin on. And for some of you lucky ones, there will be. However, others and myself get the honor of being unpaid without benefits Joe Civilians. I’ll break it down for you: no branch : no job. No OBC slot : no job. I fall into the former category. You see, I commissioned in August, unlike May (the norm). Yes I get to wear my shinny gold bars around all I want, but only for special occasions, like crying under a cold shower. Those who actually received their branch assignments before graduation, get the pleasure of waiting for an OBC slot. Some, like The Sharaffe, go two days after graduation. Many others who graduated in AUG are waiting till January, May, and even later. So what do you do till then? “Hell, I’ll go to Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger, Mountain!” Wrong! Sorry kids, you are official property of CC, and they ain’t authorized the scrilla (money) to allow that. “Well, I’ll be a GBR then!” Wrong again. Can’t do that but for 140 days, usually immediately before your OBC report date. Even then, your home of record has to be within something like 50 miles of the school (there are ways around this)
So what do you do if you can’t do anything for the Army? I’ll tell you. You sleep, get fat, and look for a job. And lucky me, it’s one of the worst job markets in a long time. Day after day I search the classifieds, Monster.com, etc. “With a BS degree, I can easily pick up a good job.” Wrong again. Do you honestly think a company is going to hire a 2LT fresh out of school, who they know will have some sort of commitment. Don’t forget that were also at war, and companies are getting fed up with having their employees (Guardsmen and Reservists) oversees for years at a time. The likelihood of you being hired into an actual salary-paying job is slim to nil. So now you are reduced to applying for a retail, food-services, manual labor type of position, which brings me to my job and the reason why nothing gets done around here.
After a futile search for some-sort of respectable, well paying job, I was forced to take whatever came along. I had already earned myself a low-paying rotating weekend gig at the local airport. Earning less than $300 a month sure wasn’t paying any bills, so the search continued. Apparently my plight had become known to the whole neighborhood, as I was given an offer from a guy up the street. “What kind of job is it?”, I asked. I was only told that it paid around $13/hr and would be temporary. Sounds great to me, earn a few bucks and be done before I ship out. The job was actually at the local nuclear power plant, and I was hired to work during the outage. For the uninitiated, an outage occurs ever 18 months, and is when the reactor is refueled and any maintenance performed. So I make the one-hour commute to butt-fuck Egypt every morning, arriving before 7 and returning after 7. For those of you without a calculator readily available, that comes out to 84 hours a week. So by now you should all realize why nothing has been happening around here as of late. Yes it sucks. No I have no free time. And yes I hate my life. Fortunately, the job is temporary and I will earn a little bit of cash, especially with 44 hours of overtime. I long for things to turn back to normal, and then maybe finally I can get some things done to the site.
http://www.marnin.com/images/homer/homersnacks.gif
P.S. Domer says he’s going to be coming into town sometime today. Hopefully I can squeeze in some Sunday evening drinking to deaden my nerves. Reportedly he will be bringing a few comic strips for me to review.
For those of you who don’t know already, I’ve been in a state of limbo since 09AUG03. That’s right, thanks to Cadet Command, I’ve been wallowing in Second Lieutenant Purgatory for months. And if everything goes according to plan, I’ll still be here till December. For all you young cadets and future cadets, let me burst your bubble. You’ve probably gone through your meaningless existence in ROTC thinking that the Army had a guaranteed job for you just as soon as you pin on. And for some of you lucky ones, there will be. However, others and myself get the honor of being unpaid without benefits Joe Civilians. I’ll break it down for you: no branch : no job. No OBC slot : no job. I fall into the former category. You see, I commissioned in August, unlike May (the norm). Yes I get to wear my shinny gold bars around all I want, but only for special occasions, like crying under a cold shower. Those who actually received their branch assignments before graduation, get the pleasure of waiting for an OBC slot. Some, like The Sharaffe, go two days after graduation. Many others who graduated in AUG are waiting till January, May, and even later. So what do you do till then? “Hell, I’ll go to Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger, Mountain!” Wrong! Sorry kids, you are official property of CC, and they ain’t authorized the scrilla (money) to allow that. “Well, I’ll be a GBR then!” Wrong again. Can’t do that but for 140 days, usually immediately before your OBC report date. Even then, your home of record has to be within something like 50 miles of the school (there are ways around this)
So what do you do if you can’t do anything for the Army? I’ll tell you. You sleep, get fat, and look for a job. And lucky me, it’s one of the worst job markets in a long time. Day after day I search the classifieds, Monster.com, etc. “With a BS degree, I can easily pick up a good job.” Wrong again. Do you honestly think a company is going to hire a 2LT fresh out of school, who they know will have some sort of commitment. Don’t forget that were also at war, and companies are getting fed up with having their employees (Guardsmen and Reservists) oversees for years at a time. The likelihood of you being hired into an actual salary-paying job is slim to nil. So now you are reduced to applying for a retail, food-services, manual labor type of position, which brings me to my job and the reason why nothing gets done around here.
After a futile search for some-sort of respectable, well paying job, I was forced to take whatever came along. I had already earned myself a low-paying rotating weekend gig at the local airport. Earning less than $300 a month sure wasn’t paying any bills, so the search continued. Apparently my plight had become known to the whole neighborhood, as I was given an offer from a guy up the street. “What kind of job is it?”, I asked. I was only told that it paid around $13/hr and would be temporary. Sounds great to me, earn a few bucks and be done before I ship out. The job was actually at the local nuclear power plant, and I was hired to work during the outage. For the uninitiated, an outage occurs ever 18 months, and is when the reactor is refueled and any maintenance performed. So I make the one-hour commute to butt-fuck Egypt every morning, arriving before 7 and returning after 7. For those of you without a calculator readily available, that comes out to 84 hours a week. So by now you should all realize why nothing has been happening around here as of late. Yes it sucks. No I have no free time. And yes I hate my life. Fortunately, the job is temporary and I will earn a little bit of cash, especially with 44 hours of overtime. I long for things to turn back to normal, and then maybe finally I can get some things done to the site.
http://www.marnin.com/images/homer/homersnacks.gif
P.S. Domer says he’s going to be coming into town sometime today. Hopefully I can squeeze in some Sunday evening drinking to deaden my nerves. Reportedly he will be bringing a few comic strips for me to review.