Army of None

In my quest to find a job and pad my wallet, I've been applying to listings on sites like Monster and CareerBuiler. I saw a posting on CareerBuilder for a design position with the US Army in the LA area, and hit apply. I figured it must be some kind of desk job managing marketing or designing ads or something. Some time goes by and I get a call from one Sgt. Guererro who wants to ask me some questions: how much do I weigh, have I been convicted of a felony, did I go to college. Yes, I did go to college, I responded. Where? University of Pennsylvania. Is that a two-year or four-year school? Four-year. Four-year? Yes. Where is that? In Philadelphia. I thought you said you were from LA? I am, I just went to school there. You went to Pennsylvania for school? Yes. It's really a four year school? Yes, I have a BA. You have a BA? Yes.

He was so incredulous that he was talking to someone who had actually graduated from a four year school, hadn't been convicted of a felony, and was in shape, and it became more and more apparent in his voice with each new question. It also became clear that there was no design job to be had; he was recruiting for the army. He enthusiastically told me to come by his recruitment center. I gave a vague noncommittal response. What does that say about the state of our armed forces when finding someone who has above-disdainful intelligence and hasn't gotten into trouble before and isn't morbidly obese is a real find? I worry for the country.

Update: CareerBuilder has been entirely useless since then. Because I applied for an army job, suddenly my best matches were jobs like "truck driver in Valencia." I opted out of all emails from them. And I got a few more calls from Sgt. Guerrero to find a time for me to stop by. After a number of apologies for being to busy to visit, I got a call from a higher up firmly asking if I ever planned to stop by or if I could stop wasting their time. I admitted fault, and appreciative of his directness, opted to never hear from them again. Sometime later, the Culver City office closed down, taking all my unrealized military potential with it.