Quote:
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
-from 'Wear Sunscreen' by Mary Schmich
I now realize it's genetic that when you get to a certain age, you think yours is the last generation that was worth a darn. I could feel it happen to me when I hit my mid 30s. But if you take a serious look back through history, people are people, period. There are dumb and smart ones, and the only thing that changes are technology and a few minor social issues. But the people around now are only different from the people in any generation only by the stuff they know how to run and how they're dressed.
muddyboots wrote:
An Army Medic with Special Forces skill levels can't get a job as an EMT, and yet he can do most of what a doctor does in the military. Something is wrong there.
That's an apples-oranges comparison. SF medics do emergency medicine and treat locals for basic serious issues. They're not the equal of a stateside general MD. I've worked with SF forces, I'm not knocking them but no SF medic is going to say they're as good as a stateside doctor, say, in an ER.
Military experience simply doesn't equate with the antiquated "you haven't earned you dues in
this office" mentality of the private sector. I was an Army officer, got out as a Captain. Been there, done that. But where I work now, I'm taking orders from people who really don't have a clue how to 'lead' anything. I haven't kissed the right backsides and dotted the correct 'i's to suit the suits around here (not that I really wanted to be a manager, I had a discussion with the boss of them a few years back where I told him that management expectations around my office don't live up to my personal standards. You should have seen the look on his face!). At one point, companies thought if you threw MBEs into 'leadership' roles, you didn't have to train them. That theory has long dince been vaporized and now the pedulum has swung back to kissing the right body parts to get ahead.