It's ALWAYS Sunny in IRAQ!

Yep, here I am in the middle of the big sandbox.

I haven't even been in the Army a year and I'm already deployed.

Really, though, it's not as bad as the news makes it out to be.

Will be back later, with pictures.

Hooah!

Wow, yeah, it's more than just a job, it's an adventure (as well as the occasional headache)

But overall, Army Life is good. Basic Training, both sorry and happy to say, was not as hard as I thought it would be. Yeah, I wish I could have gone to a REAL Basic like Ft. Benning or Ft. Knox, but unfortunately it seems the Army has an issue with giving 'real training' to anyone born with a vagina. Ft. Sill, I heard, recently went co-ed. But no, I was sentenced to the pansy-ass kindergarten BCT experience that was Ft. Relaxin'-Jackson. (This is all sarcasm, of course.)

Aparrently A-360, the company I trained in, had it pretty damn easy compared to most. We were allowed to have our cell-phones on Sundays, if we were really good: My friends who went to Benning and Knox say they got a 2-minute phone call home the first week they were there and that was it. No, I don't feel spoiled. If anything I got off lucky.

Doing push-ups isn't so bad once you learn how to do them correctly, and yes, believe me there are a thousand or so wrong ways to do them. In truth, I still struggle with them from time to time. Flutter-Kicks were invented by the Devil, I am convinced. My Dad, an old-school Marine, didn't ever have to do ONE and he was in Parris Island back in the Full-Metal-Jacket days! THAT should tell you something about how much things have changed, anyone who says the military has gone soft these days is straight-up lying or delusional.

Oh yeah, one thing about Flutter-Kicks relating to Ft. Jackson in particular, they are particularly painful not only in the heat of the Southern Sun, but especially when you realize you're on top of a colony of Ft. Jackson's famous Fire Ants. JOY!

As for AIT in Ft. Gordon, GA...

Beware something known as the Phase System. Another tool of the Devil (there are still A LOT of very religious folk with high rank int he Army, something that is fortunately beginning to change with time) the Phase System is a means of keeping AIT students in check working alongside TRADOC Regs, which your friendly neighborhood Platoon Sargeant will enforce at his convenience/pleasure./if it suits his or her mood.

The Phase System is loosely similar to Castes; Phase 4 is the first and lowest Caste, for newbies who've just arrived, soldiers who for whatever reason haven't passed a PT Test, or the elite few who can't grasp the basics of Army life. Next up is Phase 5, pass your PT Test and stay out of trouble (and depending on what company you're in, you may have other requirements to meet) and they give you a little more breathing-room. You get to wear civillian clothes on your time off, you even get to smoke. JOY! The final Phase, 5+ (the reason why they don't go right to 6 is unkown to me at this time) Is your golden ticket.

Really, the only time being of a higher Caste/Phase than your peers is on weekends and holidays. Phase 4's aren't allowed to do jack and or shit, they stay in the barracks all weekend and are usually put on some kind of bitch-work detail. They're not even allowed to go to eat without an NCO's say-so (and people wonder why so many of them get depressed or go AWOL.) 5's and 5+'s are allowed off-post privileges on weekends, 5+'s get to stay off post the entire weekend whereas 5's have to return every night, kinda like a curfew.

Being Phase 4 really sucks, you have no rights and you're not even a human being. Any time someone of a higher Caste than you doesn't show up for a detail or duty, a P4 winds up getting 'voluntold' to do it, it's your punishment for being there. They say they want you to be good and excel in PT so you CAN phase up, but this system leaves big gaping wide opportunities for exploitation at the hands of fellow soldiers in training and even NCO's.

Ft. Gordon, or Ft. Ghetto as it is sometimes called by those trapped in TRADOC's icy soulless claws, isn't so bad at first but after you've been in the Phase System for so long it starts messing with your head. You find yourself doing things you wouldn't usually do, after a while you just don't give a shit about anything. Nothing you say or do ultimately matters, you can be a perfect model soldier and TRADOC will still ram it's thorn-laden dick up your ass because you sneezed in the presence of a Senior NCO. And before you know it all you want to do is leave, that's your only goal: Getting the fuck out.

The ONLY good thing I had at Ft. Gordon I had to leave behind: My friends.

Love you guys, take care of eachother and hang in there :-)

3 weeks

So I ship out in 3 weeks.

I've had a LOT of things on my mind,

and yet, I don't feel like talking about a single one of them.

I REALLY don't respond well to threats!

So I got fired yesterday, but there's a catch: Of all the things I likely should have been fired for, this time it was for something I actually DIDN'T DO.



Yeah, know what that is?



If she doesn't like people staring then A) maybe she should have considered that before she got that massive tattoo there and B) low cut shirts designed to show cleavage are technically against the dress code.

I never said anything to her that I haven't already said to both my boss AND my other co-workers! Fortunately for me, the boss-man says even he is skeptical of this claim since I've worked my ass off here for as long as I have and he's already got several complaints from other employees about the new girl.

This is not just my job, this is my reputation.

This

means

WAR.

I don't respond well to threats.

I know I haven't been updating as often as I'd like to, but some interesting things have been happening with my job.

First off, here's a little back-story as to what this blog post is raving about: http://community.livejournal.com/hotel_workers/3143715.html#cutid1

Right, so I start my shift and things are shitty from the get-go. I have a few days off, I missed a LOT. SOMEONE *COUGH creepy night auditor* we still don't know who *COUGH he's so far in the closet he smells like mothballs and old socks COUGH* was browsing gay porn on the boss-man's computer. I wish I were kidding, but bimbo-boss-man looked at the Internet Explorer history tab and found some interesting websites listed in it. For some unknown reason, IE doesn't tell you when the sites were visited, just that they WERE (or maybe MicroSuck updated this feature recently, I don't know because our work computers are still using IE 5.something or other.) So after listening to him whine about it while he installs parental-control software on his computer (which officially nobody is supposed to be using for any reason, but hey, that's life for ya) I wait until he's about to leave, he's in a pissy mood, now's obviously not a good time.

So a few hours pass and about a minute before he's out, I say "Hey, just one more thing real quick, okay? I'm not trying to be rude, I know last week in Little Rock was kind-of an anomaly, but PLEASE don't come to my house anymore. Hubby was upset and when Hubby's upset, I'M upset. My phone works, all you have to do is call."

E P I C B A D I D E A

He goes on a 7 minute tirade about me not answering my phone when he DOES call (which isn't true in the slightest. That, and I don't remember being hired for an on-call position) and 'reminding' me that I signed a piece of paper saying that I'd have a working phone after 30 days of signing (which I did.)

Dude, seriously, chill the fuck out and stop acting like I just shot a kitten.

Then he goes on that he can "technically terminate someone for not holding up to that signed agreement." Please tell me this is a joke. First of all, I'm not sure that 'signed agreement' is even legally sound since I'm NOT on-call. And if I ever WAS, nobody ever told me about it. Second, it still doesn't warrant you COMING TO MY FUCKING HOUSE!!! Third, if I want to go out on my day off, away from my phone, thus not able to answer it right away, I'll go out and enjoy myself because IT'S MY DAY OFF YOU NITWIT!!! My phone has caller ID, if someone calls I'll know about it, and if it's from work I'll call them right back. This is how it's been for months, now.

Then he 'reminds' me that I have 2 past write-ups. The first one was because I didn't get ANYTHING done during the 3 days following the ice storm, something that was an act of the Gods, an absolute freak accident and a one-time occurrence. The other time was being written up for something though I admit I did wrong (the phone-number incident) I had already been reprimanded for beforehand, which is technically harassment but fuck dude I can't reason with these people anymore.

So now he's saying all the scary-words like "we WANT to be able to keep you here" and "it's a tough world out there," trying to make me pee myself in fear of getting axed and it's just not happening. Seriously, I can technically go to Basic whenever I want.

Go ahead, boss-man, fire me. We both know this crack-house will practically burn to the ground without me. If you want to shoot yourself in the foot over something as stupid as a phone while doing me a huge favor by giving me a head-start on my military career, you go right ahead. I won't stop you.

Besides, the way the owners keep pansying out on spending ANY MONEY on the upkeep, you won't have a hotel to ruin-*ahem* run, for much longer anyway.

OH FUCK ME!

I DID IT! I'M IN!!!

*Crickets*

Little Rock is a ghost town.

I've been here since 3PM, signed in at the Processing Station, then they drove me back to the hotel and I've been in my room watching SpikeTV ever since. It's 6:05PM now, no one has called for me, no one has given me any instructions or orders, I'm all by myself and dying of boredom over here!

All I was told was that the physical will commence tomorrow and to set a wake-up call for 4:15AM, that's it. I hope there's not some poor Staff Sgt. strutting around base looking for me.

Is this normal for the military?