Bradboy said:
I know a guy who was in PAT platoon about 2 years ago. He said while he was there he noticed two different types of people. There were people who used their boredom positively and those who used it negatively. He told me that he and his buddies would always find something to do on their down time such as spending time in the gym, playing various sports, etc. He also told me that he knew people who would sit around and drink themselves stupid, only to become fat, lazy, and ultimately useless. So I guess it's all in the type of person you are. I guess you could consider PAT platoon another test of your committment to the CF. Are you willing to wait until your next course and better yourself in the meantime? Or are you going to sit around and whither away into a waste of the CF's time and money? Just a perspective from a new recruit. Cheers.
Nah, they don't need you to waste their time and money - they that well enough themselves, they don't need our help. :-X
They tried to tell us that the waiting list was intentional, to test our commitment (and it was a test of our commitment, but it sure as heck wasn't intentional), but nobody bought it. What does the Army gain from having you sit around doing nothing for a year? They're paying you, quartering you, patching up your injuries, taking care of your teeth, feeding you and buying your medication, but they're not getting anything out of you; you're not being put to any productive use to get anything done for them. But hey, it's their budget - if they want to waste it, it's up to them. But it really annoyed me when they tried to sell the story that it was deliberate to test my commitment to the Army. No, that what BMQ is intended to do. That really annoyed me. Instead of manning up and saying, 'Sorry, we pulled a bonehead,' they tried to feed us a ridiculous story about it being part of the training. As a result, I know quite a few people who have not renewed their contracts, and several more who don't intend to. And why should they? They were lied to and cheated. They were promised signing bonuses for their civilian qualifications, they were promised bypasses on their occupational training, and instead, they ended up sitting around Borden doing nothing for a year before they went for their QL3 training. And when they eventually did go, they had to go for the entire course. Then when they got to their units, they were told that they weren't entitled to signing bonuses, and should have never been told that they were. What happened, if I remember correctly, is that Borden was telling the recruiting centres that signing bonuses and training bypasses were authorised in such cases, when in reality, they weren't. It was good ol' disorganisation, and the Canadian Army is famous for it.
When Chretien gave the CF a bigger piece of the pie in the 2002-2003 Budget, they decided to immediately hire 6000 new recruits. They figured that they had to hire them while they still had the budget to do so, but didn't take into consideration that somebody had to train those new recruits, and that the majority of them would be going to Borden. And since the previous annual recruiting rate was lower than the retention rate, the schools cut back on the number of courses going through to match the number of recruits coming through. Makes sense - why have ten instructors on staff if you only need three, right? But suddenly, they had on average 75 recruits a week coming from St. Jean. And it's not that easy to just post a few Cpls and M/Cpls from units, because then the units lack the personnel required to be operationally ready. So you have to train more Privates and Corporals to be Corporals and Master Corporals. So now you need more instructors at the Combat Schools in order to teach the Junior Leadership Courses, but again, you can't just pull people away from units and leave the units operationally unprepared. So you have to wait until more Privates are trained and posted to units so that they can replace the Privates who are going to be promoted to Corporal to replace the Corporals who are going to be promoted to Master Corporal and posted to the various schools. So, it's basically just a complete standstill - the schools need trained instructors, but the units can't give them any until they have trained Privates. But the schools can't give the units any more trained Privates until they have more instructors. In my trade, it takes two years of training to become qualified. So it will take at least two years to get a Craftsman qualified to work on his own so that you can take a Corporal off the floor, give him his Master Corporal's leaf, and post him to CFSEME to teach. That's why the backlog is only now starting to clear up. But they obviously didn't take that into consideration when they hired us. They couldn't have. I can't see the Army saying, "Well, they'll be sitting around doing nothing for a year, and then they'll be done their first contract before they're even QL4 qualified. In some trades, they'll be done their second three-year contract before they're QL5 qualified so we'll be paying that lot for six years and not really getting anything out of them, but what the heck, let's hire them anyway. We'll see if we can talk them into signing on for 14 more when their IE is up." And they want to hire 4000 more people by the end of the fiscal year. Apparently, they didn't learn anything last time around. They look at their operational requirements, and say, "We need personnel." so they hire by the thousands. But they don't need personnel, they need
trained personnel. A better approach would have been to sit down and say, "What is the maximum number of people that we can train this year, including all PAT?" and based their recruiting number on that, thereby getting the maximum number of personnel into units and eliminating the backlog so that next year, they would be able get people through BMQ, through QL3 and off to a unit to work and be useful without any unnecessary delay.
PteMacPooie said:
No, it has not gotten better because of Foxtrot Coy.
Just more injuries, and more Bull-oney.
The only thing that could make it better is if they had a fresh turnover in staff, morale would build and it wouldn't be so bad.
*sigh*
I guess some things will never change. Sad, really. Don't worry, though - it's not like that when you get to your unit. Once you're qualified and working in your trade, it gets better. I'm going on to my 5th unit next week (I've worked at 3 R22R Maint., 5e BNS S.I., 5e Bon SG Pon. Veh., 1 R22R Maint. and next week, I'm moving over to 5e Ambulance de Campagne), and none of them have been anything like the crap that I had to put up with at PRETC.
I may end up on it myself (just being honest with myself hehe).
