The "Shitbird"

AKA the 'sick call Ranger', a 'Blue Falcon', or, in the old speech, 'pussy'.

The new military has a bunch of great folks. Stand up Americans. But since requirements to join our various services (OORAH MARINE CORPS! YOU TOLD THEM TO STUFF-IT AND YOU STILL ROCK!) have been lowered to accommodate a more 'diverse' population, it is, by some, seen as a meal-ticket, and a way to the good life of disability checks and permanent care by our beloved and ever-stretched-thin VA.

The "shitbird". Somehow these men and women (really 'children' is a better word) make it past the initial screens and into our various services and somewhere between being yelled at or made to run in formation or carry a heavy backpack on a march or firing *gasp* a weapon they decide that their knee hurts (it's usually the vagina that actually hurts, particularly on the male form of shitbird), and there's not enough IV Vagisil in the world to make good soldiers, airmen, or seamen out of them. God bless the Marines, if you are going to quit on them you are quitting early.

And the shitbirds are not stupid, at  least not most of them. Most of them have heard about the chinks in the system and how long they need to stay in before their knees develop chronic pain, or their backs, or their brains. And then they start the march towards a medical separation with benefits. It usually takes a true shitbird about 14 months to achieve this.

The nice thing about the shitbirds is that, unlike in civilian ER land, I can actually tell them, 'no, you get no lortab, go back to work'. But then I put them in for a medical separation after their command has called me telling me, no surprise, that the service member in question is, in short, a shitbird and they want them gone.

We do have our tricks to keep them from fully grasping the government entitlement teat, but at some point you cut your losses and go on.

These same shitbirds, on the outside, soon find that because of their 'disability' that a job is hard to come by, so then the 'I  need my disability rating increased' game starts with the VA, and that goes on until they die or have enough children to live comfortably, eating cheetos, getting fat, and raising more.... shitbirds.They also go to the ER a lot. The ER can't tell them 'no'.

Diversity rules.