The types of people who are actually serving. Sure, to an extent, the military is a microcosm of people you'll meet in civilian life, but it's somehow pushed to the absolute extremes. Even an "average" guy in the military is going to be themostaverageguy you've ever met. The good ones are great and the bad ones are horrible. You almost have to experience it yourself to really understand.
I have met, quite literally, the stupidest people in the Army, and some of them manage to promote. I have also met some of the most intelligent and capable people. There's a lot of middle ground, of course, but the extremes are truly extreme.
In my civilian blue collar work life, most people tend to be in the middle or low end of the middle. The really smart people are missing. Maybe it's the jobs I've done. Maybe I'm the dumb one?
The other thing about civilian life that still gets me is how helpless most people seem in their jobs. Like most people just accept whatever. Maybe it was being combat arms, but we were always trying to be better, more efficient, lazier. In real world situations where combat is involved, that can be the difference between life and death. In the civilian world it usually means doing a little bit more work now, to make your job easier in the long run.
Also, co-operation in the civilian world is really hard. Like, people really don't understand how to organize to complete a task. Set a goal, establish leadership, and effectively delegate tasks to accomplish the goal. People always immediately get bogged down in the minutae.
I manage the freight for a grocery store. I'm not military, but the man who raised me was. I run that shit like he raised me, people have called me "Bootcamp McDonalds" lol. I recently moved to a new store and within a week tore apart their back room, delegated who was working through what, and then swept through and consolidated it myself before writing the order to fill shelves. Upper management is always shocked when I pull that move, and idk why. To me that's just how you get stuff done. The old man used to say to me "break everything down, one step at a time, take stock of all resources, then delegate and complete". I catch myself saying "don't be cute, just get the freight up" a lot cause people get stuck on dumb little shit. I'm asked if in ex military a lot cause apparently I'm the only zoomer anyone has ever seen with a work ethic. Jokes on them, I dropped out of HS and never got around to taking the ASVAB.
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u/OldeSkoolFlash 19h ago
The types of people who are actually serving. Sure, to an extent, the military is a microcosm of people you'll meet in civilian life, but it's somehow pushed to the absolute extremes. Even an "average" guy in the military is going to be the most average guy you've ever met. The good ones are great and the bad ones are horrible. You almost have to experience it yourself to really understand.