Carryovers

[Standing Wolf]

Do you find yourself doing certain things - or not doing certain things - even years after the completion of your military service, as a result of that experience?

I spent a bit less than 21 years on active duty, and to this day, 24 years after transferring to the Fleet Reserve, I hate wearing hats. Every blessed second you're outside in the Service, you're expected to be "covered". The only time I ever wear a hat now is when I'm at the ballpark, where it's pretty much mandatory.

After two decades of writing dates in the military/European fashion - 26 December 2017 - that's just the way I write the date now, unless forced by legality or protocol to do otherwise. I tried to make myself put the month first when writing checks, etc., but eventually just gave it up; it's too deeply ingrained in me now.

In a broader, less specific example, I believe spending as much time in the military as I did made me a more stoic person when it comes to personal comfort and convenience. After years of insane hours, rotating work shifts, O-dark-30 preflights, riding jammed in the back of a pickup truck with eleven other guys, getting billeted in a transit barracks room you could grow orchids in and having to shower with cold water and dry yourself off with your sheets - getting up in the middle of the night to dose a pet or comfort a sick child, cleaning up after family members without getting mad about it, or dealing with virtually anything life can throw at you with equanimity, is second nature.

[Kacper]

I was once tasked with getting a new hire straight out of the Navy to quit after I warned my boss not to hire him straight out of the Navy given his rating. I forget what it was precisely now, but he did medical records auditing and was about as uptight as he could be about compliance and my employer, well, we didn't have a lot of hard and fast internal rules so it was a complete mismatch. My boss didn't like to fire people because then he would have to pay more for unemployment, so I was secretly tasked with driving new hire nuts because he was driving everybody else nuts. Eventually some key others were let in on the mission because I needed their help in creating an endless string of new tasks for him for which there were no policies, procedures, rules, or regulations because , "I don't know. Do whatever it takes to handle it" drove him absolutely batty and I had to make sure nobody gave him any guidance because he already PO'd everybody who had tried by his demanding a printed document upon which to rely to do anything.

[Standing Wolf]

I was once tasked with getting a new hire straight out of the Navy to quit after I warned my boss not to hire him straight out of the Navy given his rating. I forget what it was precisely now, but he did medical records auditing and was about as uptight as he could be about compliance and my employer, well, we didn't have a lot of hard and fast internal rules so it was a complete mismatch. My boss didn't like to fire people because then he would have to pay more for unemployment, so I was secretly tasked with driving new hire nuts because he was driving everybody else nuts. Eventually some key others were let in on the mission because I needed their help in creating an endless string of new tasks for him for which there were no policies, procedures, rules, or regulations because , "I don't know. Do whatever it takes to handle it" drove him absolutely batty and I had to make sure nobody gave him any guidance because he already PO'd everybody who had tried by his demanding a printed document upon which to rely to do anything.

Are you sure he hadn't come out of the Air Force? Because my experience with Air Force people was that they lived and died by rules and regulations, and wouldn't make a move without them. The Navy is much, much more in the "Hey, whatever works" mode.

My flight crew had to abort from landing at Adak in a snowstorm with 50-knot crosswinds and a runway of solid ice one night, and we barely had enough fuel to make it to Elmendorf. The Air Force duty driver gave us a ride to the Billeting Office, and this little Airman, or whatever he was, behind the counter didn't want to give us rooms because we hadn't "called ahead for reservations". Thirteen tired, cranky, hungry, pissed off Navy brownshoes being hard-assed in the middle of the night by an E-4. Our Patrol Plane Commander, a somewhat tightly-wound Lieutenant from Oklahoma with no discernable sense of humor, threatened to climb over the counter and get the keys himself, at which point the Air Force dude decided to make an exception. That was pretty typical of my encounters with the junior Service.

[Kacper]

Are you sure he hadn't come out of the Air Force? Because my experience with Air Force people was that they lived and died by rules and regulations, and wouldn't make a move without them. The Navy is much, much more in the "Hey, whatever works" mode.

My flight crew had to abort from landing at Adak in a snowstorm with 50-knot crosswinds and a runway of solid ice one night, and we barely had enough fuel to make it to Elmendorf. The Air Force duty driver gave us a ride to the Billeting Office, and this little Airman, or whatever he was, behind the counter didn't want to give us rooms because we hadn't "called ahead for reservations". Thirteen tired, cranky, hungry, pissed off Navy brownshoes being hard-assed in the middle of the night by an E-4. Our Patrol Plane Commander, a somewhat tightly-wound Lieutenant from Oklahoma with no discernable sense of humor, threatened to climb over the counter and get the keys himself, at which point the Air Force dude decided to make an exception. That was pretty typical of my encounters with the junior Service.

No he was definitely Navy though I know someone with a similar job from the Air Force who is exactly the same. I swear you could give that guy a letter from another file and tell him to write the same letter but to a different person and he simply could not do it. He needed to see a book that said that was the letter that was to be sent out under the circumstances and he needed the letter to be in the computer as a form letter that he could link the name and address from the database into by checking a box instead of you know typing a two sentence letter with an address and name on it different than the one he had been handed to go by, and then he needed someone to approve the letter before he passed it on to the boss to sign.

Anyway, he was very obsessive so I started making sure my gig lines were off and my shirt fronts bunched up instead of a straight gig and a military tuck just because I knew it drove him crazy. Dude literally ordered me some shirt stays because it was bothering him so much LOL.

[Standing Wolf]

Wow. Well, I guess every Service has got them. I did run into some real squirrel-bait occasionally in the Navy. My first C.O. up at Centerville Beach NavFac, south of Eureka, reminded me so much of Christopher Walken's Sgt. Toomey from the film Biloxi Blues that it was scary.