CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS: You Know You’ve Been Contracting For Too Long When…

Today I was putting on my Kit when one of my teammates said “You know you’ve been contracting too long if can put on all your kit with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth and not drop a single ash”

We had a good laugh about it and spent the rest of the day thinking up new ones. Spending all day long cracking on other Contractors and each other is a pretty common thing especially if you are on a team with a tight group of guys. The main thing I will miss from this work when I “retire”  is the camaraderie amongst men who carry guns.

Out of all the different groups of people I have hung out with Contractors are one of the funniest subcultures out there [Expats are a close second]. They share their own lingo, vacation spots, fashion [or lack of fashion] and poor choices in women.

Anyway, the stuff we were coming up with was so funny I had to start taking notes. I have listed the funniest ones the current or former contractors here should totally get. And even if you have never worked as a Civilian Contractor you should still get a kick out of reading it.

You Know You’ve Been Contracting For Too Long When…

- You know where Issan is

- You ever carried a weapon on a gig that had the word “Launcher” in it’s name

- You saw those pictures of the drunken TC Embassy Guard Force guys in Afghanistan and said “So?”

- You can’t take a job with a company that makes you go through the U.S. Army’s CRC because you never turned in your gear the last time you went through [because you jumped ship and went to work for another company mid-contract] and owe them like 4,000.00 Dollars in lost gear.

- You have more than 4 Gorilla Boxes full of shit form other gigs in your house back home.

- You remember when no-one ever got a gig from filling out an online job app.

- You start a sentence with “when I was married”

- You have not been back to the states on leave in 4 years

- You remember when spending 30,000.00 dollars while on leave was no big deal.

- You know 5 or more people on every FOB in Iraq

- When you arrive in Bangkok on leave a local bird picks you up, and you drive

- You start a sentence with “So we started shooting right away” [for guys who have worked in Iraq]

For the Civilian Contractors reading this feel free to add a few more of your own “You Know You’ve Been Contracting For Too Long When…” in the Comments.

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~James G
Founder – Editor in Chief

James G is a Veteran Civilian Contractor who has worked in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for way too long; he has traveled to over 50 countries chasing fortune and glory. He spends his off time in Indonesia and Virginia getting drunk, shooting guns, writing poorly written articles and Smoking too much. James G. on FACEBOOK