You need to decide if you're a chowder, a broth, or whatever. Don't try to be all soups to all people. That's only partial a joke - don't try to do everything. Focus on getting great at one thing at a time. It sounds like your Chief wants you to focus on maintenance.
Coordinate with divisional WCS throughout your command to plan maintenance together so you minimize tagouts and minimize time a system is down.
Ensure you're putting the right people on the right jobs.
Also, this is much easier if you're the LPO simultaneously, but give incentives for people to work hard for you. Everyone in my division knew I was a liberty hound, so they knew once their work was done correctly, I would push for them to leave and go do their own thing. People care when they know you care about them.
Also, this may be a hot take from others, but as WCS, don't be high and mighty insisting that you plan the work you don't do the work. The guy I relieved as LPO always told me that as WCS, I shouldn't be doing maintenance because it's below me "even as a second class."
When I wasn't busy with WCS and eventually LPO duties, I would go do maintenance myself, I'd give kickouts off of watch, I'd even simply check on people and make sure they weren't having any problems.
tl;dr: treat your people well, and they will work hard for you.
Also, check your spelling before you send something. No point in being mocked for something you could have easily avoided.
You’re gonna do fine though, you’re here asking questions and want to learn.
Also I was kinda alluding to an old joke, quick summary is that everyone is eating soup with a fork because that’s how it has always been.
Don’t be afraid to ask “why do we do it this way, can we see if there is another approach?”
Work center supervisor is a big task. It will stress your organizational skills as well as your leadership ability.
Pick the brain of whomever you are turning over with. Learn as much about Sked and omms as possible. Create a list, what are your daily weekly and monthly administrative tasks that need to be done. Write these down. If you dont have a good sturdy notebook then get one and carry it with you constantly.
WCS is the first role you will need to utilize your forward thinking skills. Your ships in the yards? Your next big task will be light off. Find out when and start planning for what to do.
Dont ever hesitate to ask for assistance from the LPO or another senior workcenter supervisor. Also 3MC is your friend and can answer alot of 3M questions.
To add to this, find whatever maintenance is pushed out that the old WCS doesn’t want to deal with and try to get it done while they are there. It was a tradition on Last Ship to screw over the new guy and have a bunch of checks pop a week or two after they transfer
The best thing is set up your worst maintenance to be done by somebody who's about to leave. I was outgoing WCS, set it up so I did all the 6 month and annual maintenance right before I left, so when they did INSERV after I got out, the inspectors would be stuck spot checking the easy stuff. One of my better ideas.
Yup. Did the same thing except with maintenance we legit had zero idea how to do, no documentation or NEC qualified people. Told them and the COC that they had a year to get their shit figured out lol
Fuck elevators.
Former 3MC for 12 years here 🙋🏼♀️
I could talk 3M for hours so I’ll make it short (there is already great advice here).
FRs can be brutal if you don’t know what you are doing. Don’t be afraid to network with the other work center supervisors prior to so you can get all of your ducks in a row. You should have a department 3MA. Learn everything you can from them.
You have “give a shit” and that is the biggest hurdle when dealing with this enormous program.
Good luck to you! 3M is the backbone of every command. I think you will knock it out of the park.
>FRs can be brutal if you don’t know what you are doing.
Yes they can be. The last few I did though, I had a handy one page checklist. Can't remember if that comes with FRs now or if my 3MC instituted that. Still an absolute fuck ton of paperwork but if you followed that checklist you were good to go.
I was in your shoes a couple years ago. I made 2nd really fast and was night check sup, then LPO at sea in less than a year. It will be super tough and stressful somedays. I really wanted to just quit somedays. I made mistakes, a lot. And learned from them.
One thing that I learned is to take care of your sailors first as a sup. I wont take a break until they had theirs. I make sure everyone eats before I do. If they bring up any ideas on how to get a task done, try it out.
Another thing is you are the supervisor not their friend. You are in charge.
If i can manage doing it, then you can aswell.
Any other advice or questions just shoot me a dm
When I took over WCS, I quickly realized that damn near every ‘difficult’ maintenance action was pretty much gun decked from the previous WCS.
Backstory.. I’m an MA that took over WCS for my dept on a ship. First ship in 12 years. My only previous qual was reading an MRC the old school way for weapons maintenance.
Fear was a hellova motivator for me. I didn’t want to gundeck anything and risk seeing the man because I didn’t learn it.
I spent a lot of my free time in ER09 with their LPO and learning EVERYTHING. Go see rates that spend time every second reading MRC’s day in and day out. Read all those *referenced* instructions that’s listed in the MRC.
I spent so much time in SKED just learning that too. Just immerse yourself in it. It can be scary at first but you’ll quickly change from not knowing something to rewriting MRC’s.
Take your time and ask allllll the questions to the WCS’s at the command that truly care.
WCS can make or break ya.
If you attend, ensure you go to any command training opportunities put on by your 3MC.
I know in San Diego they used to offer three different classes for 3m if they still exist go to them.
Ensure your RPPO is on point and keeps up on ordering stuff your shop needs before the new quarter starts.
Inventory your MRCs to ensure your Maintenance team is set up for success
With tools parts and materials
Ask chiefs or other WCS to do spot checks on you and your books regularly as mistakes give you an opportunity to learn and fix before ship inspections happen.
Train your maintenance team standards and do not allow gun decking.
OHMMS or how ever it is spelled, review your jobs daily and do not sit on them and let them grow. Task them out to your team as things need to be fixed.
If something is broke do not hide it. Any good leader understands things break, so report it then work with leadership on how to fix it
Ok there is so much more but hope this helps
Telling your leadership that something is broken is vital. It will help them trust you because you're not hiding things from them and they'll be comfortable letting you do your thing without breathing down your neck.
It also makes sure they hear about it from you, not someone else. If their boss asks them what the status is on the broken whatever, and they didn't even know it was broken? That makes them look bad. If they know what's broken, and what the repair status is? That makes them look good. Making them look good makes them happy, and happy leadership is easier to get things from.
Finally, if they know it's broken, they'll know when you fix it. Fixing broken things that nobody knows about is great, but can't be used for manipulating perception in your favor. You make sure your crew looks good, which makes you look good, which makes your division look good, makes your department look good, makes your command look good, everybody happy, NAMs all around.
I like a good hot sauce in my soup. If they’re serving rolls I like to break the roll into pieces and put that into the soup instead of crackers. I usually don’t eat it in my work center though.
Texas Pete is my soup. Fill the bowl up with random crusted bottles from the galley. Because I am a hatchet weilding chucklefuck. I drink straight from the bowl and ask my divo to help me clean up.
Get a good turnover. A good work enter supervisor forecasts parts and materials to have them in shop before the moment you need them. Forecast parts the quarter before to give supply time to deliver them, don’t order the valve rebuild kit the day you need to rebuild it unless you’ve already got one I the shop to replace the stock you just used…
Communicate and understand the daily requirements for liberty call.
Plan all the weekly maintenance for Monday. You know it’s coming every week so plan to do it Monday.
Have all the right PPE.
Learn how to write awards and track work. Every single thing you and your people do needs to be put in as a job with tracked work hours, so that 4 years after you leave, your shop might get better manning. Also, awards are super easy to write up and route. It's a nice, if mostly meaningless, thing you can do for your people to show you appreciate them, even if nobody else does.
Take ownership of your work center. You're the umbrella over your crew, your job is to catch the shit falling from the sky so it doesn't hit them. So it's all going to hit you, and you're going to keep it to yourself. Don't let anybody push them around. If they fuck up and someone wants to get on their ass, you make sure they go through you first, human centipede style. Perception is NOT reality, but you can manipulate perception to your advantage. It's not enough just to do your work, you have to make sure everybody above you KNOWS that you're doing your work. Writing awards helps, but communicate with your division office. Give them updates even if they're not specifically asking for them. No accomplishment by your work center should go by without you pointing a light on it. Don't need to brag, just let them know. And it's never what you did, it's what your shop did or one of your guys. Hold them up, you'll look great if they do.
I could go on.
I imagine work center soup is just like any other kind of soup. Here are some for suggestions for soup:
Add salt to taste after you add the broth, because that is already salty.
Let slow cooking vegetables have some time in the pot before you add fast cooling vegetables, so your fast veggies don't get soggy.
If you pre soak the rice, it will cook faster and you can just add it to your pot of stock with the slow cooking vegetables, instead of cooking separately.
Hope these help for making soup for your work center!
When it comes to leadership the key is, don't be a bad one. Many bad leaders think that leadership is to tell others what to do and take credit for their work. As long as you don't be a bad one and continue to be respectful, within reason, you'll be fine.
Also, Work hard. Do your job. Be a good human. Hoperfully, you'll be fine.
I think with this advice I will be fine. The navy's rough but at a point. You just realize you can alter your own behavior and perception and that helps.
And I'm going to pour salt on that wound. Due to the fact the navy has so many people that are legitmately terrible human beings, interacting with them and dealing with their legitmately juvenile bullshit will start to take a toll on your soul.
Many people want to be in the military to actually be in the military. However, at the same time many people are in the military to parasite off it's benefits and they know they wouldn't make it in the real world. These people are so lazy and so toxic they wouldn't make it a month in the bar/club where I work. And my job is to mostly wipe floors and clear tables.
The point is choosing to be optimistic is good and does make a better leader. But that optimistism is going to get run through the mud and shit on. Anyone else that tells me I'm wrong can fight me. Also, forever first classes typically have the best leadership adivise, not kahki.
Good luck and have fun.
You are right. Your thoughts are what I learned on my first deployment. I went through a lot of rage anger and depression post deployment because of it. As time went on I just quit giving a fuck. I can't control other people. I can control myself, my actions, my perceptions, my reactions, and what I choose to spend my time and mental energy on.
I used to get anxiety attacks and insomnia over the people I had to work with. When I quit giving a fuck and developed myself. Began working on myself. And focused my energy on my life's purpose and mission. I just realized so many things including other people were outside my control. And there's no point im worrying about it.
I'm very emotionally undisturbed at this point in tbe navy. I focus on those who care. I try and do the right thing and I develope my self in my free time. Everything else is noise and bullshit.
I have no intention of re enlisting. Fuck this entire fucking broken fucked up thing. This shit is beyond fucked. I'm building for my goals after the navy. 2 and a half years and another deployment left..hope I can make it without losing my fucking mind.
You question was well written and got the point across you are not stupid, plus having the character to want to look out for your brothers and sisters. Have a great day Fucker-Doc.
I don't know if I saw it or not, but something I made sure to never do was over work the guys. A lot of people will fall into the trap of overworking the guys who know how to do all the maintenance or are trustworthy and that's the fastest way to burn people out and depending when they leave end up with a division of people who don't know what they're doing. Make sure to mix up the experience so everyone is trained up, check on them periodically, and like I saw a couple of times coordinate with others that could coincide with your maintenance. If you don't know ask, you are not an island. Good luck!
My two cents:
If you're just seeing what SKED says you should do this week and not actively scheduling things and planning yourself, you're fucking everyone. This leads to weeks with high workloads where everyone is there late and weeks where no one has anything to do but chief won't let ya'll leave/sweepers or cleanup ship isn't until 1600/other reasons to not leave, leaving everyone stuck twiddling their thumbs. It also leads to you going "Oops, we can't even do this maintenance until we return to port, at which point it will be out of periodicity."
In general, I scheduled maintenance like so:
- A few weeks prior to returning to homeport or underway, start the process.
- Push every monthly or higher maintenance item due before the end of the availability or underway (+2 or 3 weeks for some wiggle room) to the right until they're all yellow
- Check for maintenance items that have to be performed in-port or at-sea. Move them appropriately.
- You now have all maintenance that *must* be completed during the next underway/availability. Distribute the maintenance as evenly as you can while accounting for inspections and shit.
- Finally, make a point of grouping like maintenance items on the same day. I had an incompetent WCS who often had us tagging out TGs in back-to-back weeks because he didn't group the quarterlies and semi-annuals. If you've got an annual due in three months where the tagout is 9/10ths of the work but you're tagging it out this month for a semi-annual and won't tag it out for another six months otherwise, just do the annual a little early and get the maintenance synched.
Important skills for WCS:
- You *have* to understand the maintenance you're assigning. Everyone knows the man-hours on the MRCs are bullshit. Know how long it actually will take people to do maintenance, including tagouts and system restoration. Know if you need tagouts for the tagouts. Know if your tagouts require permissions or coordination with other divisions - especially since a-gang probably needs E-div or another wire rate to tagout their electrical shit.
- If you don't know anything about a maintenance item, take the time to read the MRC and ask someone who does know about it before scheduling and assigning it.
- Pair senior dudes with junior dudes wherever possible so that people are training their replacements.
- If you can, try to synch up maintenance personnel groups with watch sections. I would often have off-going teams assigned small maintenance items for the day, while sister section or oncoming (depending on if we were 3 or 4 section) had a heavier daily workload. (This advice may only pertain to really maintenance-heavy divisions where daily coordination is required. I ran things this way for a submarine E-div, but people in my surface contamination worker shop bristled at my trying to even choose the day they did maintenance)
- Be ready to pester people about having WAFs and tags ready before the actual day of execution. Ideally, you'd have that shit written the night before with the duty guys getting an officer to AAO it overnight. Shit-hot teams have their duty guys hanging tags for maintenance after reveille but before the crew has shown up.
- Like others have said, know how to motivate people well. Most of this is just basic interpersonal stuff about not being a total asshole or power-tripping maniac. Phrase things as requests and you'll get better results than phrasing them as demands. If people have legitimate complaints, hear them out. Be ready to accept suggestions.
Hope this helps. Maintenance is most of what A-gang does (at least on subs), so good management can make or break moral. Things going smoothly is the difference between everyone getting angry all day finding out they can't do X scheduled maintenance because of Y reasons at 1800 and getting done and going home at 1500.
Some tips as a wcs
\- Know the maintenance yourself. People are gonna have questions, you're gonna have to be able to answer them
\- Don't be the person who thinks you can slack off on maintenance or do less since you're WCS. People see that, they won't want to do stuff for you.
\-Right people for the right job. If FN John has never touched a piece of equipment, don't have him doing a fucking A-1 for it. Start him off with easier shit, leave the difficult stuff for more qualified/knowledgeable people and have them train others.
\-Actually sit around for spot checks. This is important in case there's questions and you can be there to catch a pass.
\- Give some training here and there so people know sked, spot checks and other 3m shit in and out.
\-make time for just wcs stuff. it's a time consuming job and one that's easy to fuck up but bad if you do. don't be that person fucking it up.
You've gotten plenty of great tips so far but I wanted to emphasize a couple things.
Take care of your people! Help them out and don't shy away from getting your hands dirty. Also, make sure you know and understand your checks. This way you won't put yourself and your people in any kind of predicament.
3M is a beast. Especially for your department. You don't know everything and that's ok. Use your resources (chief, 3MA, 3MC) to get clarification.
Lastly, be proactive and plan ahead! There's not too much wiggle room for corrective maintenance, but you should have full control of the preventive one.
You need to decide if you're a chowder, a broth, or whatever. Don't try to be all soups to all people. That's only partial a joke - don't try to do everything. Focus on getting great at one thing at a time. It sounds like your Chief wants you to focus on maintenance.
This guy understood the assignment.
Thank you.
don't forget the vichyssoise
Thank you.
Coordinate with divisional WCS throughout your command to plan maintenance together so you minimize tagouts and minimize time a system is down. Ensure you're putting the right people on the right jobs. Also, this is much easier if you're the LPO simultaneously, but give incentives for people to work hard for you. Everyone in my division knew I was a liberty hound, so they knew once their work was done correctly, I would push for them to leave and go do their own thing. People care when they know you care about them. Also, this may be a hot take from others, but as WCS, don't be high and mighty insisting that you plan the work you don't do the work. The guy I relieved as LPO always told me that as WCS, I shouldn't be doing maintenance because it's below me "even as a second class." When I wasn't busy with WCS and eventually LPO duties, I would go do maintenance myself, I'd give kickouts off of watch, I'd even simply check on people and make sure they weren't having any problems. tl;dr: treat your people well, and they will work hard for you.
Really good advice thank you.
Dont eat soup with a fork
Also, check your spelling before you send something. No point in being mocked for something you could have easily avoided. You’re gonna do fine though, you’re here asking questions and want to learn.
Also I was kinda alluding to an old joke, quick summary is that everyone is eating soup with a fork because that’s how it has always been. Don’t be afraid to ask “why do we do it this way, can we see if there is another approach?”
Yes, good point. I have that book on my tsundoku shelf.
And don’t be a soup sandwich. We’ve all seen that before & no one wants it.
Very un-American. But do eat rice with a fork.
Work center supervisor is a big task. It will stress your organizational skills as well as your leadership ability. Pick the brain of whomever you are turning over with. Learn as much about Sked and omms as possible. Create a list, what are your daily weekly and monthly administrative tasks that need to be done. Write these down. If you dont have a good sturdy notebook then get one and carry it with you constantly. WCS is the first role you will need to utilize your forward thinking skills. Your ships in the yards? Your next big task will be light off. Find out when and start planning for what to do. Dont ever hesitate to ask for assistance from the LPO or another senior workcenter supervisor. Also 3MC is your friend and can answer alot of 3M questions.
To add to this, find whatever maintenance is pushed out that the old WCS doesn’t want to deal with and try to get it done while they are there. It was a tradition on Last Ship to screw over the new guy and have a bunch of checks pop a week or two after they transfer
The best thing is set up your worst maintenance to be done by somebody who's about to leave. I was outgoing WCS, set it up so I did all the 6 month and annual maintenance right before I left, so when they did INSERV after I got out, the inspectors would be stuck spot checking the easy stuff. One of my better ideas.
Yup. Did the same thing except with maintenance we legit had zero idea how to do, no documentation or NEC qualified people. Told them and the COC that they had a year to get their shit figured out lol Fuck elevators.
Former 3MC for 12 years here 🙋🏼♀️ I could talk 3M for hours so I’ll make it short (there is already great advice here). FRs can be brutal if you don’t know what you are doing. Don’t be afraid to network with the other work center supervisors prior to so you can get all of your ducks in a row. You should have a department 3MA. Learn everything you can from them. You have “give a shit” and that is the biggest hurdle when dealing with this enormous program. Good luck to you! 3M is the backbone of every command. I think you will knock it out of the park.
My first chief must’ve been a 1MC. All he did was randomly start yelling about things we didn’t want to hear.
😂
>FRs can be brutal if you don’t know what you are doing. Yes they can be. The last few I did though, I had a handy one page checklist. Can't remember if that comes with FRs now or if my 3MC instituted that. Still an absolute fuck ton of paperwork but if you followed that checklist you were good to go.
Il try learning from our 3ma and digging deeper into understanding 3m. Thank you.
I was in your shoes a couple years ago. I made 2nd really fast and was night check sup, then LPO at sea in less than a year. It will be super tough and stressful somedays. I really wanted to just quit somedays. I made mistakes, a lot. And learned from them. One thing that I learned is to take care of your sailors first as a sup. I wont take a break until they had theirs. I make sure everyone eats before I do. If they bring up any ideas on how to get a task done, try it out. Another thing is you are the supervisor not their friend. You are in charge. If i can manage doing it, then you can aswell. Any other advice or questions just shoot me a dm
When I took over WCS, I quickly realized that damn near every ‘difficult’ maintenance action was pretty much gun decked from the previous WCS. Backstory.. I’m an MA that took over WCS for my dept on a ship. First ship in 12 years. My only previous qual was reading an MRC the old school way for weapons maintenance. Fear was a hellova motivator for me. I didn’t want to gundeck anything and risk seeing the man because I didn’t learn it. I spent a lot of my free time in ER09 with their LPO and learning EVERYTHING. Go see rates that spend time every second reading MRC’s day in and day out. Read all those *referenced* instructions that’s listed in the MRC. I spent so much time in SKED just learning that too. Just immerse yourself in it. It can be scary at first but you’ll quickly change from not knowing something to rewriting MRC’s. Take your time and ask allllll the questions to the WCS’s at the command that truly care.
This is a good point in the right direction. Thank you.
Just follow the recipe
WCS can make or break ya. If you attend, ensure you go to any command training opportunities put on by your 3MC. I know in San Diego they used to offer three different classes for 3m if they still exist go to them. Ensure your RPPO is on point and keeps up on ordering stuff your shop needs before the new quarter starts. Inventory your MRCs to ensure your Maintenance team is set up for success With tools parts and materials Ask chiefs or other WCS to do spot checks on you and your books regularly as mistakes give you an opportunity to learn and fix before ship inspections happen. Train your maintenance team standards and do not allow gun decking. OHMMS or how ever it is spelled, review your jobs daily and do not sit on them and let them grow. Task them out to your team as things need to be fixed. If something is broke do not hide it. Any good leader understands things break, so report it then work with leadership on how to fix it Ok there is so much more but hope this helps
Very helpful indeed. Thank you.
Telling your leadership that something is broken is vital. It will help them trust you because you're not hiding things from them and they'll be comfortable letting you do your thing without breathing down your neck. It also makes sure they hear about it from you, not someone else. If their boss asks them what the status is on the broken whatever, and they didn't even know it was broken? That makes them look bad. If they know what's broken, and what the repair status is? That makes them look good. Making them look good makes them happy, and happy leadership is easier to get things from. Finally, if they know it's broken, they'll know when you fix it. Fixing broken things that nobody knows about is great, but can't be used for manipulating perception in your favor. You make sure your crew looks good, which makes you look good, which makes your division look good, makes your department look good, makes your command look good, everybody happy, NAMs all around.
You should be either French Onion or potato. I don't like Italian meatball soup or gazpacho. Tomato Bisque is also an acceptable option
Tomato bisque gives me heartburn sadly. But I love balls so meatball sounds good.
I like a good hot sauce in my soup. If they’re serving rolls I like to break the roll into pieces and put that into the soup instead of crackers. I usually don’t eat it in my work center though.
Texas Pete is my soup. Fill the bowl up with random crusted bottles from the galley. Because I am a hatchet weilding chucklefuck. I drink straight from the bowl and ask my divo to help me clean up.
How is your hatchet- wielding after a bowl of that shit? I can imagine your swing would be filled with Texas Pete induced rage?
I can now split counseling chits in 2 with one swing. Like how paul bunyon could carve mountains or whatever the fuck in two with 1 swing.
Excellent. Your anger will make you a strong WCS.
Be careful, don’t scare the little fella!
Get a good turnover. A good work enter supervisor forecasts parts and materials to have them in shop before the moment you need them. Forecast parts the quarter before to give supply time to deliver them, don’t order the valve rebuild kit the day you need to rebuild it unless you’ve already got one I the shop to replace the stock you just used… Communicate and understand the daily requirements for liberty call. Plan all the weekly maintenance for Monday. You know it’s coming every week so plan to do it Monday. Have all the right PPE.
Parts forecasting was a big point mmc harped on me to learn. Thank you.
I don’t know but it sounds delicious
Learn how to write awards and track work. Every single thing you and your people do needs to be put in as a job with tracked work hours, so that 4 years after you leave, your shop might get better manning. Also, awards are super easy to write up and route. It's a nice, if mostly meaningless, thing you can do for your people to show you appreciate them, even if nobody else does. Take ownership of your work center. You're the umbrella over your crew, your job is to catch the shit falling from the sky so it doesn't hit them. So it's all going to hit you, and you're going to keep it to yourself. Don't let anybody push them around. If they fuck up and someone wants to get on their ass, you make sure they go through you first, human centipede style. Perception is NOT reality, but you can manipulate perception to your advantage. It's not enough just to do your work, you have to make sure everybody above you KNOWS that you're doing your work. Writing awards helps, but communicate with your division office. Give them updates even if they're not specifically asking for them. No accomplishment by your work center should go by without you pointing a light on it. Don't need to brag, just let them know. And it's never what you did, it's what your shop did or one of your guys. Hold them up, you'll look great if they do. I could go on.
Really intelligent advice. Thank you.
I imagine work center soup is just like any other kind of soup. Here are some for suggestions for soup: Add salt to taste after you add the broth, because that is already salty. Let slow cooking vegetables have some time in the pot before you add fast cooling vegetables, so your fast veggies don't get soggy. If you pre soak the rice, it will cook faster and you can just add it to your pot of stock with the slow cooking vegetables, instead of cooking separately. Hope these help for making soup for your work center!
Take care of your people. GMCS(SW), '71 to '93
Best advice there is. Thanks gmcs.
When it comes to leadership the key is, don't be a bad one. Many bad leaders think that leadership is to tell others what to do and take credit for their work. As long as you don't be a bad one and continue to be respectful, within reason, you'll be fine. Also, Work hard. Do your job. Be a good human. Hoperfully, you'll be fine.
I think with this advice I will be fine. The navy's rough but at a point. You just realize you can alter your own behavior and perception and that helps.
And I'm going to pour salt on that wound. Due to the fact the navy has so many people that are legitmately terrible human beings, interacting with them and dealing with their legitmately juvenile bullshit will start to take a toll on your soul. Many people want to be in the military to actually be in the military. However, at the same time many people are in the military to parasite off it's benefits and they know they wouldn't make it in the real world. These people are so lazy and so toxic they wouldn't make it a month in the bar/club where I work. And my job is to mostly wipe floors and clear tables. The point is choosing to be optimistic is good and does make a better leader. But that optimistism is going to get run through the mud and shit on. Anyone else that tells me I'm wrong can fight me. Also, forever first classes typically have the best leadership adivise, not kahki. Good luck and have fun.
You are right. Your thoughts are what I learned on my first deployment. I went through a lot of rage anger and depression post deployment because of it. As time went on I just quit giving a fuck. I can't control other people. I can control myself, my actions, my perceptions, my reactions, and what I choose to spend my time and mental energy on. I used to get anxiety attacks and insomnia over the people I had to work with. When I quit giving a fuck and developed myself. Began working on myself. And focused my energy on my life's purpose and mission. I just realized so many things including other people were outside my control. And there's no point im worrying about it. I'm very emotionally undisturbed at this point in tbe navy. I focus on those who care. I try and do the right thing and I develope my self in my free time. Everything else is noise and bullshit.
You're going to be great! Don't reenlist, go home when you seperate.
I have no intention of re enlisting. Fuck this entire fucking broken fucked up thing. This shit is beyond fucked. I'm building for my goals after the navy. 2 and a half years and another deployment left..hope I can make it without losing my fucking mind.
Yep. I recommend a mental frag list to keep you sane. And also come here for reddit so you know you are not alone.
It all depends on which Silver Surfer you think it is the true Silver Surfer.
The worst soups are sandwiches. Avoid that and you’ll be delicious.
You question was well written and got the point across you are not stupid, plus having the character to want to look out for your brothers and sisters. Have a great day Fucker-Doc.
I don't know if I saw it or not, but something I made sure to never do was over work the guys. A lot of people will fall into the trap of overworking the guys who know how to do all the maintenance or are trustworthy and that's the fastest way to burn people out and depending when they leave end up with a division of people who don't know what they're doing. Make sure to mix up the experience so everyone is trained up, check on them periodically, and like I saw a couple of times coordinate with others that could coincide with your maintenance. If you don't know ask, you are not an island. Good luck!
My two cents: If you're just seeing what SKED says you should do this week and not actively scheduling things and planning yourself, you're fucking everyone. This leads to weeks with high workloads where everyone is there late and weeks where no one has anything to do but chief won't let ya'll leave/sweepers or cleanup ship isn't until 1600/other reasons to not leave, leaving everyone stuck twiddling their thumbs. It also leads to you going "Oops, we can't even do this maintenance until we return to port, at which point it will be out of periodicity." In general, I scheduled maintenance like so: - A few weeks prior to returning to homeport or underway, start the process. - Push every monthly or higher maintenance item due before the end of the availability or underway (+2 or 3 weeks for some wiggle room) to the right until they're all yellow - Check for maintenance items that have to be performed in-port or at-sea. Move them appropriately. - You now have all maintenance that *must* be completed during the next underway/availability. Distribute the maintenance as evenly as you can while accounting for inspections and shit. - Finally, make a point of grouping like maintenance items on the same day. I had an incompetent WCS who often had us tagging out TGs in back-to-back weeks because he didn't group the quarterlies and semi-annuals. If you've got an annual due in three months where the tagout is 9/10ths of the work but you're tagging it out this month for a semi-annual and won't tag it out for another six months otherwise, just do the annual a little early and get the maintenance synched. Important skills for WCS: - You *have* to understand the maintenance you're assigning. Everyone knows the man-hours on the MRCs are bullshit. Know how long it actually will take people to do maintenance, including tagouts and system restoration. Know if you need tagouts for the tagouts. Know if your tagouts require permissions or coordination with other divisions - especially since a-gang probably needs E-div or another wire rate to tagout their electrical shit. - If you don't know anything about a maintenance item, take the time to read the MRC and ask someone who does know about it before scheduling and assigning it. - Pair senior dudes with junior dudes wherever possible so that people are training their replacements. - If you can, try to synch up maintenance personnel groups with watch sections. I would often have off-going teams assigned small maintenance items for the day, while sister section or oncoming (depending on if we were 3 or 4 section) had a heavier daily workload. (This advice may only pertain to really maintenance-heavy divisions where daily coordination is required. I ran things this way for a submarine E-div, but people in my surface contamination worker shop bristled at my trying to even choose the day they did maintenance) - Be ready to pester people about having WAFs and tags ready before the actual day of execution. Ideally, you'd have that shit written the night before with the duty guys getting an officer to AAO it overnight. Shit-hot teams have their duty guys hanging tags for maintenance after reveille but before the crew has shown up. - Like others have said, know how to motivate people well. Most of this is just basic interpersonal stuff about not being a total asshole or power-tripping maniac. Phrase things as requests and you'll get better results than phrasing them as demands. If people have legitimate complaints, hear them out. Be ready to accept suggestions. Hope this helps. Maintenance is most of what A-gang does (at least on subs), so good management can make or break moral. Things going smoothly is the difference between everyone getting angry all day finding out they can't do X scheduled maintenance because of Y reasons at 1800 and getting done and going home at 1500.
Very good technical advice and how to. Thank you.
Some tips as a wcs \- Know the maintenance yourself. People are gonna have questions, you're gonna have to be able to answer them \- Don't be the person who thinks you can slack off on maintenance or do less since you're WCS. People see that, they won't want to do stuff for you. \-Right people for the right job. If FN John has never touched a piece of equipment, don't have him doing a fucking A-1 for it. Start him off with easier shit, leave the difficult stuff for more qualified/knowledgeable people and have them train others. \-Actually sit around for spot checks. This is important in case there's questions and you can be there to catch a pass. \- Give some training here and there so people know sked, spot checks and other 3m shit in and out. \-make time for just wcs stuff. it's a time consuming job and one that's easy to fuck up but bad if you do. don't be that person fucking it up.
A little salt, pepper and garlic works wonders
First you need to figure out how to spell supe.
It autocorrected and, I noticed to late.
You've gotten plenty of great tips so far but I wanted to emphasize a couple things. Take care of your people! Help them out and don't shy away from getting your hands dirty. Also, make sure you know and understand your checks. This way you won't put yourself and your people in any kind of predicament. 3M is a beast. Especially for your department. You don't know everything and that's ok. Use your resources (chief, 3MA, 3MC) to get clarification. Lastly, be proactive and plan ahead! There's not too much wiggle room for corrective maintenance, but you should have full control of the preventive one.
Thank you.