Army Recruiter students sent home from school for tattoos
Someone wrote to us late on Friday afternoon and said that some students at the US Army’s Recruiter school had been sent back to their duty stations because of their tattoos. I thought that it was a little strange, so I called the Recruiting Command at Fort Knox and talked to a nice lady at the the Public Affairs Office. She promised to get back to me. So I got this email just a minute ago;
Mr. Lilyea,
Six NCOs were returned to their units last week after they had checked into the Recruiting and Retention School. These NCOs had tattoos that do not meet AR 670-1. US Army Recruiting Command has requested a revision to AR 601-1, Assignment of Enlisted Personnel to the US Army Recruiting Command, that states that Army selections for recruiters meet AR 670-1. While that request is in motion, US Army Recruiting Command will not accept NCOs that do not meet that standard.
The recruiter has been designated by the Department of Defense as a position of special trust and therefore must meet rigorous standards. It is an inconsistent and negative distraction for new soldier prospects to see tattoos on recruiters that the new recruit is not allowed to have. Army recruiters lead by example and, as the face of the Army in more than 1,300 American communities, must exhibit superior military bearing and appearance as required by AR 670-1.
Best regards,
US Army Recruiting Command Public Affairs
I don’t have tattoos, for my own reasons, but I am all about the Army. They’ve written a new policy just this year in regards to tattoos, and that’s fine. They even have a BS program for grandfathering soldiers who had their tattoos before the policy so they can remain in the service. Well, unless they want to advance – because a recruiting job is one of those jobs that soldiers have to have in order to advance along with being a drill sergeant. So I’m guessing drills will be next to be scrutinized for their tattoos, so that recruits don’t get confused about the new standard.
A decision that soldier made years ago before tattoos were even an issue will affect his career as an NCO. Good job, Army. Good job.
Category: Big Army
I’m not understanding the part about “Army selections for recruiters meet AR 670-1.”
Uh, isn’t everybody in the Army supposed to meet 670-1? Who is allowed to NOT meet 670-1? Oh, I know deployed SF guys grow beards and SFODD is allowed “relaxed grooming standards” but I’m talking about the regular Army – how can they not be meeting 670-1?
Actually, what the Department of the Army said after some soldiers kvetching was that if you have tattoos when the new regulations hits the street it won’t adversely affect you in being recommended for retention or limited on promotion of said soldiers. The same could be said of PFT scores or even range scores or even your uniform bag. That a command can and does have the permission to live by the letter of the law, so that means tattoos are verboten in recruiting command and that the folks selected (as well as thier approving commands) will receive hate in thier service jackets for the same. So it begins another way to attrition of the force to meet budget mandated force levels.
They can dress in drag and parade in obscene political parades in uniform though.
Fucking US military policies.
MCPO Rules on Tattaattooing:
1. The first tat in 1979 should always be done by “Spider” in Bergenfield, NJ.
2. The second should improve on “Spider’s” work, be conducted by the most respected tat artist in Portmouth, England (circ 1980).
3. The third should be a bald eagle mounted on strong upper arm looking aft and be done by “Spider” (circa 1981).
4. The fourth should not be done in this manner: Encourage all your Chief’s to go out and get the CPO Anchor tattooed on the lower left outer calf, at a respect tat joint in VB, while said MCPO provided beer and whiskey to all Chiefs and artists … Only to be asked by unit EO the following day, “Master Chief, what did you guys do last night?”
My response was, “we were being branded as CPO’s!”
He slapped the new Navy tat policy in me chest and laughed!
No shitter!
Sounds like someone thought it would be a good idea at the time….. 🙂
Here! Hold my beer.
Tattoos are way older than the army itself.
Just because somebody decided down the line that it isn’t “fashionable” to be hacked all over doesn’t mean this is an eternal judgement.
You know what? I guess it was forbidden in the first place, because at that time it really wasn’t fashionable and being tattoed had a bad rep. But again modern Armies (no a US Soldier) fail to keep track on time. A good army has to consist of about the same people it’s willing to defend and sacrifice their life for – the people who make up the country you may die for. So if this society finds it acceptable to be tattoed and most people in it do it, then it should not be prohibited for the troops, because that creates a mental and outright optical gap between citizens and forces that may lead to a shrinking acceptance and support for eachother – the beginning demise of any fighting power.
ABNDVR: It isn’t that ink is acceptable now; it’s because it wasn’t as accepted 30 years ago. It’s like back in the ’70’s, a lot of us Air Force types didn’t like having our hair so short. The BX always ran out of the hair products we used to try hide how long our hair actually was. We tried to convince the commander we couldn’t compete with the townies for potential dependapotomi with such unfashionable hair styles. The base commander couldn’t understand our complaints because, as he put it, everyone had their hair short when he was that age. It was like trying to convince my father to let me turbo-charge the family car.
Visitor to Recruiting Office: “Sergeant Michaels? That’s funny. I stopped in here about six months ago and spoke a sergeant who looked like you and I’m sure his name was Michaels. Any relation?”
SGT Michaels: “That was me. I am transgender. I see that you have a hand tattoo. That is unacceptable for military service.”
Excellent !
First Sergeant Moerk strikes again!!!
Yep, it’s pretty obvious they weren’t pre-screened on Facebook by a Spec8 before leaving their home stations.
This isn’t new. Back in the early 90’s one of my running buddies got tagged for Recruiter when training was at Ft Benjamin Harrison. It was a 6 week class and took them until the end of the 3rd week to boot him because he had tats visible while wearing the class B short sleeve shirt. My son got rejected from going in the AF because he has a tat on his chest visible when wearing a v-neck undershirt, but not when wearing the crew neck.
Go figure.
(donning flame-retardant suit)
Okay, here goes:
As a former recruiter, I do understand that we do have a responsibility to the service to present our best possible image to the public at large. Yes, Johnny and Sally are 17-21 and not so shocked by sleeve tats, but as any recruiter will tell you, many times mommy and daddy are the ones you REALLY have to sell, and they might not be so forgiving.
Frankly, what surprises me is the fact that the prospective recruiters were even allowed to show up at Fort Knox (or Pensacola for us Navy types) for Recruiting School with said tattoos. I had to do a pretty thorough screening process before going to P-Cola, including physical appearance, etc. Even back in the 1990’s, certain tats and locations of same were a no-go. I can’t imagine the policy was that much different now than then, or that it varied much between services.
And yeah, appearances did matter even at boot. Take smoking, for example. When I went to boot, the Company Commanders I had both smoked, and did so regularly in front of us. A few years later, the CO’s of the various RTC’s were instructing their CC’s not to smoke in front of recruits, and a few years after that, pretty much banned it from the various RTC’s altogether.
Bottom line, yeah, folks who were grandfathered under AR670-1 should still be allowed to serve and be retained/promoted, but there are going to be jobs which are “PR-intense and/or subject to public scrutiny” that they might not be good selections for the face of Big Army/Navy/whatever.
YMMV.
When I was tagged for recruiting ten years ago, by the glorious Army, you filled out a checklist that “asked” you about 10 questions, then submit it. After that, you got orders to report to recruiting school. At recruiting school they also did some screening as well.
Not sure for the Navy, but you aren’t even told where you’re going to be assigned until the last week or so of the course.
At the same time, back then, they were so heavy on getting recruiters on the streets, they tagged people without remorse. The “thought” process from that alleged think-tank the Pentagon was that if you put more recruiters on the streets, you’ll get more recruits! (Yeah, not…)
As far as I can tell, the only one who thought Tattoos were bad (mmkay) was SMA Chandler.
And yes, now that they are cutting the force, those same tattoos are now “unacceptable” because you’re not the pretty parade Army we want to show off. You’re that nasty, dirty, grungy Army that wins wars…
Thumbs up!
Oh, I agree–the “recruiting” armed services are not the ones you want to put on the front lines, necessarily.
As part of our screening, we were able to select from the various NRD (Naval Recruiting Districts) if they were available. That meant if you were really lucky and got NRD LA (as I did) you could get anywhere from Santa Monica to Ridgecrest. Larger area NRD’s I’m sure were real interesting when you showed up.
I can’t speak for the other services, but Navy recruiting had regular guys from the fleet who did 2-3 years, and if they were lucky, went back to the fleet with their stripes and sanity intact. Then there were the “permanent” folks, the CRF, or Career Recruiter Force. They also stood for “Can’t Remember Fleet.”
It’s the latter group that made my and most other recruiter’s lives a living hell. It wasn’t about anything else except numbers. “Heroes to Zeroes” was their motto.
2 years of nuke pipeline training, five deployments in nearly 7 years of continuous sea duty, and the 30 months of recruiting I did I’ll always remember as the most soul-draining, negative, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-here days of my life.
Again, that being said, some guys loved it. Some folks could lay on the schmooz and slick sales to the kids, who’d eat it with a spoon. God bless ’em. And yeah, I think it’s kind of silly that it’s okay for an NCO/Petty Officer to have a visible tat out in the fleet and nobody says shit, but put them in a visible position and everyone goes apeshit.
Kind of like Kipling’s “Tommy”, only the Army is shitting on its own.
I had an E-6 come to my Avionics shop on the USS Oldboat who had been kicked out of CRF. It seems he floated a few too many immediate failures into the pipeline (guys with felonies that would keep them from certain rates, one cat who was not only functionality illiterate but had flunked the asvab, then the straw that broke the camel was brilliant he brought in a FORN from a state department watch list country to be a nuke MM). Anyhow this E-6 was placed in charge of my shop because E6 beats E5 at flip ya game, broke the shop so fast that we all were asking to go TAD anywhere but stay and work with the dude.
Even funnier is that he was constantly trying to screen back in and when we had NavPers show up the E9 in charge of recruiting made it a point to single him out and say to never send another request that the only way he would be approved is if science found a virgin 40 yr working the red light in Amsterdam.
Or loses wars as the case may be.
Though for some reason I do not think my tattoos are why we lost. I blame green beans.
Guess what’s going to happen to these guys when their records are screened for promotion and it shows that they were rejected for recruiter duty, regardless of the reason. If you guessed they will will get fucked, then you are dead nuts on. Good job big PC Army.
The rule USED to be that an admin drop such as tats were not a black mark. Get in trouble, blow academics or a PT test, those were bad.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be…and I’ll leave that right there.
Yeah, and when I joined an Article 15 was called non-judicial and was not prejudicial to your final career – “Like a traffic ticket” was the explanation – one didn’t hurt, but don’t make a habit of it. What will any article 15 do to you now? Last I heard it was a kiss of death, especially for promotion to senor NCOs.
Had a few who made it to BRC in San Diego who, due to the tattoo screening policy, shouldn’t have been there. While I disagree with the policy this is just the result of career recruiters (scumbagus ultimus) not doing their job when they head out to various commands to screen potential recruiter school students.
CRF–never let them give you a pat on the back without checking for a knife first.
From what some recruiters have told me, this could start a run on tattoo parlors. I had one tell me that he’d rather do a 5th tour in Afghan than recruit.
When it came to the choice of recruiting or deploying, I told my unit back in ’05, “I could go somewhere that they hate me, wanna stab me, will hope I get blown up, OR you could let me go to Iraq.”
The worst part is, if you’re “successful” as a recruiter, they won’t necessarily let you leave USAREC. So that 3 years can turn into 10. But if you don’t meet your quota, then you get a bad eval and its potentially over.
See, this is exactly what I was thinking, too. Not sure how much the Army has changed since I retired in ’05 but when I was in during the 90’s, NOBODY wanted recruiter duty.
Recruiting was then thought of as a career killer and stories of 16 hour days, 7 day weeks, months with no time off and being threatened with all manner of harm for failing to “make mission” (i.e. sign up the sufficient number of recruits) was enough to drive any self-respecting NCO away from recruiting.
Stories of divorce, depression, even suicide among recruiters were legendary. And now all you have to do to get out of it is get a visible tattoo? Great, I know where I’m going on my lunch break, down to Bragg Blvd….
I have no problem with those high, military standards. What I have a problem with is that when it comes to other obvious and apparent matters, such as sashaying recruiters with lisps who have pics of their same-sex spouses on their desks, those high standards don’t apply. So, let’s hear from those whose standard is merely whether a service member can do the job. If that’s true, then please educate me as to the purpose of screening out tattooed recruiters and prospective recruits.
This shit drives me nuts. Hope you’re happy Chandler, you POG fuck. Sometimes I think I’m living in bizarro world. Back in the day if you had tattoos you were in the military. Now, where tattoos are widely accepted in society(soccer mom’s and lawyers have them),why they are being shunned by the military is beyond me. The military needs to be given the green light to getting back to its primary objective: Breaking shit and killing people. To take on evil men you don’t a bunch of choir boys.
They’re all the same face! “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”
Suddenly every combat arms NCO gets sleeve tattoos. I recruited 2002-2005, hated every damn minute of it. I also concur, this is the work of the shady 79Rs that have camped out since 9-11.
Fucking bullshit POG ass shit, from a CSM of the Army who cares more about “optics” than war fighting. Screw you Chandler.
I hate to say it, but welcome to our pain. The Marine Corps instituted an asinine tattoo policy a while ago, now I guess it is the Army’s turn. Damn military has gone bonkers.
What were their PT scores?
That reminds me of a Dirty Harry line, I think from The Enforcer. When Tyne Daily is in front of the Eval. board and everyone is sucking up to her because she is a woman candidate. “You got a question for her Harry?” “Yeah. How fast can she run the 100?”
“OK, what’s the best traffic ticket you ever wrote?”
Hysterical scene. Reminds me of every board I faced.
Ironically i ended up getting a bad NCOER because i refused to put people on the floor in Albany MEPS that didn’t meet the tattoo requirements in 2004.
got hit with ” fails to live up to potential” because i follower the rules. God Bless the NY ARNG azzhats
I am currently on Recruiting duty and have been for the last year, What pisses me off the most is the actual comment the Public Affairs rep from Recruiting command said.
The recruiter has been designated by the Department of Defense as a position of special trust and therefore must meet rigorous standards. It is an inconsistent and negative distraction for new soldier prospects to see tattoos on recruiters that the new recruit is not allowed to have. Army recruiters lead by example and, as the face of the Army in more than 1,300 American communities, must exhibit superior military bearing and appearance as required by AR 670-1.
I have a full sleeve on my left arm and the tattoo on my right arm cannot be covered with my hand. So basically what the Army PA is saying is that because of this I dont meet the rigorous standards of being in this position of special trust. Then goes on to say basically that I do not lead by example and do not exhibit superior military bearing or apperance as required by AR 670-1. Oh Im sorry USAREC that I was good enough a year ago but now because of my tattoo’s I’m apparently not. I’m so sick of this kind of BS, Hey here is an idea why dont you let me out of the rest of my 2 year contract and ETS early. I used to want to be a career soldier but over the last few years I have decided it is time to go our seperate ways.
Be careful there Active Duty Recruiter SGT. Don’t expose those tats as Spec8 Moerk is constantly trolling the interwebz looking for an Oak Leaf Cluster to her Blue Falcon ARCOM.
I have a problem my process just stop because I have a cross in my right leg that just for inches that I already start the process to take off whit lazer.