Wherein I Return to the Army after 3 Years

Well - not entirely three years - I disrupted sometimes in the end of July, so it's really something like two years and 11 months.

Regardless, nothing much seems to have changed. The same jobs are still there, staffed by more-or-less the same people, with some exceptions, though their replacements look more-or-less the same anyway. Of course, I am unable to reveal anything of my work nor my colleagues, for fear that I will be punished under the Official Secrets Act for exposing my country's military secrets (mostly those of gross incompetance, laziness and generic civil-service-standard ineptitude), but suffice to say that I am not particularly impressed by the people I have to work with most of the time. Mind you, I love them all, of course, but I just imagined working life to be more dynamic on so many more levels than a couple of old women bickering about whose turn it is to take out the laundry.

Of course, they laughed at my hair, my old-auntie peers. Luckily rank had its tiny little perks, and I initially got very few jibes from the lower ranks. That changed soon enough when they realized the haircut wasn't indicative of my enthusiasm to serve my country in a most strict and regimental manner but rather the sort of bumbling mistake made by a stupid, kindly person, and even my suc-suc-suc-sucessor was soon laughing at me.

No wonder everyone hates us clerks. We're a cruel bunch.

I almost got the day off, but rejected it. The manpower-deputy told me when I reported to him that he had nothing much for me to do, especially since I'd missed an exercise in Australia and everyone of import wasn't around (which I took to be a rather refreshing self-confession of his own pathetic job). I made the mistake of volunteering for work, though, (and lots of it) for which I might kick myself in the days to come. On the other hand there's no worries about finding me anything to do, and I figure getting work you like to do is better than sitting around looking bored and discontent and ending up on the receiving end of busy-peoples' ire.

And there's a lot of ire going around. The army is the first place I got lessons in the infamous office politics people are always so eager to tell you about, being of too low import in my prior jobs. My position and ability with a computer made me something of a maneuver piece for the warring factions, though I did my best to keep out of it. Within the day I'd managed to catch up on quite a lot of the popular gossip going around, though it's never really very different. Someone got a larger bonus than someone else, someone doesn't seem to be working quite as hard as they should, someone seems to be trying to take advantage of someone else... sometimes the pettiness of human conflict makes me sick.

Of course, it's fitting that such conflict should arise in an organization designed to stifle (or amplify) the destructive effects of said conflicts on a larger-scale - meaning that wars are fought for reasons as petty as clerks' squabbles.

38 more days. Usually I like work, but I can't wait for this to be over.