Retardidment: The Job Hunt

Here we go again with the bitter Rantings® of a man forced to stop doing the one job he loved and actually could do without serious consequences.  Yeah, that’s me, BrainRants®.  I’m tired of linking more than three times to previous posts, so I made a whole new RantsPage® to collect this assemblage of awesomehood.

Happy now?  You should be happy, motherfucker.  This post details the most painful part of retiring from the military, which would be finding a paying job to follow your 23 years of Army service.  And yeah, Army, not some lame Air Force guy who cries in public or wets himself for whatever random reason.

The Army does a decent job of trying to connect you to employers out there, I’ll say that much.  However, they don’t really take factors like cost of living and rent into account.  Sure, I’d love to be a forklift operator, because fuck, who wouldn’t!  But even $22/hour won’t pay the rent and keep the electricity on here in Virginia.  Virginia, in which I’ll no longer be exempt from the nosebleed taxes that are the reason the roads are so fucking awesome here.  That, and shit.  In all truth, they’re smooth as fuck.  I digress…

If I’ve impressed upon you that the Army retirement system is a massive process of “Well, it’s pretty much all up to you, asshole,” system, then the job search is even more so.  This is what I’ve dealt with since fucking February.  No kidding.  Here is the reality of it all:

Applications – Completely online, and it takes a full half-day to type and click through all of the pages of blank information boxes you have to fill out.  Left big toe length?  Check.  Frequency of urination after 2AM?  Check.  Prior record of public urination?  No comment, I plead the 5^th.  Attach sperm sample?  Fuck off… *click-X*

Feedback – Buahahahahahahaa… you fucking get none.  Period.

Interviews – Technically, this is feedback if they want an interview.  “Can you be at our office fifty minutes away in twenty minutes?”  Can you pay me two hundred large a year?

Offers – Most of us exiting the military get involved in jobs related to our former existence.  Companies will hire to fill positions, but they like to lowball you.  “How does $80 thousand a year sound?”  It sounds like almost a 50% pay cut before the taxes I’ll now have to pay, you rotting cock.  But hey, dude, give me a week. I’ll call you… maybe.  With no other offers or feedback (see above), you have to be gracious.

I’m really loving all this, in a sick kind of way.  I might have to move the family into a refrigerator box under a I-495 overpass.  At least there’s room to park.

This all reminds me of some spaghetti western movie where two dudes have their pistols at each other’s temple after a wild gunfight.  Neither of them know how many bullets are left in their opponent’s revolver.  Both are waiting for a trigger pull and a *click* of a hammer on an empty chamber.

I’m still waiting.  I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, donations are accepted.

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Truth in advertising – I wrote this a little while ago, and now it’s star date 20160118.  I’ve landed a job and I’m getting paid.  The midgets don’t complain as much as I feared, and my lashings from the boss are less severe than I’m used to from the Army.  I’m only in the barrel once every other week!  Win!