Open thread: Choose your delusion

by contacting the enlisted recruiting sections at each of the military branches. The Navy is at Millington, Tn.

I worked at Recruiting Command Headquarters for the Navy in the waiver section.
I was empowered to do waivers for a variety of infractions for various ratings that where under the personal reliability program. For serious infractions, the Navy would do what is called a full kit waiver. These waivers are a major pain in the rump for all involved just to compile. This is done at ther recruiter level with help from the applicant. The applicant must provide various people to vouch for them. References are usually people in the community that are recongnized as "good" members of society. Chruch people, bosses, bussiness owners, school teachers, etc. With a full kit waiver, every place the person has lived, a police check will be performed at the local and state level to the sherriff as well as city, town as state police forces.

Once this data is compiled, more checks are conducted to make sure the person on the document are real and who they say they are, again recruiter level. Then the entire package is sent to the district level, where a board reviewews the data. Any questions, and the kit goes back to the recruiter with the question. After district approves it, it goes to area, where the same thing happens. Then it goes to headquarters where again a board reviews the data, and does a "whole" person review. These waivers take a while to perform. In the Navy, a Captain oks it and if that Captian has resevations, it will go to the Admiral of recruiting command for final approval/disapproval.

At any point along this path, it can be disapproved and the process is killed and the applicant is turned away.

For my waivers, I would do a telephonic waiver of the offense with the classifer reviewing the applicant, I never ever talked with the applicant. I reviewed trends and my primary review was would I want this guy in my shop on my ship. If he failed that, I disapproved his telephonic waiver. I never had someone comeback later that turned out bad based on the data presented to me at the time. At this time, I would also ask the classifier if this guy is worth a waiver if I was on the fence. The classifer would not be on a speaker phone, I would not allow him to. The applicant in some cases where in the room with the classifier. Many many applicants I disapproved based on the classifiers recommendation. I was the "bad" guy. This kept many inappropriate applicants from getting into ratings that would require integrity in the normal performance of their duty. My waiver dissapproval did not disaprove them from joining the Navy, just could not get into the job they where hping for.

While these waiver numbers appears to be bad, its not all that alarming. The people that we dont want in the military are not getting in, unless they are fantasic liars, in which case they will lie themselfs out shortly.

Remember, the military can only work with what we have available from the mush that society has been churning up. With the advent of more and more people living under single or multi work families, many kids are raising themselfs and are making inappropriate decisions. These decisions are landing them in jail where they are paying their debts. This waiver process gives us the best review of someone before they come in.

Also, many other organizations are actively going after the major recruitment pool, the highschools and recently graduated. There are many more opperatunities for the most sought after people in society and to be honest if someone offered my child a full ride to a university, or a recruiter wanting em to join, I would push my child to the university. And most of you would also.

I would not be alarmed about the "reduction of standards" being quoted here as the waiver process is insuring we are still getting good quality people inthe military representing us to the world.