Do more than three years and you'll lose your mind
Pros
Long breakfast and lunch hours (not guaranteed) Random days of no scheduled activities (DONSAs--depending on your post) Four day weekends for federal holidays, some posts have more ACAP is useful for people who don't have civilian skills (resume writing, personal finances, etc) Salaried pay and 30 days per year paid leave from the get-go Once-in-a-lifetime experiences Good practice for people who want to get into janitorial and lawn care careers Will teach you just how much physical and mental stress it takes to break you off
Cons
Some people very obviously grew up in the Army--by which I mean they didn't grow up at all. Pettiness and mutable standards are probably my biggest gripes about the Army. Training events for appearance's sake come in at a close third. Some units have extremely strong good-old-boy clubs. Gone are the days where enlisted and officers cordially loathed each other--now it's joes vs NCOs and officers together, and if you can't draw conclusions about how awful that is I dunno what to tell you. It's almost impossible to get rid of a dirtbag if he makes it to E-6--it needs a BC's signature on the paperwork, it takes forever anyway, and what does he actually care about some random Staff Sergeant? Don't even mention trying to get dirtbag officers out. DUI? Enlisted? Even on a technicality? Gone in a month. Same offense, *six times?* General? Oh, you. Pay for anyone less than an E-3 is more or less unlivable. The dining facilities (which, if you live in the barracks--and if you're single you are forced to--your wages are garnished to pay for them, to the tune of $300-400 a month) don't provide enough calories to sustain you, let alone provide you with the calories necessary to get any stronger, have extremely poor healthy food selections (I swear they're still on the calories-from-bread kick from the nineties, and so much money could be saved by getting rid of the (really awful) fast food line...and it would slim down on the number of fat dirtbags), and all the cooks have awful attitudes. Most hate cooking, and it shows in the product. Team leaders get shafted from both ends--from officers and NCOs that blame them for everything that goes wrong and from joes who whinge about doing some heavy lifting sometimes. Coworkers are lazy and dim--way too many people I wouldn't trust to make me a bacon cheeseburger, let alone not shoot me in the back on mission. Not to mention way too many people that don't know how to be neat. Cleaning common areas that are shared with another (POG) unit will teach you the caliber of their responsibility, which is nil. Too much equipment, too little responsibility for it (or, put another way, too much responsibility shoveled onto people who can't keep track of it all)--critical things decay slower, but lesser things that would make the workplace less depressing get broken as soon as they're rolled out. Save for the snow cats that never seemed to be functioning for lack of spare parts--those seemed pretty critical, but I never saw them fixed. Supplies are regularly short, tools, ammunition, basic issue items, replacement parts, you name it. Probably the only thing I've never run into problems with is fuel, but, then again, I've been light for most of my career. Barracks for everyone except POGs are in disrepair. Females in the Army get special treatment. No, I don't mean the different PT standard--physiologies differ. I get it. What I mean is females get special dispensation to fail--at everything. With no repercussion, because SHARP is a thing that exists. Everyone is terrified to stand up to their peers, but they're especially terrified of criticizing a female. Put by one of my last sergeants-major: "never correct a female. It'll end your career."
