Morons I have known- a weekly rant (3)

The Army Instructor (Gruntus Moronicus)

There is an old adage that those who can- do and that those who can't teach.
Never did I find this more true than in the Army Instructor. Fortunately, the idiots were balanced out by some truly first class people. This tale is not about them!

The Army has an interesting approach to instructing. The first step is to inadequately prepare you for a task, then to roundly abuse and humiliate you for failing to excel at said task. This is presumably character building and has nothing to do with their poor staff retention rates. Hold onto this thought and I will come back to it later.

The Instructor is a person who is, often as not, one lesson ahead of the student, but that's OK- he is always right. Question him about it and you will soon learn not to. To repeatedly question him puts you in the same IQ bracket. I don't know about now, but back in the 1970's cruel and unusual punishment was very much in vogue.

The instructors that I talk about here are easily recognized. The are usually short (surprise, surprise) and stocky. The forehead tends to slope down to the unibrow and the little piggy eyes. They have a strange manner of speech- in addition to the usual service jargon, they LOVE to use big words (anything more than two syllables) Trouble is, they almost always use them out of context and/or mispronounce them! Much like a parrot they have no need to understand what they speak, just repeat stuff- loudly and repeatedly. Shouting was always a good substitute for communication skills, apparently.

It's hard to single any particular one out there- their hallmark is they have no real individual personality whatsoever. At least there are in a niche where they have a use. Recruits may more may not out-evolve them and come to recognize that these clowns were as dumb as mud- they just had a little more knowledge, with emphasis on the little.

By a selection process based on time served and also used by algae, they often rise to senior positions, by virtue of anyone with more talent having left to find a more gainful occupation. With the top jobs held by so many brain-dead drones, the smarter were more likely to seek opportunities elsewhere, thus continuing the cycle.

Those of us with bad attitudes had a name for them- Victim Of The System. They were condemned to live within it forever, being unable to adapt to life elsewhere. And they believed the bullshit they used to spout. Impossible to fell sorry for them, they where such obnoxious crap-heads....