I hope this actually makes me feel better. I’ve been walking around venting for the past hour because of what transpired this evening. Something that makes me feel a bit less secure about the intelligence level of our military leaders.
Don’t get me wrong, the past 6 months have been an eye opener. I’ve seen the poorest leadership I could have ever imagined in an area where you’d expect to see the best. I’ll tell you one thing, the great military leaders of old have long since passed.
I walked out of our maintenance connex, I’ll show you pictures when I get back, and I notice two higher level enlisted marines, one is a SgtMaj and the other a GSgt. I like the GSgt because he seems relatively intelligent and easy to work with. So anyway… I walk out and see them talking and notice the SgtMaj glance over at me and starts to go off about how our generators are not “aesthetically pleasing.” No joke, those are his exact words.
At this point, I realize he’s talking about MY site to the GSgt. So instead of waiting around for someone to come tell me to move something I walk over to their little conversation. He looks at me and starts telling me about how that is their “foyer” and if someone came down from the Camp north of us that it would be unsightly.
I bit my tongue… ohhh how I bit my tongue. I thought better about informing him that this is a combat zone and not his living room. I thought better about telling him that there isn’t a Bed Bath and Beyond down the road where I can pick up some flowers to make the place nice. I also stopped myself from asking him if he wanted me to sweep the sand off the ground too.
So anyway, I tell him that we’re working on getting heavy equipment to move one of our generators away because it isn’t functional.
“You need to push the other one closer to the container so it isn’t sitting in the middle of the (walking) path.” He said.
“We need to do maintenance on it and if it’s closer we can’t maintain it.” I respond.
“What maintenance?”
Here’s where I’m about 3 inches from losing it… “Changing the oil?” You stupid moron…
“Oh, well can’t you put these in line or something?”
“No… we’re getting the unusable one taken away…” or don’t you remember me saying that 30 seconds ago…
“What about that air conditioner that’s sitting over there?”
BACKGROUND: 4 hours prior to this little talk we pulled an a/c out of one of our containers that arrived yesterday. It fell out of the wall and we put a new one in. So it had been sitting there for… oh… less than a few hours.
“My night crew guys are going to take care of it…”
“Oh, well it’s just not aesthetically pleasing…”
I thought, well, I’m sorry that you’ve been sitting behind a desk your entire career but I’m sure the area around said desk is very pleasing. Do you own any books on fung shui?
There were a few other things that I won’t mention because it’s not my place. I’m a civilian and have always been. But I did tell one of my former infantry friends about what those things. He’s actually had to fire his rifle at the bad guy, unlike our friendly neighborhood SgtMaj. So anyway, allow me to continue…
“Just relax, we’ll get it all straightened out.” I respond.
“Don’t tell me to relax, I am relaxed.”
I’m looking this ogre straight in the eye and respond… “Just relax…” in my calm voice…
“When you say you’re going to move it I want it done now, not a month from now…”
“We’re coordinating HE (Heavy Equipment), you know how difficult it can be to get them.”
“Yeah but just get it done.”
“Okay.” I say, hoping he hears the absolute disrespect in my voice.
Then he walks away… I pat him on his back as he walks past me just for good measure and walk off… Fuming…
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