Ian Royle

I’m in a ranting kind of mood.  I’m angry, upset, mad, and I’m sure it is from an lack of vitamin B complex.  What I like to refer to as my Not-Angry-Pills.  Today, I went to work for the Canadian Militia.  And it sucked, well most of it sucked, but not the SAT range with Sgt Dulooey.  He’s a real nice fellow, good disposition, friendly personality, not much like me.  No my problem with the militia commonly called the Mo is its unrealistic expectations for attendance.  By unrealistic, I mean pay for time worked, and the desperate belief that other factors might overshadow the fact that the pay and benefits are better at any fast food establishment here in Alberta.  You see the upcoming weekends events are scheduled to begin at 06:15 Saturday morning with the first day finishing up at 01:00 Sunday.  We are then expected to go home which for me is a half-hour drive sleep, get up, shower, SHAVE, eat breakfast and return in time to start again Sunday at 06:15 and be dismissed at the earliest 16:00 Sunday afternoon.  That is 29 hours of work for which I will recieve the princely sum of two-hundred-fifty dollars less mess dues, taxes and other deductions.  If you figure anything after 8 hours a day would be paid in the civilian world at a minimum time and a half, there are 16 Regular hours and 13 OT hours.  When considering the hours against the earnings the wage we are earning that weekend is $7.04/hr!  For this, we recieve such benefits as, sitting on the dead grass on a windswept prairie, stale sandwiches and preservative laced snack products in a cardboard box, terrible coffee and the contempt of university students promoted to superior positions simply because, with no responsibilies such as children, mortgages and real jobs they were able to attend 6 week camping trips with the Mo during which excessive drinking would have occurred and at least one instructor and one candidate would have been removed from course for fraternizing.  Any wonder why I won’t be attending next weeks exercise?