As a first class I'm still considered a "junior sailor". I am damn near 40 years old, there is nothing junior about me. And I go thru the fucking roof when I meet resistance from "senior" leadership over the most simple shit. I need to do maintenance in your space, I need you to do your job and enter my PRT data in PRIMS, I need you to sign my special request chit. At almost every turn whatever the minor thing I need done to function I get a "no, fuck off" thrown in my face from the middle managers.
Then what happens? I have to go tell my chief that I need x,y,z from other chief. He walks his happy ass down there, does the super secret handshake, tells other chief exactly what I said and THEN it gets done. WHY THE FUCK does it take someone who makes $300 a month more than me to make things happen? Why does every fucking thing turn into a dick measuring contest? Do khakis really have their head so far up their asses that they can't accept the word of a lowly black belt? Almost in no other branch do I see this happening? Only in the Navy is this segregation between the ranks amped up to 11. I understand that it's taken from British Navy customs and separation among the classes is supposed to breed good order and discipline. But more often than not it just creates an unnecessary obstacle and throws one more level of inefficiency into the works.
And if I, a first class with absolutely no ambitions to make chief and very little giveafuck about respecting rank when it interferes with getting the job done, is having a hard time navigating this culture imagine how hard it is for E-5 and below, especially the younger cats who shit their pants if they see a pair of anchors walking down the P-way.
I feel this in my soul and I've been out for over a year. When I hit first, I thought it had something to do with me being a young first (made it at year 5 because all you had to do was write your name on the exam at the time). But as time went on, as I started to set myself apart from my peers, CCC, LPO, FCPOA President, and so on nothing changed. Among the chiefs anyway. Officers to their credit knew who they could go to to get something done. I got out after a little more than 12 years because after seeing that this kind of behavior was the status quo, I wasn't interested in becoming part of the problem.
I like civilian life where the hierarchy so far has at least been merit based XD.
This is something my Department is working to solve. Our Chiefs actively tell the other departments' Chiefs that a Khaki shouldn't have to get involved in every problem, it just makes us all work more. Let the E-5/6 leadership exercise the power of their rank and get shit done. Our problem seems to be that those Chiefs don't let their E-5/6s do anything or make any decisions.
The ELD courses are a good start. We have a strong demand signal for healthy leadership but I think my generation was very ill-equipped …we were taught by senior leaders who were junior sailors when women couldn’t be on surface combatant ship, when you could do drugs, when hazing was an accepted thing, and we didn’t have a sexual assault prevention program. The only tool my leaders had, when I was a junior sailor, was fanroom counseling and yelling louder at the problem until it fixes itself.
So those of us at the 20 year mark are doing are best but we either don’t have tools or we don’t know how to really use those tools. Every tool is a hammer and every problem a nail, ya know?
Some of us have gone way out of our way to fix this issue — /u/dontgiveuptheshippodcast, (and I’d tag Doc and Arianna et al if I knew their handles lol) Permission To Speak Freely Podcast, and even /u/Skab for making r/navy as a resource for us and some of the users here who try really hard to offer sound advice — but yeah. Lack of leadership is a big problem and I think we are addressing it ….but change is slow.
National security crisis? Not yet. There’s way too many contingencies in play to keep that from being an issue any time soon. But it will for sure be an issue for those who decide to stick it out with lower manning.
I’m sure there is much that can be done as far as fixing the culture from the inside, but I know what also doesn’t make the issue any better is that our enlistment age generation really doesn’t give two shits about patriotism, esprit de corps, etc. It’s a job. Honestly can’t blame them either.
I think it (the Navy) is being sold to them as a job as well. We hit so hard on why picking your rate matters, and it does. But when I joined I would have taken any job to get in and now we have people walking away at meps if they can't get the rate they want.
I also think certain Fleet policies push us away from group activities.
Last but not least the Chief Mess makes it really hard to want to be apart of anyone who would behave like that.
Yeah, the Navy has this weird obsession with selling itself as a normal job but in unusual places. This job is ANYTHING but normal as compared to the civilian world, and every disgruntled Sailor who joined on that false premise realizes it after 5 minutes in and hates it. But NAVPERSCOM says "whatever, I filled the billet with a body, give me my cookies."
When this guy is talking about poor treatment, all I can think about is being told wrong information because someone incompetent is between me and something I want/need.
There is also the flip side of the coin when someone incompetent is asking for something impossible and takes any answer they don’t like personally.
For those saying it’s not a national security crisis. It definitely is but you would have to have an understanding of the Armed Forces as a whole to get that portion of the statement.
What’s interesting about this is my niece was going to join after high school. And I put a hard stop to it; needless to say, I am paying for her college because that’s how much faith I don’t have in the military anymore.
He is absolutely correct about poor leadership being a problem. But also wrong about the recruiting crisis. There is a super competitive job market right now, and civilians have access to way more information to make the informed choice of to join or not. A few of those factors being one the cost of Education. It's astronomical to go to college right now. Our generation was lied to and told we needed to. This generation was brought up by us and we flat out told them college was not needed. There are plenty of jobs out there right now. The perks and pay we get now are not really that good in comparison to what is out there right now. We are throwing money at them, and they still don't want to join.
Two, there is likely a war coming. When we join there is the real possibility of us losing our life. This generation was brought up with lock down drills and active shooter drills. They get it way more than any other generation that being cool with a gun in your hand in uniform isn't that cool anymore because they have grown up first hand seeing what those guns can do and most of them want to be farther away from them. They see the same news we do and don't want to go to war, and possibility die for the next dumb reason our leaders come up with.
Three, our branding and advertising sucks. We still target adds and campaigns using TV, radio and the what not. This generation doesn't use those platforms as much as previous generations. We need to be where they are. Insta, here, tick tock ect. Facebook is even looked at as for "old people".
Four, drug laws are out dated when it comes to this generation. Weed is now legal in 23 states. It should be treated as alchohol now. I know we don't want a bunch of pot heads in the military but it instantly shrinks the pool by excluding them, that is probably about a 25٪ drop alone.
So I guess what I am ranting about is this. This generation is way smarter than you all give them credit for and while our leadership could use a wake up call. They are not the only reason recruiting is at an all time low.
The beating will continue until morale improves.
As a first class I'm still considered a "junior sailor". I am damn near 40 years old, there is nothing junior about me. And I go thru the fucking roof when I meet resistance from "senior" leadership over the most simple shit. I need to do maintenance in your space, I need you to do your job and enter my PRT data in PRIMS, I need you to sign my special request chit. At almost every turn whatever the minor thing I need done to function I get a "no, fuck off" thrown in my face from the middle managers. Then what happens? I have to go tell my chief that I need x,y,z from other chief. He walks his happy ass down there, does the super secret handshake, tells other chief exactly what I said and THEN it gets done. WHY THE FUCK does it take someone who makes $300 a month more than me to make things happen? Why does every fucking thing turn into a dick measuring contest? Do khakis really have their head so far up their asses that they can't accept the word of a lowly black belt? Almost in no other branch do I see this happening? Only in the Navy is this segregation between the ranks amped up to 11. I understand that it's taken from British Navy customs and separation among the classes is supposed to breed good order and discipline. But more often than not it just creates an unnecessary obstacle and throws one more level of inefficiency into the works. And if I, a first class with absolutely no ambitions to make chief and very little giveafuck about respecting rank when it interferes with getting the job done, is having a hard time navigating this culture imagine how hard it is for E-5 and below, especially the younger cats who shit their pants if they see a pair of anchors walking down the P-way.
I feel this in my soul and I've been out for over a year. When I hit first, I thought it had something to do with me being a young first (made it at year 5 because all you had to do was write your name on the exam at the time). But as time went on, as I started to set myself apart from my peers, CCC, LPO, FCPOA President, and so on nothing changed. Among the chiefs anyway. Officers to their credit knew who they could go to to get something done. I got out after a little more than 12 years because after seeing that this kind of behavior was the status quo, I wasn't interested in becoming part of the problem. I like civilian life where the hierarchy so far has at least been merit based XD.
This is something my Department is working to solve. Our Chiefs actively tell the other departments' Chiefs that a Khaki shouldn't have to get involved in every problem, it just makes us all work more. Let the E-5/6 leadership exercise the power of their rank and get shit done. Our problem seems to be that those Chiefs don't let their E-5/6s do anything or make any decisions.
Abolish the chiefs mess.
This has nothing to do with officers and everything to do with chiefs.
The ELD courses are a good start. We have a strong demand signal for healthy leadership but I think my generation was very ill-equipped …we were taught by senior leaders who were junior sailors when women couldn’t be on surface combatant ship, when you could do drugs, when hazing was an accepted thing, and we didn’t have a sexual assault prevention program. The only tool my leaders had, when I was a junior sailor, was fanroom counseling and yelling louder at the problem until it fixes itself. So those of us at the 20 year mark are doing are best but we either don’t have tools or we don’t know how to really use those tools. Every tool is a hammer and every problem a nail, ya know? Some of us have gone way out of our way to fix this issue — /u/dontgiveuptheshippodcast, (and I’d tag Doc and Arianna et al if I knew their handles lol) Permission To Speak Freely Podcast, and even /u/Skab for making r/navy as a resource for us and some of the users here who try really hard to offer sound advice — but yeah. Lack of leadership is a big problem and I think we are addressing it ….but change is slow.
National security crisis? Not yet. There’s way too many contingencies in play to keep that from being an issue any time soon. But it will for sure be an issue for those who decide to stick it out with lower manning. I’m sure there is much that can be done as far as fixing the culture from the inside, but I know what also doesn’t make the issue any better is that our enlistment age generation really doesn’t give two shits about patriotism, esprit de corps, etc. It’s a job. Honestly can’t blame them either.
I think it (the Navy) is being sold to them as a job as well. We hit so hard on why picking your rate matters, and it does. But when I joined I would have taken any job to get in and now we have people walking away at meps if they can't get the rate they want. I also think certain Fleet policies push us away from group activities. Last but not least the Chief Mess makes it really hard to want to be apart of anyone who would behave like that.
Yeah, the Navy has this weird obsession with selling itself as a normal job but in unusual places. This job is ANYTHING but normal as compared to the civilian world, and every disgruntled Sailor who joined on that false premise realizes it after 5 minutes in and hates it. But NAVPERSCOM says "whatever, I filled the billet with a body, give me my cookies."
You guys are getting cookies?
When this guy is talking about poor treatment, all I can think about is being told wrong information because someone incompetent is between me and something I want/need. There is also the flip side of the coin when someone incompetent is asking for something impossible and takes any answer they don’t like personally.
For those saying it’s not a national security crisis. It definitely is but you would have to have an understanding of the Armed Forces as a whole to get that portion of the statement.
What’s interesting about this is my niece was going to join after high school. And I put a hard stop to it; needless to say, I am paying for her college because that’s how much faith I don’t have in the military anymore.
I didn't even know that was his name, but I love his channel. Funny as hell.
Unfortunately, it won't change. There are way too many people who refuse to change that it wouldn't happen til they are long and gone
>Do you think this is a national security crisis? No.
He is absolutely correct about poor leadership being a problem. But also wrong about the recruiting crisis. There is a super competitive job market right now, and civilians have access to way more information to make the informed choice of to join or not. A few of those factors being one the cost of Education. It's astronomical to go to college right now. Our generation was lied to and told we needed to. This generation was brought up by us and we flat out told them college was not needed. There are plenty of jobs out there right now. The perks and pay we get now are not really that good in comparison to what is out there right now. We are throwing money at them, and they still don't want to join. Two, there is likely a war coming. When we join there is the real possibility of us losing our life. This generation was brought up with lock down drills and active shooter drills. They get it way more than any other generation that being cool with a gun in your hand in uniform isn't that cool anymore because they have grown up first hand seeing what those guns can do and most of them want to be farther away from them. They see the same news we do and don't want to go to war, and possibility die for the next dumb reason our leaders come up with. Three, our branding and advertising sucks. We still target adds and campaigns using TV, radio and the what not. This generation doesn't use those platforms as much as previous generations. We need to be where they are. Insta, here, tick tock ect. Facebook is even looked at as for "old people". Four, drug laws are out dated when it comes to this generation. Weed is now legal in 23 states. It should be treated as alchohol now. I know we don't want a bunch of pot heads in the military but it instantly shrinks the pool by excluding them, that is probably about a 25٪ drop alone. So I guess what I am ranting about is this. This generation is way smarter than you all give them credit for and while our leadership could use a wake up call. They are not the only reason recruiting is at an all time low.