Do military people really have this much free time?

[milit]

Desk jobs for officers in the Marines tend to be heavy on the free time from my experience, though probably not at the enlistment offices. Hell, half my SO's job is to stalk me and other officer candidates on Facebook.

Many jobs like that exist in the military (at least the AF). Technically you're supposed to be doing some kind of menial task that is supposed to take 9 hours each day but can be done in 1-2, or doing something to 'better yourself', but in the end you just end up looking at your phone or finding things to argue about with your coworkers.

My job in the Navy was a whole bunch of twiddling my thumbs until I had to work...and then it was twiddling my thumbs with a pair of headphones on, doing maybe an hours' work over the course of a 12 hour shift. There are many, many jobs in the military that can be boiled down to, 'twiddle thumbs; repeat until shift ends' lol.

It could depend on your job. I am a 25P in the Army. I do strategic work. I have 11 OC-192 trunks I watch over, many voice circuits, and servers. When I am on night shift like I am right now (we have to man our shop 24/7) I spend alot of time on Youtube when I finish my college classes and do an hour of correspondence courses. It sucks, I hate sitting on my ass for 12 hours doing nothing. It's the kind of Job when nothing breaks you have nothing to do. Even if something breaks sometimes the User / distant end isn't in at 3am so there isn't a whole lot we can do to remedy the problem. That person doesn't know how to be productive. I am enrolled in college, boost my promotion points, and I am working on Security+ and Network+ certs. Some people have initiative others don't.

To maximize your chance of landing a job in the military with the most free time, which branch and which job should you go into?

[Deleted]

Some jobs in the military are merely glorified pencil pushers, this isn't exactly unknown to me, as it's a huge bureaucratic beast.

But as for what MOS it is, fuck if i know

[Muis]

Just gonna report this thread, as you've made quite a few which all got closed on good grounds.

[Deleted]

Attendance duty can be more annoyng than real work believe me.

[Raiju]

I'm so glad you took my advice, I eagerly await Rich's response to you asking this... again.

[Gnosk]

Sounds very boring, I hate doing nothing at work why would anyone want to do that all day long?

[Revi]

When i was in the military, I had very little actual free time, meaning time where i could choose what to do.
The periods when i was guarding an object did have a lot of downtime, but that's the nature of guarding. If you're not on patrol, and there's nothing going on, you're just sitting around waiting for something to happen (which it very, very rarely did).
When we had training, there could be several weeks without a single minute off "free time" if we were off-base.

A lot of jobs are like that unless you're overseas or working with recruits.
Responsible for equipment of some sort? Make sure it's all in good condition, otherwise you sit around waiting for someone to need something.
Guarding an objective? Make sure you're prepared, do patrols, otherwise you sit around waiting for something to happen.
Responsible for personnel in some manner? Make sure your responsibilities to them are covered, otherwise sit around waiting for a problem to arise
Etc. etc.

On the other hand, there's a lot of jobs in the military where you work your ass off for long and irregular hours, some times with little food and even less sleep

If you want a job in the military where you do as little as possible, be aware that you (depending on which country you're from) will have to go through months or years of basic training first, and then prove competent enough to be trusted with your own areas of responsibility.

Edit: I very much preferred the busy periods. Sitting around on your ass doing nothing for a living gets really boring, really fast.

[prwraith]

If we're not at war what would you like us to do? We can't shoot guns or fly planes all day everyday

[Tierbook]

Just gonna report this thread, as you've made quite a few which all got closed on good grounds.

I must be missing something since this is his second post...

[milit]

My husband told me to tell you, that if you want to join the Military and be a lazy sack of shit, then go into the Airforce and get a job field called Services (you'll issuse basketballs at the gym and other lazy shit).

Could you ask him which MOS is that? And also if it has actual free time where you can read books and use the internet?

[Feel The Power]

I must be missing something since this is his second post...

and his first post on this name was the same post. Ask Rich in off topic forums about this guy, he'll tell you several things at the very least.

[oujosh29]

I was in artillery, and when we weren't out in the field we had a lot of down time. There were duties here in there but yes theres a lot more down time than you would think. I actually picked up WOW in the army from a friend while in the army lol. But I also had weeks where I had to get up at 4 am almost everyday for maneuvers and going to the range for multiple weeks getting ready for Iraq. So you get plenty of down time, then none at all. It probally evened out to a regular job till your deployed.

[Zvinny]

I'm in the Navy, and I'll admit sometimes it seems like we do have a lot of down time. For instance, I work with sensitive materials and equipment and the room storing those has to be guarded 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. Well, when you pull the 0000-1200 on a Saturday to Sunday, your job basically is sit in this room and make sure no one steals things and the room doesn't catch on fire. So their will be a lot of playing around on Youtube, checking facebook and other such things.

However, while I've had many 12 hour days where I didn't really "do" anything besides guard a room, I've had just as many where my division and I pulled a 48-60 hour, nonstop no sleep shift with maybe a couple 5 minute smoke breaks. Every day is different.

[Endus]

These kinds of threads are unconstructive and spammy. Locked.