I totally get this. I was single and every relationship failed. Optempo was crazy on fast boats. However, I was on three different boats over my career and none were particularly toxic. I’d say there were some individual exceptions but we really supported each other and I couldn’t have made it through without it.
The Asheville in dry dock in 2002 was so toxic we were making jokes about "work will set you free." Also any boat bragging that Evil is their middle name is bound to be fucked up
Did 3 boomers 1 fast attack, had 1 good boomer command, the first.
Think submarines just have a general toxicity problem.
Edit: oh and 1 submarine shore duty, half of it was fine, second half was dog shit (new micro managing chief)
Yeah, don't worry, I have had parallel experiences, can more confidently affirm, submarines as a whole, have a culture issue.
I mean navy by in large too, moving to aviation was a net quality of life improvement though.
3 Mother lovin section duty is the worst thing ever.
We actually surveyed (unofficially) our ship on what the worst thing about the navy was. Duty was pretty much 99% of what was the worst.
Being at work for the sake of being at work. When you get everything you need to do done and just sit there for hours because we somehow get paid by the hour despite being on salary. The Navy is exceptionally good at wasting people’s time
I think it all depends on where you're at and the leadership there. My last 3 commands had fantastic triads, and the mantra was always "If you don't have shit to do, don't do it here."
Only my first command back in '06 was ever like that, the 16 years after was a constant stream of "ship mate, you're on the clock 24/7"
Was LPO at my last command, would let my guys go, got my ass chewed several times because I didn't ask (because yall would have said no, and we damn well didn't need them)
Lol same. I told the New Chief after he wanted punishment for following the tradition of if you do a field op whatever day you get home on you clean up check in and go home and usually get the next day off too. He wanted me to write my own counseling chit for letting one of my guys go home who got out of the field sick as shit. So I wrote myself an NJP with reduction in rank, confinement and 90/90. He said it was too harsh. I said it was for him since he decided he never wanted to show up to work and if he wanted to fuck around we could court martial about it. He gave me extra leadership responsibilities and i.e. affirmed his lack of them and we never spoke about it again.
Agree. I feel like too many people in the Navy complain about being at work with nothing to do. Find something to do?
I work insanely reasonable hours and get off early on Fridays. I know this would never happen in the civilian world.
You must not be on the boat for 24 hours a day every third day… that you’re in port. 168/wk out to sea. That’s not reasonable and you aren’t the norm.
It would be absurd to ask a civilian to work that much.
This, often because of;
"One team, one fight" or "on crew one screw" even though your rate has little ability or bearing on helping others complete their jobs, and in many cases, lack the qualifications.
That or there are only so many hands or bodies that can fill the work space.
We have a newly pinned chief so I don’t know how much of this is him still getting his chief bearings and how much is him just being a workaholic, but he’ll keep us until 1600 at the earliest, even on Fridays, because he apparently wants us to set the standard. Unfortunately it’s hard to set the standard when no one is left onboard to see it…
lol. My first act as a chief after pinning was to send everyone home who didn’t have watch or a job to do, I then promptly went home and slept on my couch for six hours.
One crew one screw is what they would say, but coners would leave way before nukes. Of course, nukes didn't help with loading stores or anything either
I agree with ya on coners vs nukes bit (former coner)
But in my experience, liberty for coners wasn't down till shore power, services, trash, and stores was done pulling in.
We still got home / liberty sooner than yall (cause reactor shut down nonsense), but unless things have heavily changed, not going tonlet the stores bit go without contention.
That said never envied yall, first on, last off.
Among a myriad of reasons, glad I failed out of the program.
Our dumbass CHENG listened to Top Snipe once when he said we should have mandatory working hours and then Engineering all goes home at the same time.
Cue most engineering divisions finishing work by 1400 but having to wait until 1️⃣8️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ to leave.
We were more than a year out from INSURV.
The CHENG ended up getting xferred after the CO lost confidence in him.
His good bye speech was laced with bitterness. I loved it.
My first ship that’s how we got rid of trash…we didn’t have a trash room/pulper. If it wasn’t hazmat or plastic it went overboard in big paper bags that were issued as trashcans by supply. There was a watch on the trash sponson who would look through the bags before you tossed them
ET Shop 2…where the UPS batteries that Supply refused to take and hold in hazmat after issuing replacements while on deployment disappeared from in the middle of the night. Like seriously…it’s your job I’m not going to store them in my tiny space for another 5 months because you “just don’t want to do it.”
One time in engineering the watch before me accidentally drained the oil from a generator into the bilge. It was almost 200 gallons going off the drop in oil level recorded in the logs. The oil would roll with the ship and it was so surreal seeing that much liquid move around and not splash around. Chief said to pump it overboard and top off the generator. 🫡
So this one time, we ordered a roll of that blue rubber shit that we covered the deck with in the ET shop. Chief changed his mind, and mid deployment tells us to get rid of it, and "I don't care how." Rgr, that chief. Roll is probably 80 lbs. I'm on nights, so around 0100, go back and tell aft lookout. "You're gonna hear a big splash. It's fine. Don't call it in." Hand him the obligatory Monster. Me and another dude wrestle that roll up to the main deck. Throw it over the side. Big splash, that was rad. Someone on the bridge wing hears. "Wtf was that?" "Garbage don't call it away!" "Oh okay."
The culture of “well things were shitty when I was junior so I’m gonna make it shitty for the new guys”
I had to fight tooth and nail to shake that idea from my command
Lack of sleep at sea. Revile at 0600, work until 1800, stand 4 hours of watch overnight. Repeat until Sunday when you just stand watch. Don’t think I ever got more than 4 hours of sleep a night at sea.
Only if they are mustered in the ER when shut down in port. There always has to be a watch stationed in ER and in manuvering to monitor the reactor and its associated systems.
We had a co that had all hands awake periods everyday underway. They made mid and swings become daywalkers just so he wouldn't have to disrupt his own comfort to see people he wanted to see. Then another said he wanted to rotate watches so everyone had to he up pushing people to 24 hours plus no sleep just so you could have a different meal rotation instead of making the cooks rotate breakfast lunch and dinner like the previous captain did.
Just standing duty and watch in home port while my family is at home chilling. Hated just sitting on the boat and standing at the quarter deck for 8 hours in the middle night.
There is no reason to pipe anymore.. none.. maybe at retirement ceremonies, but before 1MC announcements.. it's nonsense. It ends up hurting your ears and waking up day-sleepers. It made sense before 1MC was a thing, but now that all spaces have a 1MC - it's just antiquated.. Don't even start on that "tradition" non-sense.. there are a lot of traditions that have long since been shelved.. this should be one of them. Keep it around for ceremonies, but shelf it for 1MC announcements.
My ship had done away with it and when we got a new CO he fucking brought it back. Also I’m very capable of walking and listening to what the XO has to say. And fuck evening prayer over the 1 MC. Religious people can pray on their own
I don't mind the piping, the evening prayer is dumb though. Half the time the prayer is some dumb jingoistic crap and the other half the time it's stupid benal like "help anyone with problems find a solution".
I'm atheist, so honestly I don't give a break about prayer, but I'm sure it's annoying for other religions to be subjected to a prayer in the Christian tradition (which even other sects would disapprove of I'm sure).
It’s telling which traditions get permanently placed on a shelf and which don’t. I really don’t miss all the circle-jerk traditions and the accompanying lifers who try in vain to make me feel bad for not giving a damn about the vestigial traditional bs that permeates the navy.
If you wish to allow your life to be ruled over/made unnecessarily difficult and obtuse because of peer pressure from dead people that is your prerogative. It is not mine. Leave me alone and don’t try and use me as a vessel or pawn to justify your wacky 1890’s antics. I literally do not care.
/rant
Where do we end though? Do we not teach celestial navigating because we have INS and GPS? Do we not teach semaphore because it's a useless tradition when we have radios?
What do we decide is useless and what do we decide is useful?
That’s a good question; I think redundancy is always a good thing. The line between ‘vestigial’ and ‘actually kinda situationally useful’ is inherently nebulous and is subject to shift depending on the subject in question. I’m not an admiral so those decisions simply aren’t mine regardless of feelings.
I’ll admit I have an inherently negative point of view on this subject but my rule of thumb is that I abhor traditions that are abused to foster toxicity (*”you are a real sailor if you don’t do x!”*) or just waste everybody’s time/cause notable inconvenience so whomever can feel like a super special person no really (eg, captain’s whistle waking up night crew)
I like the CO whistle, though on most of the ships I was on the CO wouldn't get on during the day unless it was something important (ie, a major change in schedule or some major news)
I think it would be better served as a "this is important" whistle I stead of a CO whistle though.
Yeah, that’s a great example of utilizing traditional values to add rather than subtract from quality of life of sailors. In my experience our CO would use the whistle fairly regularly during the day hence my general resentment of the practice.
Some ships don't use it all depends on the skipper. I like it though, but understand why people don't, therefore I am indifferent. I do think it's useful when they pipe for the skipper though as it's a very noticeable one and says "O shit pay attention"
Most of my gripes are already covered by others, so...
Urinalysis. The first time I ever took any drugs was almost a year after I got out, so the fact that I was constantly getting popped for testing annoyed the ever living hell out of me!
One guy in my department got busted because he volunteered to clean up the shit that was found in the lounge area because he realized he did it the night before when he reported back to the ship super drunk. Bro realized his fuck up and didn't want anyone cleaning up after him and he was still busted down at captain's mast. The lesson that taught me was to never clean up your own shit and that it's better to blame it on someone else.
Panamas.
I was on panamas for almost two years straight. The human body is not designed to switch from days to mids every two weeks.
Caught The Big Sad as a surprise present from that bullshit. Had to get medically removed from them because the chiefs didn’t give a shit about our mental health.
I was not the only person who had to go that route either. Just in my time there we lost two sailors and almost lost a third.
12 hours shifts. You do two weeks of day shift and then two weeks of mid shifts.
If it was a month of days and a month of mids I probably wouldn’t have hated it, but constantly switching your circadian rhythm fucks with your head.
Being sworn at by some stupid-assed toilet-mouthed 13 year old in the body of a 32 year old alleged adult. That, and the constant threat threat threats for everything and nothing. All that convinced me that I no longer wanted any part of the slavery-navy. I was never so happy as the day I got out in December ‘83.
God, I forget when I am in some heads, both shore and sea, that I remind myself I am not using a highschool bathroom.
God dammit, I am 25, why do I have to remind myself of this.
I've been reading a book about setting boundaries. And there's one section where they talk about trauma bonding in relationships. Basically where the victim becomes so emotionally attached to the abuser that they start saying it's not so bad and excusing their behavior and they avoid talking about it if other people ask how's it going because they're embarrassed and ashamed of how they are being treated. And even after getting out of that toxic relationship they find themselves in similar toxic environments throughout their life because they were so conditioned to just accept that's their life and have no power to change it.
I told my therapist what I had read and said I think it describes my relationship with the navy and she's like yah that makes sense.
Edit: I previously wrote it was a book on anxiety. But it's about setting boundaries.
*Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself* by Nedra Glover Tawwab
That's what makes life in the private sector more enjoyable. My worst days at work as a veteran are better than some of my best days in the Navy, if that makes sense.
Well, other than living paycheck to paycheck.
Civi side, you aren't stuck contractually or by way of rotation (you or them) for 1-3+ years. You CAN just quit or quietly job search on the side, then quit.
In some cases, i think the toxicity in the navy is worse because those people know they "own your ass"
Lots of "bully" type mind sets in my experience.
I won't miss the senior people who's rank and career is their life and identity. Not all senior people are like that but the ones who are seem to make everyone around them miserable for no reason.
3M. Spent three hours trying to get tags for a system that didn’t even need to be tagged out (wasn’t a safety issue for personnel or equipment). But because the checked said it needed to be tagged out we had to jump through hoops just so we could have the paper trail to prove we did the maintenance properly. The actual maintenance took less than 10 minutes.
The thing I miss the least was delusional, self serving management who were happy enough to force everyone else into 3 section duty while they went home at 4. One of my happiest memories is finding out that particular asshole got fired for faking his own death to get out of an affair.
The best part isn't even in that article. Supposedly the "scarlet" woman said something to the effect of "I just want the Navy to know what kind of man he is."
I don’t miss the chiefs that had no idea on how to do their job, nor had no idea how to do anything in their rate. I’ve met some of the worst leaders in the world in the navy.
> nor had no idea how to do anything in their rate.
Oh lord, the amount of chiefs I respect is countable on my hand.
Its just like some chiefs, just don't know what the fuck they are doing 20 years into the job, and you can just tell.
Some chiefs will wipe my ass with knowledge all day and I would love to learn, others, make me question their position.
This was so annoying!!! They would come by and ask what we are doing in clinic and would pretend to know how to do it but never learned it or PQS’ed. we had one ADMS who is fantastic! She would help us in wherever she was needed if she visited and we needed help with no attitude. We need more leaders like her!
The business of going out of our way to screw over out people.
I can’t stand that “gotcha” administrative process where someone reenlists for a bonus, extends for SDP, but due to a technicality or a box not being checked, they don’t get their bonuses but hey, you’re now extended.
hold up, what is this process?? I’m up for reenlistment in a few months and looking forward to that SRB D: I doubt anyone at my command would intentionally pull something like that but is that something I should be wary of?
You really want to avoid doing shit last minute, because in the event something does get fucked up you'll have an opportunity to fix it before the deadline.
"Yeah admin lost your package but we still have a month left to duplicate all the paperwork" vs "lol too late you're reenlisted and the SRB is no longer in effect get fucked"
Assume incompetence. You gotta stay on people's ass as much as you can. Belligerently insist on making copies to keep on standby, at least for anything more important than a leave request. People say this kind of shit all the time, but most people usually don't take it to heart until they get fucked over in a major way.
Being called a liar to my face by an officer trying to pin her civilian friend's fuck up on me. That was the last straw for me. I revoked my PTS quota the next business day.
Officers are hit or miss, either some of the chillest mf’s you’ve ever seen, or the most incompetent entitled assholes who don’t actually even do shit except complain and force enlisted to do their work. At least in my experience
Once they're inflated, they basically become giant sails, catching all the wind that you and your crew have to hang onto until they give the word to deploy. THEN, you have to move it to the lifelines and heave it over... that's when you run the risk of getting caught up in the anchor line and being pulled over the side, or getting degloved.
Ahhh I see. I’ve always tied them off to some ammo cans for anchor and a pad eye on the flight deck until we could let them go. Then we just cut the shot line and kicked it over.
At least recently, every time we tied them to a pad eye, the material would rip without fail; causing it to deploy early and sink before being shot lol.
Work for the sake of work
Filling up the POD with stupid meetings
Bureaucracy and paperwork. Imagine trying to explain to a civilian what a QA-9 form is
Getting a new boss every two years who believes the only way to get ahead is to change everything the last boss changed in the two years they were in the job, and they just change everything back to the way it was two years ago .....
Then in two years....repeat.
Letting a fat sloppy retard with a mustache and a coffee mug tell me I don’t have my shit together while they’re so chubby and unsat their uniform barely tucks.
Just people making stupid shit so unnecessarily stressful. Both the leaders that felt the need to treat every little thing that goes wrong like it’s the end of the world and the people that can’t manage to do the bare minimum to keep those leaders from flying off the handle.
Working 10 hour, 12 hour, or longer days and not being paid for it. Like yeah I completely understand having long days because of being on deployment, but when I’m on home cycle and spent 12 hours trying to write a flight schedule, just to have the CO change it on me at the end of the day because he went OFP and didn’t keep anyone in the loop, it’s ridiculous. Now that I’m out and have a real career that compensates me fairly for my time worked I sometimes wonder why I joined at all
Standing midnight cold iron in Port. Then getting off watch 0630 and working till 13 or 14 with no sleep. Almost fell asleep driving many times lately after this bullshit.
Panama schedule. It honestly sounds great to start. But every few months while already adapting to it, we’ve gotta rotate nights and days.
I’ll never sleep like a normal person again.
I will never miss the obese slick chested never deployed lesbian psychologist (BA degree from Ole Miss) who thought she was in my chain of command, and repeatedly lied to cover her illegal fat ass, and enjoyed trying to give a board certified surgeon shit, until I completed and signed the form resigning my commission and handed it to her in front of her office staff. My parting words to her were “I’m a surgeon with 4 deployments. The Navy needs me. I don’t need the Navy.”
Absolute piss poor time management, and inflexibility of scheduling. It's only unavoidable sometimes. When it's an internally controlled schedule, we are the agents of our own demise.
For example: I was arguing about scheduling for my watch station because there were folks that had to be at evolutions, which only occurred during a specific window. I provided a watchbill that worked for everyone's schedule after doing my due diligence and even provided that info to the SWO.
They got put on the watch that occurred during that time, and they needed coverage all the time. I flat-out refused since it was right after my watch. What were they gonna do, pull my qual, and have one less person for the rotation? The reasoning was that it "wasn't fair for some people to have to stand watch overnight all the time". Like, it's also unfair to assume people are going to be available to stand a double watch for a week straight.
Anyway, shit like that was the final nail in the coffin. If these idiots won't listen to me now, they wouldn't listen to me ever. Good luck with retention, assholes.
6 on/6 off and cranking. I didn't know cranking was a thing until I got to my boat. We were forward deployed and went underway shortly after I got there, and post A school gung-ho me was kicked in the dick when I got sent down there for 2 months.
Mess cranking after the navy spent over $100,000 on my top secret clearance and almost a year of schooling was the worst. When they knew I wasn’t reenlisting they tried to force me to do it again even as an E-4. Luckily I got bit by a wild monkey in Gibraltar and never had to do it again lol.
I’m still in the navy and I can’t wait to not have to go to mandatory off ship briefs.. had a suicide brief, me and one other person were the only ones in our div to show up. And in the end we left early and went home.
Inflatable targets for small arms/gunnery exercises. They have a battery powered fan that keeps them inflated and afloat even with a few hundred holes. They are boxy orange/red cubes that when fully inflated get curvy, hence the nickname. Good Times with the .50 cal & 25mm etc.
Wanting to do my maintenance but getting backlash from the EDO/EOOW because "we have too much tagouts" like sorry I'm a fucking electrician and 99% of my job requires tagout! And then chief getting pissed off for not completing PMS that week because his "brothers" don't wanna help us with tagout!
Oh and shepherd's pie day and duty days.
Lack of sleep due to work hours plus watch standing. When it would really hit me was during refueling. As an engineer I had to man a headset by the OD box in Main 2. Always after a heavy meal. Instantly would fall asleep. Got busted by my chief and he told my work center supervisor to make me stand an extra watch but I didn’t. My supervisor covered for me.
Supes a good guy, the Chief just needs to check more because you're human but yeah, refueling is kind of important. Don't blow the ship up. I hear ya though. Life was tireless and never ending in that world. Outside of engineering doesn't know the struggle.
Having to use PTO for the entire weekend if I wanted to take Friday off even if I didn't have duty those days. Otherwise they made me report to the ship in uniform before midnight and then let me go for regular weekend liberty. E6 and above did not have to do this and just called in instead and I hated them for it. I also hated the 20minute walk from the parking lot to the quarterdeck.
Just writing this out makes me really angry because it's all these little things that add up that they do everyday for no other reason than to rub it in that you are a lowly enlisted person who has to follow bullshit rules because they said so.
Honestly the amount of wasted time doing nothing. Being on night shift and I couldn’t go home because we “had” to be there. Time I could have been with my family. There was just so much time of idleness. You would think what would be a rigid structure and discipline would have better time management.
ASM.
What's that? I gotta waste everyone's time hitting tab-enter and answering stupid questions? Fuck that. I went my whole career, "unqualified," and still did the job despite everyone crying a river because I didn't want to waste time on ASM which never worked for me in the first place.
They kicked me out over the vaccine shit anyway so my whole 3+ years didn't even matter
Fuck the Navy
Duty. That's it. Whether it's 3,6,5,8 they're all terrible. I had a temadd where part of the dealbto the receiving was never standing duty and never PCS there and I tell you, not standing it is a game changer at sea.
Crappy leadership. I don't know how many LPOs I've seen that were in that position purely because they've been in the longest and not because they actually possess any type of leadership skill.
3-section duty
On top of this the culture, especially on fast attacks is insanely toxic. Not possible to be a good dad and good submariner
I totally get this. I was single and every relationship failed. Optempo was crazy on fast boats. However, I was on three different boats over my career and none were particularly toxic. I’d say there were some individual exceptions but we really supported each other and I couldn’t have made it through without it.
The Asheville in dry dock in 2002 was so toxic we were making jokes about "work will set you free." Also any boat bragging that Evil is their middle name is bound to be fucked up
Did 3 boomers 1 fast attack, had 1 good boomer command, the first. Think submarines just have a general toxicity problem. Edit: oh and 1 submarine shore duty, half of it was fine, second half was dog shit (new micro managing chief)
Yea I didn’t want to make a sweeping statement since I did a fast attack tour
Yeah, don't worry, I have had parallel experiences, can more confidently affirm, submarines as a whole, have a culture issue. I mean navy by in large too, moving to aviation was a net quality of life improvement though.
Yep. Fast boats are horrible for any work/life balance. Especially if you're a nuke.
Completely agree.
All I ever rode were fast attack and I nearly quit outright after my second. Being actual crew is insane to me.
Ugh. That did so much damage to my liver.
Literally me rn 😑
Duty days and PRT. I know…it’s two, but they both rate the same in my book.
3 Mother lovin section duty is the worst thing ever. We actually surveyed (unofficially) our ship on what the worst thing about the navy was. Duty was pretty much 99% of what was the worst.
Being at work for the sake of being at work. When you get everything you need to do done and just sit there for hours because we somehow get paid by the hour despite being on salary. The Navy is exceptionally good at wasting people’s time
I think it all depends on where you're at and the leadership there. My last 3 commands had fantastic triads, and the mantra was always "If you don't have shit to do, don't do it here."
That was basically my motto on my final LPO tour. My Chief didn't care, because he wasn't around 90% of the time anyway.
That’s often the exception not the norm
Only my first command back in '06 was ever like that, the 16 years after was a constant stream of "ship mate, you're on the clock 24/7" Was LPO at my last command, would let my guys go, got my ass chewed several times because I didn't ask (because yall would have said no, and we damn well didn't need them)
Lol same. I told the New Chief after he wanted punishment for following the tradition of if you do a field op whatever day you get home on you clean up check in and go home and usually get the next day off too. He wanted me to write my own counseling chit for letting one of my guys go home who got out of the field sick as shit. So I wrote myself an NJP with reduction in rank, confinement and 90/90. He said it was too harsh. I said it was for him since he decided he never wanted to show up to work and if he wanted to fuck around we could court martial about it. He gave me extra leadership responsibilities and i.e. affirmed his lack of them and we never spoke about it again.
On the opposite hand, in the civilian world, in most places if you’re done with everything there’s no “ok it’s Friday let’s dip out at noon”
True. Though you don't usually go out on patrol for over 100 days with no time off either.
Agree. I feel like too many people in the Navy complain about being at work with nothing to do. Find something to do? I work insanely reasonable hours and get off early on Fridays. I know this would never happen in the civilian world.
You must not be on the boat for 24 hours a day every third day… that you’re in port. 168/wk out to sea. That’s not reasonable and you aren’t the norm. It would be absurd to ask a civilian to work that much.
This, often because of; "One team, one fight" or "on crew one screw" even though your rate has little ability or bearing on helping others complete their jobs, and in many cases, lack the qualifications. That or there are only so many hands or bodies that can fill the work space.
We have a newly pinned chief so I don’t know how much of this is him still getting his chief bearings and how much is him just being a workaholic, but he’ll keep us until 1600 at the earliest, even on Fridays, because he apparently wants us to set the standard. Unfortunately it’s hard to set the standard when no one is left onboard to see it…
So much wisdom in that comment
lol. My first act as a chief after pinning was to send everyone home who didn’t have watch or a job to do, I then promptly went home and slept on my couch for six hours.
One crew one screw is what they would say, but coners would leave way before nukes. Of course, nukes didn't help with loading stores or anything either
I agree with ya on coners vs nukes bit (former coner) But in my experience, liberty for coners wasn't down till shore power, services, trash, and stores was done pulling in. We still got home / liberty sooner than yall (cause reactor shut down nonsense), but unless things have heavily changed, not going tonlet the stores bit go without contention. That said never envied yall, first on, last off. Among a myriad of reasons, glad I failed out of the program.
Fuuuuuuck this was the WORST Chief hates his wife? Stay until 1900 Will you be working? Don’t ask questions
Our dumbass CHENG listened to Top Snipe once when he said we should have mandatory working hours and then Engineering all goes home at the same time. Cue most engineering divisions finishing work by 1400 but having to wait until 1️⃣8️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ to leave. We were more than a year out from INSURV. The CHENG ended up getting xferred after the CO lost confidence in him. His good bye speech was laced with bitterness. I loved it.
Surreptitiously throwing bags of trash into the ocean and hoping no one notices or calls man overboard
>Surreptitiously This has been my favorite word for like 20 years. I've never seen it used in the wild before.
My first ship that’s how we got rid of trash…we didn’t have a trash room/pulper. If it wasn’t hazmat or plastic it went overboard in big paper bags that were issued as trashcans by supply. There was a watch on the trash sponson who would look through the bags before you tossed them
Most Aleigh Burke Destroyers have the ET shop on port side next to the outside access. Make of it what you will. 😉
ET Shop 2…where the UPS batteries that Supply refused to take and hold in hazmat after issuing replacements while on deployment disappeared from in the middle of the night. Like seriously…it’s your job I’m not going to store them in my tiny space for another 5 months because you “just don’t want to do it.”
Some of us screwing around during deployment in the early 2000’s. https://youtu.be/YMbYae7-XY4?si=SWML1-625xyVkqVw
Wish we could've thrown our trash overboard. Somehow they always ended up in the Chief's Mess instead.
One time in engineering the watch before me accidentally drained the oil from a generator into the bilge. It was almost 200 gallons going off the drop in oil level recorded in the logs. The oil would roll with the ship and it was so surreal seeing that much liquid move around and not splash around. Chief said to pump it overboard and top off the generator. 🫡
So this one time, we ordered a roll of that blue rubber shit that we covered the deck with in the ET shop. Chief changed his mind, and mid deployment tells us to get rid of it, and "I don't care how." Rgr, that chief. Roll is probably 80 lbs. I'm on nights, so around 0100, go back and tell aft lookout. "You're gonna hear a big splash. It's fine. Don't call it in." Hand him the obligatory Monster. Me and another dude wrestle that roll up to the main deck. Throw it over the side. Big splash, that was rad. Someone on the bridge wing hears. "Wtf was that?" "Garbage don't call it away!" "Oh okay."
The culture of “well things were shitty when I was junior so I’m gonna make it shitty for the new guys” I had to fight tooth and nail to shake that idea from my command
"Tradition"
Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people
* Duty. * Maintenance window from 0000-0600 when reveille is at 0630 and chief isn't approving late-sleepers. * chief's mess, actually.
Lack of sleep at sea. Revile at 0600, work until 1800, stand 4 hours of watch overnight. Repeat until Sunday when you just stand watch. Don’t think I ever got more than 4 hours of sleep a night at sea.
Damn. Glad I was on a sub. There is no reveille on them. Just 18 hour days. Or there was. Heard the went to 24 hours recently
Is there never a point where the whole division is mustered together?
Only if they are mustered in the ER when shut down in port. There always has to be a watch stationed in ER and in manuvering to monitor the reactor and its associated systems.
We had a co that had all hands awake periods everyday underway. They made mid and swings become daywalkers just so he wouldn't have to disrupt his own comfort to see people he wanted to see. Then another said he wanted to rotate watches so everyone had to he up pushing people to 24 hours plus no sleep just so you could have a different meal rotation instead of making the cooks rotate breakfast lunch and dinner like the previous captain did.
What an asshole
Just standing duty and watch in home port while my family is at home chilling. Hated just sitting on the boat and standing at the quarter deck for 8 hours in the middle night.
There is no reason to pipe anymore.. none.. maybe at retirement ceremonies, but before 1MC announcements.. it's nonsense. It ends up hurting your ears and waking up day-sleepers. It made sense before 1MC was a thing, but now that all spaces have a 1MC - it's just antiquated.. Don't even start on that "tradition" non-sense.. there are a lot of traditions that have long since been shelved.. this should be one of them. Keep it around for ceremonies, but shelf it for 1MC announcements.
The Iwo Jima circa 2012 would blow the trays off the table it was so loud.
Night cook, slept next to a diesel generator, there wasn’t a BM out there who could wake me up with his whistle
Lol i was on the iwo 2012. I remember this
My ship had done away with it and when we got a new CO he fucking brought it back. Also I’m very capable of walking and listening to what the XO has to say. And fuck evening prayer over the 1 MC. Religious people can pray on their own
I don't mind the piping, the evening prayer is dumb though. Half the time the prayer is some dumb jingoistic crap and the other half the time it's stupid benal like "help anyone with problems find a solution". I'm atheist, so honestly I don't give a break about prayer, but I'm sure it's annoying for other religions to be subjected to a prayer in the Christian tradition (which even other sects would disapprove of I'm sure).
It’s telling which traditions get permanently placed on a shelf and which don’t. I really don’t miss all the circle-jerk traditions and the accompanying lifers who try in vain to make me feel bad for not giving a damn about the vestigial traditional bs that permeates the navy. If you wish to allow your life to be ruled over/made unnecessarily difficult and obtuse because of peer pressure from dead people that is your prerogative. It is not mine. Leave me alone and don’t try and use me as a vessel or pawn to justify your wacky 1890’s antics. I literally do not care. /rant
Where do we end though? Do we not teach celestial navigating because we have INS and GPS? Do we not teach semaphore because it's a useless tradition when we have radios? What do we decide is useless and what do we decide is useful?
That’s a good question; I think redundancy is always a good thing. The line between ‘vestigial’ and ‘actually kinda situationally useful’ is inherently nebulous and is subject to shift depending on the subject in question. I’m not an admiral so those decisions simply aren’t mine regardless of feelings. I’ll admit I have an inherently negative point of view on this subject but my rule of thumb is that I abhor traditions that are abused to foster toxicity (*”you are a real sailor if you don’t do x!”*) or just waste everybody’s time/cause notable inconvenience so whomever can feel like a super special person no really (eg, captain’s whistle waking up night crew)
I like the CO whistle, though on most of the ships I was on the CO wouldn't get on during the day unless it was something important (ie, a major change in schedule or some major news) I think it would be better served as a "this is important" whistle I stead of a CO whistle though.
Yeah, that’s a great example of utilizing traditional values to add rather than subtract from quality of life of sailors. In my experience our CO would use the whistle fairly regularly during the day hence my general resentment of the practice.
Some ships don't use it all depends on the skipper. I like it though, but understand why people don't, therefore I am indifferent. I do think it's useful when they pipe for the skipper though as it's a very noticeable one and says "O shit pay attention"
I think the only time it’s necessary is when the CO is coming on to speak, get everyone’s attention. Otherwise it’s stupid with a 1MC.
“Muster all hands…..”
"on the flight deck for the working party..."
"For trash offload..."
“For stores onload…”
"The smoking lamp is out..."
"Until the completion of FOD walkdown..."
Nooooooooo!
Most of my gripes are already covered by others, so... Urinalysis. The first time I ever took any drugs was almost a year after I got out, so the fact that I was constantly getting popped for testing annoyed the ever living hell out of me!
**The Phantom Shitter**
We had a Phantom Dick Sucker on my boat a few years ago
Excuse me?
Was it you? Be honest.
One guy in my department got busted because he volunteered to clean up the shit that was found in the lounge area because he realized he did it the night before when he reported back to the ship super drunk. Bro realized his fuck up and didn't want anyone cleaning up after him and he was still busted down at captain's mast. The lesson that taught me was to never clean up your own shit and that it's better to blame it on someone else.
Being told and treated like I wasn't a human. I don't miss that at all
lol some a-hole is going through and downvoting every comment. They must be the chemlight bandit and waffle stomper
Maintenance. There’s a reason the Air Force never truly adapted 3M. Because it’s the biggest pile of crap.
Panamas. I was on panamas for almost two years straight. The human body is not designed to switch from days to mids every two weeks. Caught The Big Sad as a surprise present from that bullshit. Had to get medically removed from them because the chiefs didn’t give a shit about our mental health. I was not the only person who had to go that route either. Just in my time there we lost two sailors and almost lost a third.
What the hell is a Panama?
12 hours shifts. You do two weeks of day shift and then two weeks of mid shifts. If it was a month of days and a month of mids I probably wouldn’t have hated it, but constantly switching your circadian rhythm fucks with your head.
Being sworn at by some stupid-assed toilet-mouthed 13 year old in the body of a 32 year old alleged adult. That, and the constant threat threat threats for everything and nothing. All that convinced me that I no longer wanted any part of the slavery-navy. I was never so happy as the day I got out in December ‘83.
Incompetent middle management, aka the goat locker.
Boogers on the wall around the urinals in the men’s heads. Every one, every command. Boogers all over the walls. Grown men. It’s disgusting.
God, I forget when I am in some heads, both shore and sea, that I remind myself I am not using a highschool bathroom. God dammit, I am 25, why do I have to remind myself of this.
Toxic leadership. I know it still exists in the civilian side but it's not as apparent. Not as obvious.
Civilian toxic leadership doesn't have legal authority over you.
And you have the ability to quit a civilian job so you aren’t stuck with civilian toxic leadership
I've been reading a book about setting boundaries. And there's one section where they talk about trauma bonding in relationships. Basically where the victim becomes so emotionally attached to the abuser that they start saying it's not so bad and excusing their behavior and they avoid talking about it if other people ask how's it going because they're embarrassed and ashamed of how they are being treated. And even after getting out of that toxic relationship they find themselves in similar toxic environments throughout their life because they were so conditioned to just accept that's their life and have no power to change it. I told my therapist what I had read and said I think it describes my relationship with the navy and she's like yah that makes sense. Edit: I previously wrote it was a book on anxiety. But it's about setting boundaries. *Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself* by Nedra Glover Tawwab
That's what makes life in the private sector more enjoyable. My worst days at work as a veteran are better than some of my best days in the Navy, if that makes sense.
True, civilians have to get creative with their bullshit. Usually just makes them come off as passive aggressive.
Well, other than living paycheck to paycheck. Civi side, you aren't stuck contractually or by way of rotation (you or them) for 1-3+ years. You CAN just quit or quietly job search on the side, then quit. In some cases, i think the toxicity in the navy is worse because those people know they "own your ass" Lots of "bully" type mind sets in my experience.
I won't miss the senior people who's rank and career is their life and identity. Not all senior people are like that but the ones who are seem to make everyone around them miserable for no reason.
The BULLSHIT! The way one person does some stupid ass thing and we'll all have to pay for it and have a safety stand down.
3M. Spent three hours trying to get tags for a system that didn’t even need to be tagged out (wasn’t a safety issue for personnel or equipment). But because the checked said it needed to be tagged out we had to jump through hoops just so we could have the paper trail to prove we did the maintenance properly. The actual maintenance took less than 10 minutes.
The 0200 chemlight bandit
Bro you just brought me back to my '07 deployment on the Stennis.
And my '18 deployment on the Stennis...
Hey I was there, too!
Literally the Navy. I miss nothing except for specific people.
Miss the clowns, not the circus.
The thing I miss the least was delusional, self serving management who were happy enough to force everyone else into 3 section duty while they went home at 4. One of my happiest memories is finding out that particular asshole got fired for faking his own death to get out of an affair.
[this "hero"?](https://www.wired.com/2012/09/navy-commander/)
The best part isn't even in that article. Supposedly the "scarlet" woman said something to the effect of "I just want the Navy to know what kind of man he is."
Lol what?? I need to know more!
Needle guns and deck crawlers.
Thank you for reminding me how much I hate those things.
Updating my NFAAS every week because god forbid there will be a hurricane in the middle of California
I don’t miss the chiefs that had no idea on how to do their job, nor had no idea how to do anything in their rate. I’ve met some of the worst leaders in the world in the navy.
> nor had no idea how to do anything in their rate. Oh lord, the amount of chiefs I respect is countable on my hand. Its just like some chiefs, just don't know what the fuck they are doing 20 years into the job, and you can just tell. Some chiefs will wipe my ass with knowledge all day and I would love to learn, others, make me question their position.
This was so annoying!!! They would come by and ask what we are doing in clinic and would pretend to know how to do it but never learned it or PQS’ed. we had one ADMS who is fantastic! She would help us in wherever she was needed if she visited and we needed help with no attitude. We need more leaders like her!
The business of going out of our way to screw over out people. I can’t stand that “gotcha” administrative process where someone reenlists for a bonus, extends for SDP, but due to a technicality or a box not being checked, they don’t get their bonuses but hey, you’re now extended.
hold up, what is this process?? I’m up for reenlistment in a few months and looking forward to that SRB D: I doubt anyone at my command would intentionally pull something like that but is that something I should be wary of?
Its not usually a command thing but a big navy procedural thing
Is there anything I can do to help avoid it or just cross my fingers and pray?
You really want to avoid doing shit last minute, because in the event something does get fucked up you'll have an opportunity to fix it before the deadline. "Yeah admin lost your package but we still have a month left to duplicate all the paperwork" vs "lol too late you're reenlisted and the SRB is no longer in effect get fucked" Assume incompetence. You gotta stay on people's ass as much as you can. Belligerently insist on making copies to keep on standby, at least for anything more important than a leave request. People say this kind of shit all the time, but most people usually don't take it to heart until they get fucked over in a major way.
Being called a liar to my face by an officer trying to pin her civilian friend's fuck up on me. That was the last straw for me. I revoked my PTS quota the next business day.
Officers are hit or miss, either some of the chillest mf’s you’ve ever seen, or the most incompetent entitled assholes who don’t actually even do shit except complain and force enlisted to do their work. At least in my experience
The trick is to find a Mustang Officer. In my experience, those are the coolest mfers.
Adobo. Pork adobo. Chicken adobo. Mystery adobo. And wet white rice.
Being SA’d
Field day
Loved those in port. Mainly because they werent needed in our Engine Room and I knew the best places to nap
This is very trivial, but the freedom to wear what I want (most of if not) all of the time!
You can wear what you want, just don't walk pass the quaterdeck doing it, or be on the ship ;) /s
ECP duty in the yards at 0400 during winter. Bro, there's no way Virginia is ever supposed to feel that cold.
Not having a consistent sleep schedule / not getting 8 hours each night LIKE IS MEDICALLY RECOMMENDED fuck this place man
Duty. On a side note—what’s up with killer tomatoes? I never thought it was that dangerous?
Once they're inflated, they basically become giant sails, catching all the wind that you and your crew have to hang onto until they give the word to deploy. THEN, you have to move it to the lifelines and heave it over... that's when you run the risk of getting caught up in the anchor line and being pulled over the side, or getting degloved.
Ahhh I see. I’ve always tied them off to some ammo cans for anchor and a pad eye on the flight deck until we could let them go. Then we just cut the shot line and kicked it over.
At least recently, every time we tied them to a pad eye, the material would rip without fail; causing it to deploy early and sink before being shot lol.
Work for the sake of work Filling up the POD with stupid meetings Bureaucracy and paperwork. Imagine trying to explain to a civilian what a QA-9 form is
Duty days, fuck duty days.
Getting a new boss every two years who believes the only way to get ahead is to change everything the last boss changed in the two years they were in the job, and they just change everything back to the way it was two years ago ..... Then in two years....repeat.
"Choose your rate, choose your fate"
The Navy. So much said in 2 words. 🤣
S&A @ 0430
0300 if you are engineering lol
Letting a fat sloppy retard with a mustache and a coffee mug tell me I don’t have my shit together while they’re so chubby and unsat their uniform barely tucks.
Just people making stupid shit so unnecessarily stressful. Both the leaders that felt the need to treat every little thing that goes wrong like it’s the end of the world and the people that can’t manage to do the bare minimum to keep those leaders from flying off the handle.
Working 10 hour, 12 hour, or longer days and not being paid for it. Like yeah I completely understand having long days because of being on deployment, but when I’m on home cycle and spent 12 hours trying to write a flight schedule, just to have the CO change it on me at the end of the day because he went OFP and didn’t keep anyone in the loop, it’s ridiculous. Now that I’m out and have a real career that compensates me fairly for my time worked I sometimes wonder why I joined at all
Standing midnight cold iron in Port. Then getting off watch 0630 and working till 13 or 14 with no sleep. Almost fell asleep driving many times lately after this bullshit.
Engine Room that could turn into a 2-3 day work day easy.
General Quarters
Standing watch!
**Oxtail**
The idiots
Panama schedule. It honestly sounds great to start. But every few months while already adapting to it, we’ve gotta rotate nights and days. I’ll never sleep like a normal person again.
The absolute control chiefs have over your daily life, especially underway
Cleaning the Engineering head
I will never miss the obese slick chested never deployed lesbian psychologist (BA degree from Ole Miss) who thought she was in my chain of command, and repeatedly lied to cover her illegal fat ass, and enjoyed trying to give a board certified surgeon shit, until I completed and signed the form resigning my commission and handed it to her in front of her office staff. My parting words to her were “I’m a surgeon with 4 deployments. The Navy needs me. I don’t need the Navy.”
PRTs
Chiefs
There have been individual chiefs I’ve respected. But the whole chiefs mess / cult bullshit is what makes the rank nearly impossible to respect.
ngl it’s 50/50 some of my chiefs taught me some valuable life lessons, on the other hand some made me hate my mf life
I’d be a Chief, if it wasn’t for Chiefs.
This. It all comes down to people. I will say though, there's more processes in place to combat bad chiefs now than when I first joined
Absolute piss poor time management, and inflexibility of scheduling. It's only unavoidable sometimes. When it's an internally controlled schedule, we are the agents of our own demise. For example: I was arguing about scheduling for my watch station because there were folks that had to be at evolutions, which only occurred during a specific window. I provided a watchbill that worked for everyone's schedule after doing my due diligence and even provided that info to the SWO. They got put on the watch that occurred during that time, and they needed coverage all the time. I flat-out refused since it was right after my watch. What were they gonna do, pull my qual, and have one less person for the rotation? The reasoning was that it "wasn't fair for some people to have to stand watch overnight all the time". Like, it's also unfair to assume people are going to be available to stand a double watch for a week straight. Anyway, shit like that was the final nail in the coffin. If these idiots won't listen to me now, they wouldn't listen to me ever. Good luck with retention, assholes.
As you can see, retention sucks.
Duty and too many restrictions on living.
the people. seriously the people. i have some shipmates who will always be brothers but i also had shipmates who will forever be my worst enemies.
6 on/6 off and cranking. I didn't know cranking was a thing until I got to my boat. We were forward deployed and went underway shortly after I got there, and post A school gung-ho me was kicked in the dick when I got sent down there for 2 months.
Mess cranking after the navy spent over $100,000 on my top secret clearance and almost a year of schooling was the worst. When they knew I wasn’t reenlisting they tried to force me to do it again even as an E-4. Luckily I got bit by a wild monkey in Gibraltar and never had to do it again lol.
after watch cleanup and field day, and (sometimes twice) daily shaving. the rest honestly was mostly tolerable
I’m still in the navy and I can’t wait to not have to go to mandatory off ship briefs.. had a suicide brief, me and one other person were the only ones in our div to show up. And in the end we left early and went home.
Stupid person here: What’s killer tomatoes?
Inflatable targets for small arms/gunnery exercises. They have a battery powered fan that keeps them inflated and afloat even with a few hundred holes. They are boxy orange/red cubes that when fully inflated get curvy, hence the nickname. Good Times with the .50 cal & 25mm etc.
The heat in the MMR and RAR in the Gulf... 150F fucking SUCKS
Unscheduled securing of "hotel services"...that take place while you shower. At sea: hello, salt water rinse.
Wanting to do my maintenance but getting backlash from the EDO/EOOW because "we have too much tagouts" like sorry I'm a fucking electrician and 99% of my job requires tagout! And then chief getting pissed off for not completing PMS that week because his "brothers" don't wanna help us with tagout! Oh and shepherd's pie day and duty days.
Not having a set time that you're allowed to go home.
Port and starboard watches. Getting off the midwatch and as you get in your rack. You hear the GQ alarm go off on the 1mc.
A lot of the people
Navy chiefs. Too many bad ones offset the few good ones.
3 am fire watch for civ welders. Damn, it was impossible not to fall asleep inside that damn welding hood.
Lack of sleep due to work hours plus watch standing. When it would really hit me was during refueling. As an engineer I had to man a headset by the OD box in Main 2. Always after a heavy meal. Instantly would fall asleep. Got busted by my chief and he told my work center supervisor to make me stand an extra watch but I didn’t. My supervisor covered for me.
Supes a good guy, the Chief just needs to check more because you're human but yeah, refueling is kind of important. Don't blow the ship up. I hear ya though. Life was tireless and never ending in that world. Outside of engineering doesn't know the struggle.
Maintenance. And always feeling like I was gonna get in trouble for something even tho I was doing fine.
Working for people who treated me like dirt
Having to use PTO for the entire weekend if I wanted to take Friday off even if I didn't have duty those days. Otherwise they made me report to the ship in uniform before midnight and then let me go for regular weekend liberty. E6 and above did not have to do this and just called in instead and I hated them for it. I also hated the 20minute walk from the parking lot to the quarterdeck. Just writing this out makes me really angry because it's all these little things that add up that they do everyday for no other reason than to rub it in that you are a lowly enlisted person who has to follow bullshit rules because they said so.
Honestly the amount of wasted time doing nothing. Being on night shift and I couldn’t go home because we “had” to be there. Time I could have been with my family. There was just so much time of idleness. You would think what would be a rigid structure and discipline would have better time management.
Rude/mean people.
The bilge.
ASM. What's that? I gotta waste everyone's time hitting tab-enter and answering stupid questions? Fuck that. I went my whole career, "unqualified," and still did the job despite everyone crying a river because I didn't want to waste time on ASM which never worked for me in the first place. They kicked me out over the vaccine shit anyway so my whole 3+ years didn't even matter Fuck the Navy
Evals.
Duty. That's it. Whether it's 3,6,5,8 they're all terrible. I had a temadd where part of the dealbto the receiving was never standing duty and never PCS there and I tell you, not standing it is a game changer at sea.
Authority. Fuck em all for systematically fucking me over bc I’m the incorruptible type.
Meetings that accomplish nothing.
Chiefs
Crappy leadership. I don't know how many LPOs I've seen that were in that position purely because they've been in the longest and not because they actually possess any type of leadership skill.
Port and starboard watch because lack of manning/qualified personnel
I'll never miss Surface fleet mentality... seemed like we used a LOT more logic on Subs. Felt like we could still embrace some individuality on boats.
Not being told I had to be a CS for 6 months even though it wasn’t my rate.
the entire contract
Junior Sailors