Officially Out of the Navy

After almost 8 years, finally. I've been out a week and I'm loving it.

Time to clear the air of all those little things that have been on my mind since day one. Much fuss has been made about blogging about your employer, so I chose to wait mine out. No dirty little secrets here (those will go with me to the grave), but just a few insights on the time I spent in the US Navy.

There isn't much to say other than I'll miss the job security, the pay, and the relatively simple way of getting by it offered. By simple I mean that as long as you show up on time in the right uniform and do what you're told, you encountered few problems and you got paid every two weeks on time, no questions asked. I traveled often while I was on the ship and I met a lot of interesting, cool people from all corners of the globe that I would never have met otherwise. I learned to get by with whatever I could throw on my back and take with me, at least on the ship. It taught me self-reliance and how to deal with being closed off from society for varying periods of time. I learned that plans changed often and being flexible was key.

On the other hand, the downsides eventually began to outweigh the upsides. The bad thing about being a government employee meant that your ass was theirs. Once you chose a duty station, the chances of relocating or changing jobs in your favor was virtually impossible until that tour of duty was over. Rarely did anyone get relocated anywhere at a duty station involuntarily that worked in that person's best interests. Relocating usually meant that you were either a bad seed or you weren't pulling your weight. Or you appeared that way. As with all large bureaucratic organizations, there were inherent flaws in the system. Some people who would bust their ass, but not kiss anyone else's would usually get little to no recognition. Other people who got by on appearances and being the golden child were sometimes rewarded unjustly. Those who got rewarded usually deserved it, but a lot of times they didn't and vice versa. So it goes.

By far, the worst problem plaguing the Navy is the middle to upper management. Generally speaking, my closest bosses weren't bad people. It was usually the people above them (or above them) that were the problem.

That's the first rule of politics, isn't it? The man who orders the execution never drops the blade. -from Quills

You always seemed to be one or two steps removed from the ones making the uninformed decisions. They never worked with you directly and they usually had a distorted view of what was going on. There was a saying we had: so-and-so forgot what it was like to be a Blue Shirt (Enlisted; the low guy on the totem pole). In all fairness, sometimes that was a good thing. Sometimes it took an intelligent outside perspective to set things straight. But usually they just fucked it up.

And with that comes the rampant stupidity of the utterly clueless upper management.

Some of the problem with that stems from the fact that when Officers go to their schooling before entering the real Navy, they are bred in an environment that feeds the notion that they are superior to the Enlisted. After school, they join the rest of the day-to-day Navy with this idealistic view of how the military is supposed to be and how the underlings are supposed to kowtow to their every whim. They don't ease themselves into their new surroundings, they are there to change the world and then some. It doesn't last long. 6 months of living on a ship and they've learned more than a lifetime of schooling could ever teach them. To be starkly honest, I didn't like most Officers, mostly because they rarely treated Enlisted people as human beings. It was usually all business and no personality. There was always this feeling behind every interaction that there was a vast difference between you and them, and you were the inferior one. I especially had a hard time taking seriously any Officer younger than me that had been in the Navy half as long as I had who showed up at our doorstep without the first clue as to what was going on.

In the Army and the Marines (and the air crew of the Navy, from what I've seen), the division between Officer and Enlisted is a lot less defined, as the Officers know they have to rely on EVERYBODY in their unit to save their ass in a tight situation. Petty personal differences and any feelings of superiority take a back seat to self-preservation. People learn to get along to survive. The Navy is a lot more corporate. Back-stabbing and snobbish behavior is practically part of the job description.

Enough of that. We all understand the evil nature of upper management and corporate culture. It's more of a human problem than a Navy problem.

Aside from the things that were an everyday, accepted part of Navy life like going out to sea, being away from family and friends, wearing a uniform, etc, there isn't that much to complain about. But there were a few things.

Probably my biggest deciding factor on getting out of the military was the advancement. The tests that I took for advancement were 80% about things I never worked on and most likely would never work on even if I had spent 20 years in the Navy. This problem was job-specific, that only someone who did the same job I did had a problem with. Most people in the Navy took advancement tests that dealt directly with what they do on a daily basis. Mine dealt with many different things, most of which I didn't deal with on a daily basis. I had no desire to learn useless facts about other people's job. I was too concentrated on my job and my workcenter on the ship, and later in college when I was on shore duty. I couldn't give a shit less about what other people's jobs were.

The other big deciding factor for me getting out was that I sensed some very big changes afoot in the manning goals of the Navy. The new goal of the Navy (possibly the military as a whole) is 'optimal manning.' Optimal manning means that they have just enough people to accomplish the job safely. It means less people doing more work. It means less advancement. It means the military is downsizing, but still trying to accomplish all the same goals they had yesterday.

While I was on the ship, I couldn't help feeling that my life wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't go to college (ok, a REAL college). It was hard to keep up with anything going on in the news or read websites on a regular basis. I couldn't have a meaningful relationship unless the woman was really patient and willing to go for long periods of time without seeing me. I guess that comes with the job, too. But after a while the bullshit overwhelms you to the point of no return.

I could probably write a book about the good and bad points of the US Navy, but thankfully, I won't. Suffice it to say that the best and worst thing about the Navy was the same: the people. Some people were cool as hell, some were shitheads. The bad part, though, was living with the shitheads on a daily basis, at least while out to sea. That is something you won't encounter anywhere else. The Navy is the only organization in the world where you have to live and work in a semi-corporate environment in close-quarters for long periods of time with other people that you may or may not like. You have a problem with a co-worker and want to blow off some steam after work by having a couple of beers? Nope. You run a good chance that you'll be around them all day and night. Work time and free time overlap.

As my friend used to say, “It's been real and it's been fun. But it ain't been real fun.” I learned a lot of things about myself and about life and I'm glad I did it now that it's over with. But would I do it again if I had to? You already know the answer.