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Hello SF Community,

First of all, thank you for viewing my post. I have looked for answers to my question, but could not find them, so I decided to post it here.

Over the past few months, I have started to try and reach some of my longer term goals to lead kind of life I would like to lead. The first of which to to become a member of the Army Special Forces.

This has been a goal of mine over the past few years and has increasing become more and more important to me, moving from idea to action and obtainable. I've worked hard to get where I am today to reach that goal and started the next part of the process. I am focusing on the 25m target and I am taking each part one step at a time.

The last step I have been working on and nearly completed was simply joining the army.

While waiting at MEPS to sign my contract and receive a ship date, they gave me a ship date for the end of June. I repeatedly told my recruiter and the head Sergeant at the recruiting station that I am not available to ship until mid-August for other commitments that I have made that I cannot get out of. I even told the counselor this when he was finding my job.

There was much deliberation and trying to get me to sign this contract at this date because they said that they couldn't get any dates in the future that I requested. They repeatedly told me this, going as far to get a second recruiter from the request of my current recruiter to take me to a back room urging me to sign the contract on the premise that if two recruiters say it, it must be true.

He said that I can always "reno" my contract to push it out further over and over until mid-August, which I didn't want to accept. He tried many tactics in the back room to get me to sign the contract, ranging from guilt that they put so much time into me to lying and saying that it's my only chance ever to join like this and finally, the real kicker, that if I don't sign this now, I am not SF material because I have trust issues because I don't trust his or my recruiter's word that they can renegotiate my signed written contract that I "certainly" won't ship until August, regardless of what my contract actually says. I then mentioned something to him about what I thought some SF values were in loyalty to the commitments that I have and that were made clear for months when I first stepped into the recruiter's office and also the value of being certain of what you want and standing by that.

Once a civilian worker heard that the recruiter told me this, from his mouth, she immediately said "I never want to hear the word 'reno' out of your mouth Sargent", to which the story started changing. I stood tall in that I would not sign a contract that did not say an August ship date, leading to the ultimate question of this post comes about.

Ultimately, I talked to the 1st Sargent of the entire region and he said that he called the office and other people around the country and it was true that there weren't any jobs to ship out in August, but that is because the openings do not populate more than 90 days out, hence the latest date possible today at a June shipment. This 1st Sargent finally seemed to be the telling me the truth. This further makes sense that this be the case because they said they couldn't even pull a later ship date on an 11x or any other contract.

With the background information in place, the real question that I wanted to ask the SF Community is, was I wrong in not signing the contract and violating the recruiter's supposed values of Special Forces? Was he right in saying that me not trusting his word over a written contract at this stage is not SF material and I would fail right out of the "Q" course and finish as an 11b anyway?

I do believe that what both recruiters and the counselor were saying to me was wrong, especially in light of what the 1st Sargent said.

I am still now fully qualified to sign the 18x contract and I am still good and qualified for another two years. I simply can wait until June when 90 days out, the spots available for August will have populated and fully sign then.

I didn't mean for this post as a forum to vent my frustration. I am genuinely asking because I believe that trust is definitely a very large part of not only SF, but of the entire army and life in a whole and this kind of took me back and made me wonder if he is representing it truthfully.

Thank you very much for reading this.

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