workingman's blues

They have an "up or out" promotion system. In my case that meant that if I'm up for promotion to lieutenant commander for two cycles, but I'm not selected, then I'll be forcibly separated. Same goes for all officer ranks... If a two star admiral doesn't put on a third star, he gets forced out too... Only in his case "forced out means full retirement benefits and a super rich guy pension. Since I've only been in 11 years they can "forcibly separate" me instead...

My situation is a weird one in an already weird system. Not enough people in the flight communities get out by choice, so promotion is super cut throat. That's why even though most of my fitness reports read like "great guy, number 1 of x, must promote ASAP," it's still not enough since the squadrons I've been getting those reports from aren't the "competitive" ones. As a flight officer in the E2 (plane, hawkeye) If I get a world beating report from a British E3 squadron or an admin job in an amphibious air control squadron, it still won't mean shit since I'm competing against people who are doing important stuff in the E2 or on a carrier.

And I knew all this, but I was banking on being competitive for another field... The Foreign Area Officer community. The last 5 years gave me British/NATO diplomacy experience, testing well in two foreign languages, and picking up a masters in IR. Made me a solid pick for a transfer to the new community, but unfortunately I didn't get picked soon enough. Board for FAO happened at same time as board for LCDR. The later board was only considering me as a flight officer, so it's understandable that I didn't select. It's also stupid, since the FAO community needs people, and was relying on my being able to fill a billet. As soon as I failed to select for LCDR the automatic separation process started, and even the top ranking folks on the FAO side of things were unable to do anything about it.

Rolled the dice, almost made it, lost the big navy numbers game. What really sucks is that the FAO community had a few months where the promotion results were unknown, so they had a whole plan drawn out for me that they kept updating me on. Also sucks that the higher ups have been vocal about changing some of this process, and that all these changes will probably take place next year or soonafter... just too late for me.

Sucks, man.

How could they give you a job and then take it away?  Doesn't that, like violate your due process or something man?

All this time I actually thought that the military was a legitimate career path for people who weren't cutthroat ladder-climbers.

2 more hours with nothing to do but board, which would be great if this was 2008.

I'm hypothetically here for you, brother man.

Yeah... Last night I saw that post, thought to myself, "yeah, boarding just ain't the no holds barred adrenaline thrill ride it used to be," and then decided not to reply cause I'm too damn boring.
I guess it's cool that this is the workingman's blues thread which probably means your work last night entailed being on the internet for at least two hours late at night without anything to do.

I'm anything but boring tho....

Seriously though, if everyone else didn't keep their posts to like a three sentence maximum I would probably be boarding much harder. C'mon guys!

There's only two sentences in me, and I just wrote the third...

Seriously though, I'm in a rut life wise which usually leads to decent boarding. Maybe I'll be more active during my paid leave job search.
Anyway, walking the dog in the warm, mid-winter virginia sunshine, and got a preview of my working life's next chapter:

Ted Falconi wrote:There's also this woman that I'll probably never see again, and I'm not quite ready for that.

Wow, a year and a half ago.   Crap.  Really feeling the urge to quit again.  

This woman still works there too and I recently found out in the course of flirtation that she's a gun pervert.  
I thought she was joking at first and when she said "Mike, when the government takes away all our guns who will be the only people with guns?  Think about it.", I thought "Holy shit.  She really gets me."  But nope.  She was serious.
 Weird moment.

We had a 6ft tall thin natural blond Nordic goddess interning with the company who left with no warning this Monday. This at the same time the office decided to go "sugar free". Office life is no easy living.

But, I'm starting my clothing label in the next two months, and I'm pushing for more photography work so my dream (haha) of not working in an office someone else owns might actually be on its way and I haven't hit 30 yet. So I guess this is an optimistic workingman's blues post.

I expect to be semi-broke for the next few months though as all my extra income is going into the business. GF is surprisingly supportive thus far. Will post in here again when she leaves me for someone with money.

Also, how many more posts do I need to get Jasper's name away from my Avatar its ruining my boarding experience.

18

Someone just accused me of racism and I don't know this person well enough to tell if they're just joking or not.

This shouldn't matter but I've been having anxiety attacks since yesterday and I have no perspective on anything at all.

C-poots wrote:We had a 6ft tall thin natural blond Nordic goddess interning with the company who left with no warning this Monday. This at the same time the office decided to go "sugar free". Office life is no easy living.

But, I'm starting my clothing label in the next two months, and I'm pushing for more photography work so my dream (haha) of not working in an office someone else owns might actually be on its way and I haven't hit 30 yet. So I guess this is an optimistic workingman's blues post.

I expect to be semi-broke for the next few months though as all my extra income is going into the business. GF is surprisingly supportive thus far. Will post in here again when she leaves me for someone with money.

What kind of board discounts / sneak previews will you be offering for this label?

Use the promo code "Bhickman" to get 20% off your first purchase

jasperness wrote:Use the promo code "Bhickman" to get 20% off your first purchase

Fuck, I just might need to actually use this.

I'm thinking about studying up on some religion (Islam's gotta be the most lucrative, or at least "of the moment," right?) so that I can have it in my hip pocket when I decide to transition to a career as a political opportunist.

Depending on what you're planning on doing with that it could be a pretty unchill move, Ned.

Wasn't really serious, but believe me, my approach would be coming from the chilliest of places (well, once you get past faking a belief in a God for personal advancement, which isn't chill). Beyond the personal gain though, I think there's a lot of greater good to be done from the position of, say, a Quietest Salafi Muslim community leader who wants to build bridges and engage with the larger community. We have so many de facto "Christians" in politics, I think it'd be cool to try to engage politically from the other side. Anyway, was p drunk when I said that weird shit.

I was just kind of assuming that you would be doing it to gain some level of expertise that you could use to get yourself working for the State Department in some capacity. Islam is such a funny topic. As someone who is vaguely interested in cultural studies and ideology critique in a very undergraduate in college way it scares the shit out of me to make any statement about Islam, even if that statement has no positive or negative judgement attached to it. I think Said's intervention with Orientalism was so profound that it really silences any flimsy attempt to speak about Islam, the Orient, or the Middle East (which is good actually, especially in a world full of liberals like Maher, Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.)

I have a friend who is increasingly interested in Islam in an academic setting. He is at University of Michigan and is taking a graduate course right now on Islamic thought. All of the students, except him obviously, are Muslim and a sizable proportion are imams (which tangentially, I was driving through Fort Dearborn a couple weekends ago and the Muslim population and their influence is actually really something to see). He said that the course work is fascinating and the experience is very jarring in the most refreshing of ways. But once again, I think the fear of coming off as stupid and judgmental is pretty intense or in a professional academic the problem of dealing with the (I think totally valid) critique of knowledge-production as complicit with forms of material domination are all really difficult to navigate yourself around.

I'm at a job fair right now

At least I look awesome.

Go get 'em, tiger!

Just had a call with a co-worker where she detailed her getting engaged that is so incredible I was on mute laughing my ass off.

She and her boyfriend went to a New Found Glory concert. Of which she had to take today off to recover from. But afterwards they went to eat with some friends. At a certain point during dinner her boyfriend told her to go to the bathroom. She did as was requested.

When she came back her friend suggested that her and the boyfriend take a picture together. So she remains standing and the BF gets up and then kneels down to propose.

Here is the thing: he had the ring in his sock the entire time. So he sends her to the bathroom so he can literally remove a shoe and sock and whip out an engagement ring. This is incredible and I cannot believe he times a proposal with an NFG concert.

Very good.