Your job is to take care of the mission.
Deal with the enemy or the objective at hand; the system will take care of everything else.
Housing, training, family care — all those things are taken care of.
The institution has your back.
That can make a transition to a world where everyone is functionally on his or her own tough.
Here are some of the most common things that vets struggle to adjust to when they muster out and start dealing with the civilian world for the first time:
1. People Say One Thing and Do Another
This is a big issue because this behavior is almost non-existent in the military.
A Soldier’s word is his bond.
A Coastie stands by what he says.
The Marine motto is literally Always Faithful (Semper Fi) An Airman is true to his word.
Sailors can always be counted on except on shore leave 🙂
Just kidding – you know us Marines love you squids!
Seriously – If someone says he’ll do something and then doesn’t follow through on it in the military, he’s in for an ass-chewing at the very least, and likely for actual discipline as well.
Officers who continually underperform can face demotion, reassignment, and punishments of their own. In the extreme cases you have institutions like the MP, the service courts and the JAG, and so on, that handle serious under-performers or troublemakers.
You don’t have any of that system in the broader civilian world. Some companies will have their own internal policies and review systems, and there are obviously civil and criminal laws that bind everyone, but there’s no real method for preventing people from telling you that they’ll do something and then not following through.
That can be frustrating for veterans. You can get a contract for agreements and business arrangements — and you should! — but at the point where you have to use the contract to legally enforce things, the relationship has basically broken down anyway. It can be made to work, but it’s not good.
Unfortunately, there’s no good way to deal with this. You just have to watch out for yourself, read each contract carefully, and learn to be patient when people aren’t doing what you expected.
It’s a big transition from a world where life-or-death assignments can be given and agreed upon in a few sentences to one where you sign a ten-page contract just to buy a phone. And unfortunately, there’s no solution for that besides awareness, caution, and a whole lot of patience.
