I was once again recently reminded why it is exactly why I do NOT miss living in on-poste housing. Holy fucking hell. Here's my top ten list of why on-poste housing sucks balls.
1. Getting housing- To get on-poste housing, you have to have a mountain of paperwork that would crush a small child if it fell on him and then prepare to wait anywhere from a few weeks to a year to get a house that may or may not be within what your standards are. And God forbid your husband is deployed, because then you get the added fun of hoping that your fucking POA is the one housing wants that week. Then you get to move into a more than likely filthy dirty house, depending on if the previous tenants hired the cleaning crew or cleared themselves. More on that later. The entire process is a prime example of the Army motto: Hurry up and wait and then wait some fucking more. Exhausting to say the least.
2. Noise, noise, noise- The walls in on-poste housing are paper thin. You can hear EVERYTHING, and I do mean everything, if you are attached to another unit. Good example? We went home for a weekend and there had been some robberies on our block, so we asked a friend to stay while we were gone. No problem. Got home and the neighbours begged us to never leave again, or to at least never let him stay there. For 3 nights in a row, they got no sleep. Apparently, John and his girlfriend had an orgy all weekend long and just when the neighbours thought they were done, they would hear "Oh John! Fuck me harder! WHOO!" All fucking weekend. (Bad pun, I know!) Needless to say, expect everyone to know how frequent, how long, how good, and everything else about your sex life. They will hear it all.
3. Electricity, sometimes- The power on poste will go out at random times for exactly one hour. I'm serious. You can time that shit to the second. The Army has to save money somehow. . .
4. Infestations- Plan to be buying a lot of bug repellents and bleach. Case in point: Cockroach Village. We had cockroaches and so did all our neighbours, but rather than spray all the houses in one day, weeks would pass so the little bastards would just move next door until the exterminators decided to spray there. Then they moved back. Bleaching did no good. And then there were ants and spiders and mice and everything creepy crawling fucker you can imagine moving into my house to get away from all the construction constantly going on. Disgusting and damn near impossible to keep clean and bug-free. Not to mention embarrassing when company comes and sees some nasty thing crawling across the floor. I swear that we should have invested in Chlorox--we'd be independently wealthy.
5. Just Nasty- I don't know what it is about some of the families on poste, but on-poste housing must be like a beacon in the night to white trash filthy mother fuckers, because you can find them all over poste. You know, bitches who NEVER fucking clean. My house is cluttered. I have kids. But I clean and bleach every day. I swear that people on poste get paid to breed the nasty things I talked about in number 4.
6. WTF is your kid doing?- I'd be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I thought this when I lived on poste. Or for "where the fuck are that kid's parents?" I get asked all the time how I can be so thin after having had 4 kids. Well, I clean and I actually DO things with my kids. What a shocker! That is enough exercise to at least lose some of the baby weight. There are more fat chicks on poste than at a Walmart convention. And invariably, they have a baby running around outside repeatedly (like every fucking day) butt ass naked with no parental supervision!! Gee, I wonder why you're fat?
7. Who did what?- The fat chicks on poste hate the skinny chicks, so watch out. They will all look at you and accuse you of everything from fucking the mailman to having anorexia. Talk about a rumor mill. If you listened to my fat ass neighbours, I was banging my brother, my husband's best friend, the 1SG, the other skinny girl who lived on our block and everyone in the squad. I also was only 12 years old and the eldest daughter of my husband. Just brace yourself and keep an eye on your neighbours. I have seen people resort to binoculars, no shit, to try to get dirt on the people in their neighbourhood!!
8. Red Light, Green Light- And those assholes who called me a whore are always the ones with the green light out, or the apple, or the broom thing. Whatever it is on your particular poste. It's basically a sign that means that anyone who wants can go to the door and get a free fuck. Isn't that nice? Red light means the free fuck is a no-go.
9. Harassment- does NOT exist in a military poste. No matter how badly the neighbours treat you or what rumours they spread, housing doesn't give a flying fuck. It's he said- she said, so you are on your own. Unless things escalate to physical violence. . . So being yelled at you have to deal with, but if they shoot you, housing will intervene (after the third incident or so).
10. Clearing- Once you decide that housing can go take a flying leap off a low bridge and living off poste is the life for you, you get to clear which brings me back to the clean it yourself or hire the crew. If you hire the crew, you are good to go, but you are $300 for some idiot to take a GARDEN HOSE into your house and spray the place down. I watched them do it to a neighbour's place. And if you do it yourself, you will get 3 different ways that the floor must be cleaned which are contradictory and pointless. It's a fun exciting time dealing with inspectors and timelines. Have you ever noticed that when you want something from the Army, it takes FOREVER, but when the Army wants something from you, you better have it yesterday? Bastards.
Living on poste has its perks. And its pitfalls. Life on poste is never dull at least, if you like stupidity and drama. . .
3 comments:
Oh em gee...I'm going to elaborate...anyone who wants to read it click my pic :)
Miss Kate, I live on post and don't have many creepy crawly things. THANK GOD!!! Just the normal spiders you'd have with any house. But I agree with everything, but the price to moving out and having the crew do the cleaning. A neighbor moved out and she hired the crew because she was PCSing to Germany, and she had to pay $1800 for them to clean the whole house. Oh. . . which they never did, her house was relatively clean, thank goodness, because I watched and waited and even as their rule states it takes a week at least to get a new resident into the home, I had a new one moving in 2 days later!!! I called and bitched them out for her because she had no idea, but I didn't expect nor get anything out of it other than the satisfaction of yelling and cursing at someone. Oh and something to add to your list of ranting, be ready to always have an MP taking a witness story or victim write up or something in your immediate neighborhood area. Someone always has drama and you will hear the police vehicles rushing to the scene of whatever the next drama is. I just keep my head down and hope for the best everyday, and when someone says hey do you know what happened yesterday, I simply say I don't want to know and walk away.
Well, this was 12 years ago. . . Things have probably changed a BIT since then, but bullshit is always bullshit and housing excels in that!
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