Lower Your Expectations

I remember during the mid-1990s, the uproar about how Barbie dolls made girls feel less-than-adequate reached its zenith. Apparently if she were a real woman, Barbie would be like 6'4" and have a 12-inch waist or something like that, and apparently every girl who ever had a Barbie would ... I don't know, maybe like grow up and think they got a Corvette just for being a Blonde or something. Clearly I never really paid attention to it. But the critics of Barbie (and by proxy Mattel) were on to something: no one should ever grow up and think that their wedding dress would immediately fit them and only cost $15.

You dream-crushing Brunette bitch...

Ha. Hahaha. That's a zinger right there. But seriously, in all the uproar over Barbie making girls think that in order for them to be accepted they had to be thin and then the ensuing tangents about gender roles and how society was forcing every girl whose parents bought her a Barbie to accept the fact she would never be as good as Barbie, something was lost. What about guys? I mean, I'll be honest, in my house there were sparingly few Barbies, and they were all in Dave's room (Hahahah! Zinger #2!!) but we did have a plethora of GI Joes. And when you think about it, all the rhubarb about Barbie and gender roles and expectations could be just as aptly applied to GI Joe. They were made by the same company, released in the feel-good 1950s and were wildly unrealistic. I mean, I don't know about you but when I joined the Army I was convinced I would grow huge muscles, get interesting uniforms, wield unnecessarily powerful weapons and be a part of an elite unit. Why? GI Joe said so!!

You dream-crushing Brunette bitch...

I know most people (so like, 4 of the 5 people who read this) will read this and say that I am just being a woman-hater or something. But the fact remains: Barbie is thin with huge breasts and ... interesting proportions. GI Joe is muscular with massive biceps and like, no body fat. So why is it that only Barbies can crush girls' dreams? Do I not dream?


So, right, expectation management is an important part of daily life. I remember at OCS my favorite expression, right up there with "embrace the suck," was "lower your expectations." In our heads we usually have an idea of how things "should go" provided literally everyone follows our plan to a "T." No one ever follows our plans. Rarely do they follow their own. I can think something should happen a certain way, and I can be fairly convinced that I am not asking for the moon, but I am usually left dejected.


On my FOB there are a metric crap ton of civilians who do the "little things," like cleaning port-a-johns, providing maintenance for non-tactical Ford F-150s, and fixing housing issues. They all work for a massive government contractor called KBR (you might recognize them by their old name, Haliburton) and they have been doing their jobs, in some cases, for 5-6 years here. However (and I cannot stress this enough), their very existence is dependent on mine. If there are no Soldiers, there can be no KBR. And while it would suck massively, I would be capable of sleeping on a sleep pad between two Hum-Vees and peeing into PVC pipes angled into the ground if necessary. Like most people in the Army, I have done it before. And everyone in KBR knows that when we re-deploy and/or close this base, they will be out of a job while I will not. It sucks for them, sure, but they are making tax-free cash over here and have literally no expenses. I'm sure they get along just fine. So when we need to work with them for somewhat important things, like getting a key to my building so I can get into my area and set things up, you would think they would be happy to help out. You would be wrong.

Me: (walking into the Billeting Office) "Excuse me, I need a key for Building 10, Pad 3.

KBR Guy: (talks on the unsecure phone to someone back in America, neglects to even acknowledge me)

Me: "Yeah so, I mean, there are keys behind you so if you would be so kind as to ... reach for one--

KBR Guy: "You talking to me?!"

Me: (looking around the office, realizing that there is just me and him in the double-wide trailer) "ummmm... the answer you're looking for is...? Yes? Yes, I am talking to you."

KBR Guy: (hangs up phone, checks Facebook status) "Oh yeah can you come back in like fifteen minutes? I am right in the middle of something."

Me: "......."


At times like these, I love playing a game called "Whose Job Depends on Whom?" with the KBR personnel. Funny thing is, while I expect to win they somehow always come out on top. And that's the problem. With the personnel costs of two wars, we have turned to the civilian sector to do the jobs we can no longer do. Housing, for example, would be a job normally reserved for the Quartermaster Corps, but they are busy building and resourcing infrastructural stuff for Iraqis who are generally too lazy to do it for themselves. So we turn to civilians and become increasingly dependent on them. The dependence leads to us looking the other way when they do things like neglect to remember why they have a job in the first place. And they are so used to preferential treatment that no one holds them accountable when they forget to do things they are contractually obligated to do because "KBR is just difficult to work with." It can be laughably inefficient: improving our defensive stance on this FOB by shifting concrete T-Walls or re-aligning the Entry Control Point ought to be done with a snap of the finger. Nope. It takes three work orders and 15 "working" days to get done. Apparently they are busy updating their Twitter Status??

And, apparently, I follow his Twitter feed

I guess I should take my own advice and lower my expectations. But I'm still waiting for my cool GI Joe gun.