Pay your way through recruit training

Off-Topic Off Topic - Militaria
#1

The Australian Army deserves congratulations for this mindless exploitation of its recruits.

Food and Accommodation

  1. … Generally, most trainees will be required to pay for meals
    consumed. Currently the cost of this is $119.00 per fortnight, which will be deducted directly from your pay. Some trainees may be entitled to an exemption. Further details on eligibility will be given to you on arrival.
  1. The Army will provide you with all of your nutritional requirements. Trainees are not permitted to bring food, drinks or supplements for consumption during training. Any such items in your possession on your arrival at ARTC will be removed.

Hair Cuts

  1. Provision is made at Kapooka for haircuts within 24 hours of arrival. Males will have their hair cut with a number-two comb, and tapered at the back and sides. Males with particular religious requirements may seek approval for an exception. The cost of a haircut is $6.00.
    http://content.defencejobs.gov.au/pdf/army/DFA_Document_SoldierJoiningInstructions.pdf

I hope the food they get now is better than the crap we were fed 40 years ago. Meatloaf, being Army meatloaf which bore no relation to any known food or compilation thereof, at least once and sometimes twice a day was not worth paying for. Or eating. There’s always one or two like me who won’t eat such shit and, fortunately for them, there’s always one or two who are grateful to have us shovel our slop onto their plate. I wouldn’t have eaten some of the food offered to us if the Army had paid me. As for paying the Army for the privilege of consuming it …

As for not bringing your own food, the outstanding design feature of our 37 Pattern basic pouches was that they were perfectly designed for carrying canned food.

I wonder what happens with field rations. Do diggers go hungry if they don’t have cash to pay for a combat ration?

What next? You pay for your own ammo?

Jesus ****ing wept!

#2

Welcome to modern life mate. The British Army has had “Pay as you Dine” for a few years now, so unless field conditions have been declared you get charged for your food…

#3

As my children would say: That sucks, Big Time.

Although it might be that the food is better as now our Army doesn’t feed its recruits with its own Catering Corps (if ever ‘Royal’ was properly withheld from a military occupational group, the cooks would have to be the premier example) as civilian caterers do it.

In my day, we didn’t have to pay for anything the Army inflicted upon us. And we got value for the money we didn’t pay, on the basis that anything you get for free is worth what you pay for it. :wink: :frowning:

#4

Nope, food isn’t any better at all. There’s a reason it’s also known as “Pay as You Starve”…

#5

The food served by the Army when I was in was really pretty good well, as good as the cooks were anyway. Unless one was living off post, or in housing and on separate rations they had a meal card good for all of the treats available at the Quonset hut we used for a mess hall. Field chow however, is a very different matter.

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#6

Or save as you starve. Apparently it is being looked at to being binned, far too many squaddies going ‘hungry soldier’ and falling out on CFTs and runs from exhaustion due to be under nourished.

#7

Why do I see the hands of idiotic bean counters behind this?

#8

Do your blokes have a fixed amount deducted from their pay like our recruits, or do you pay per meal / dish / serving?

#9

Old system was a fixed amount, Pay as you Starve is individually charged per dish. Hence, if like many of the younger guys you’ve spent all your money on beer, by the end of the month you aren’t eating properly…

#10

About 35 years ago I consulted a doctor who had been an MO in the British Army. He informed me, apropos of nothing in particular :wink: , that on the basis of his observations of British regulars (1) beer contains all the major nutrients necessary to sustain life for decades, but (2) medical science said it was dangerous to consume it consistently in large quantities as this caused serious adverse consequences.

I have proved him correct on the first point, and wrong on the second. So far, anyway. :smiley:

#11

Is this cash over the counter, or a debit to pay?

Who runs the catering? Army cooks or civilian contractors?

#12

Cash over the counter and its civvy contractors although I seen army chefs working alongside them.

It works on a set amount for a set meal, i.e. breakfast is x2 meat options (and not two of the same), tomatoes or beans, hash browns, mushrooms, cereal, cup of tea/coffee, 1 glass of juice and bread (with butter and jam) and x1 sachtet of sauce. At present I think it’s about £1.06

Usually it comes to just under £5 a day. You can of course have more but they charge. Also they sell nutty bars, fizzy drinks and I’ve seen some places that offer beer in the evenings. I’ve also seen regional variations, for example when staying at a barracks in Edinburgh they served porridge with breakfast and had irn-bru available.

As to quality its a mixed bag, one camp on the south coast before PAYD was truly atrocious now it’s ok. When I was in Edinburgh the food was so bad we stopped eating in the cookhouse entirely and went to tescos/asda instead. We ate in our rooms, ordered in or out in restaurants out of principle of not paying for the slop they served there. Sometimes though if you’re lucky they’ll have a proper numpty who can’t add up or doesn’t care and they’ll charge you the basic rate despite the fact your plate is piled a foot high.

#13

Makes it hard if the diggers are a captive market who have nowhere else to go.

Makes it nice for the caterer.

Which raises the risk of pruning quality and quantity to improve profits.

Whereas our Catering Corps pruned quality and quantity from about 1914 without any financial imperative. :frowning: They certainly didn’t spend the savings on cookery books.

My disparaging comments about army cooks (The old exchange “Who called the cook a ****?” Answer “Who called the **** a cook?”) notwithstanding, a mate of mine in our youth trained as an army cook as a nasho around 1970 and went on to become the managing chef of a large and very well regarded provincial establishment. I’d lost touch with him when I dined there about 15 years later and was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food, which with my capital city arrogance I had expected to be marginally edible at best. (I didn’t know he was the managing chef when I dined there. I found out a few years later, when he acquired a degree of unwanted publicity as an early AIDS carrier, much to the dismay of his wife and children.)

Sounds a bit like the breakfasts we used to have in the shearing sheds in the latter half of the 1960s. Except there was no limit on how much anyone ate. The total cost was divided among everyone on an agreed forumula.

On exchange rates, it doesn’t sound excessive.

On the other hand, the average worker isn’t potentially on duty twenty four hours a day seven days a week and at risk of being deployed by a government (motivated by everything but concern for him or her) to dangerous places to deal with nasty people who are intent on killing him. Nor does the average worker have to get a leave pass just to go home, as the average worker does five out of seven days a week after about eight hours of not terribly demanding toil.

Then again, the average worker down here is usually entitled to a meal allowance if required to work much beyond the basic seven or, if unlucky, eight hours whichmeal allowance they can spend anywhere they like. And they’re allowed to go home at the end of their shift, without a leave pass and generally enjoying a degree of liberty, in every respect, denied the average grunt on base.

I don’t think it’s a terrible thing for the community through the government to fund meals for the diggers.

After all, the community through the government funds meals and other necessities and comforts for civilian prisoners who have contributed sweet **** all to society and in some respects aren’t much better off than service people when it really comes to exercising personal liberty, including choosing where to dine. Or am I missing something here? :confused: :confused: :confused:

#14

Ah yes but you’re forgetting that we have to feed prisoners for free, otherwise we might infringe their 'ooman rights innit? Bloody European bloody court of bloody human bloody rights…grumble grumble

#15

Nah, we’re not subject to the European Court of Thingy, but we still feed our prisoners. Which in many cases is a monstrous waste of food.

Nonetheless, I don’t have a problem with treating prisoners reasonably, which includes feeding them at least as well as the army fed me 40 years ago. Although in America I think that would be unconstitutional as it would qualify as a cruel and unusual punishment.

Less flippantly, while at a personal level I like the idea of wreaking personal justice upon people who have wronged me or those close to me, prisons are a necessary part of our legal system. If we don’t insist upon reasonable standards in them then we end up condoning Abu Ghraib or, at vile worst, Auschwitz.

Be all that as it may, it grates that service people who, unlike prisoners who are deprived of their liberty by compulsion because of their offences against society, have volunteered to be deprived of much of their liberty in defence of society are subjected to lesser standards and treatment than prisoners.

Why should a decorated veteran of several wars which have been (at least according to his or her government) to preserve the system which gives prisoners fair treatment, have to pay for his or her meal when the prisoner gets his or her meal for free?

#16

I served from 1966 thru 1991 and, for the most part, the meals served in the US Army were pretty good. It was definitely better in the later years. Someone once told me the two hardiest jobs in the peace time Army were MP’s and cooks because they have to work long hours every day of the year and nobody appreciates them.

Body-count math is 3 guerrillas plus 1 probable plus 2 pigs equals 37 enemy K.I.A.’s. “Murphy’s” Law of Combat #22