Officer Vs. Enlisted

[doubledown]

I am signing up for the PLC program for Marines. I have talked to many people from all branches including Marines (all of which are enlisted), and they all tell me that the military sucks and not to join. I have also heard from a semi-well informed person that officers get treated much better than enlisted and don't get screwed as much (i.e. you sign up for an administration job and they stick you in combat engineering). I was wondering if there is any truth to this at all. I want to be a Marine and serve my country but considering I'm going in for 10 years with an air contract, I don't want to hate my time in the service, and I especially don't want to be thinking I made a mistake the entire time. Any help on this is much appreciated as always.

 

[BigWorm]

Well, it sounds like you already hit the nail on the head. On the enlisted side, you have to earn a lot of the privileges such as living off base. A big difference is command, which you work towards as an officer, this equates to a lot of responsibility, on the enlisted side, you are working up to leadership roles. Eventually, you would be responsible for everything your Marines do or fail to do, where as your platoon sergeant would be the one making things happen.
The E-dogs go through a lot of shiat, and have to work their way up and out of the open squad bay, while the officers are afforded a lot more creature comforts.
I’ll take it a step further and say that pilots vs. the rest of the officer community is night vs. day. Take some time to talk with lots of people; there are always the bad apples that hate everything.
The military puts you through a lot of gay shiat that sucks, and everybody is going to bitch all the way through. For example, standing wheels watch at the end of a runway by yourself for 6 hours making sure everybody has their gear down isn’t exactly fun, but the next day your going on an aerobatic solo in a high performance aircraft.
I haven’t been in all that long, but I was a financial advisor for a little while before coming in, and I can tell you that I have a lot of fun memories of my Marine experiences vs. making phone calls, going to lunch, come back to the office, sit down and shuffle some papers.

 

[bch]

That and you can't radomly moon people in the financial advising world can you worm!

 

[BigWorm]

You got it backwards, as a financial advisor; I would have a legal case of my right to moon being protected under free speech. In the military, they just throw the UCMJ at you.

 

[vegita1220]

and I think a military judge/jury(sorry LT I forget which court martial applies for mooning people) would also be much less forgiving...