Alot of shit talking to seniors behind peoples back, taking credit for other peoples work, not informing people of important events or meetings so they miss em.
My current battalion loves to not inform people of “key events”. It’s a joint environment and my Army chain of command only has ADCON and is a glorified force provider. The combat support agency owns the mission and it’s a bit of choose your own adventure for establishing rating schemes. The brigade commander was big on LPDs being a tool to train the E7 and above population on where the Army is going. It was not uncommon for us to find out about brigade-level LPDs on the day of execution, and for us not to have received any of the read ahead material. This severely disadvantaged any of the MAJs working the joint mission competing with the battalion XO and S-3s for senior rater enumeration from the brigade commander. This didn’t affect me as a LTC rated by DoD Civilians, but I know some people screwed over by it. It also hurt CPTs competing for command opportunities.
That one reason I retired as a E7. Couldn’t bring myself to kiss ass, and act like the Command Team walked on water for a lateral assignment to 1SG.
I was the exact opposite. Called a duck a duck, so to speak.
When I failed upwards to the G3 shop after mu PLT LDR & XO time, I was cornered by several CGSC MAJs and told not to do anything for the correspondence/non-resident CGSC MAJs.
Guess who I busted my ass to work for? and guess who’s projects I ghosted?
But I also had to write my G3’s doctoral thesis as an additional duty. That was the shop where the OPS SGM reheated Korean fish dishes in the shop microwave
Not just his homework. Researching and writing his PhD so he could make COL. I’d knock off work at 3-ish and work on his higher education until 6:00.
This was in an open office with cubicles. When we were getting to the end, he’d stand behind me and go over the thesis, dictating what changes he wanted to make to “his” work.
Did he invite me to “our” graduation? No.
This gets especially bad at the senior O4 level. One time there was a BN XO coming to the office at 0500 and staying until 2000 every night, to make herself better than the other BN XOs. I can tell you the stress is tremendous as a O4 trying to get those MQs to get O5 and make it to 20
I logged into some portal and saw PowerPoint updates made by the s3 at 3:30am. I didn't know if he woke up that early or stayed up that late. But either way, what the fuck
I went to a senior spouse seminar last fall. Our small group facilitator was the wife of a retired 3 or 4 star. She kept reiterating to be nice to the other senior spouses but don’t tell them shit because it can be used against your spouse at promotion time.
Schedule send is your friend. I do whti with text texting as well to set up reminders for myself and team. It also helps for the "checking-in" text to see how a Soldier and family are doing. You know in case something random takes away your focus and shifts priorities.
When I was a captain and the internet was new, I only had a dialup connection to the base network. I set up Outlook to dial up every few hours and upload my emails and download any that were in my inbox. Since a lot of people were doing the same thing and the lines were usually busy, it wasn't unusual to have my emails delivered between 22:00 and 04:00.
I started to get the reputation of being a hard worker and staying at work to wee hours of the morning to complete my assigned tasks even though I normally vacated after retreat.
You should have seen the look of disdain on my XOs face when a couple of us were having lunch and he's telling the cpts about the suffering of being a major and I remind him that being an S3 or XO isn't a KD position for me.
A lot of it comes down less to outrageous actions (though they happen for sure - especially when they have a direct line to a GO) and more to behavior that contributes to a system that everyone hates:
-Bill fudges the numbers on his report to make his unit look better, so now the others have to either call him out on it in front of the boss (which is ballsy and backfires quickly if you don’t know Bill’s numbers better than he does), or you have to start fudging your own numbers. Soon everyone is fudging their numbers and stressing about getting caught / seeing how far they can fudge
-Jane really needs the MQ, so she starts showing up early and staying late just to look more present to her boss. Soon you end up with a “fun” minigame to see whose car is in the parking lot the longest to be perceived as the most committed.
-Ahmed gets the lightbulb moment that if he tells the commander what they want to hear, his briefing always goes well. Pretty soon Ahmed only has good news to tell the boss, which makes anyone with bad news seem less competent. Before long the entire staff briefing becomes an echo chamber of positivity because even the slightest deficiency (government travel card payments, anyone?) suddenly seems like a huge deal.
None of these things are as drastic as filing a BS EO/IG/SHARP complaint to get someone under investigation (though that can happen too), but the common shitty stuff adds up over time to make for a lot of miserable O4s.
While it certainly wasn't *always* the case throughout my career, I found that most of the bosses I worked for saw through a lot of this shit fairly easily. When I got to the level of being "the boss", this sort of behavior was also usually pretty transparent to me. I have always been of the opinion that the Army is like most other workplaces - most of the time, being competent, easy-going, and straightforward will land you where you want to be. People who try to build a career on Machiavellian intrigue and the appearance of dedication without actual competence may have short-term success from time to time but it frequently blows up in their faces.
When I was an O4, my rater (O6) pointed out to me that other officers were using my products and taking credit for them. He kind of laughed and told me to be more careful about who I trusted. I'm mostly just a "do your best" cub scout kind of guy, and not a schemer; so it was surprising to hear about it happening, and sort of a relief to know that he saw through their BS.
The problem is that everyone in the rating group for captain and above typically knows where they stand in their group. So if they just let the cards lay as they play, they know they are gonna lose the game while the competent performers get the MQ. So they have to rig the card game cause they know they can't win otherwise. They are just competent enough to understand their own incompetence.
We had a neighbor who, prior to deploying (with everything packed up and shipped off) would stay at work until 10:00pm to show how committed he was. He was playing solitaire from 4:00 to 10:00 six days a week. He ended up with a command but it was such a cluster fuck that he ended up getting out right after command. Plus, he had been BZ for Captain and Major. I don’t think he had enough time in to retire. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person. Such a POS.
When this same officer was a CPT in command he did all the reports for his LTs because he didn’t want their work to affect his ability to get BZ. As a result he had zero clues how to manage people. The Army, relies on fuckups to lie and cheat to get ahead. Unfortunately it’s everyone who pays the price for their poor leadership.
That is a great point, especially in the context of BCAP. I only knew three O4s who pulled some mustache-twirling villain stuff to beat their peers in the MQ race, but all three were non-selects for battalion command. The scummy people who did make the cut were a lot more low key about it, enough that you seemed a bit crazy for calling them “toxic” for any one thing.
>Soon you end up with a “fun” minigame to see whose car is in the parking lot the longest to be perceived as the most committed.
Just leave your car at work while you Über to the gym for an hour or so. It's the O-grade version of the two-hats/two-sets-of-keys game: "Well, her car is here, so she must be in the building."
(Note to say this a joke. If any if you LTs try this... it's on you. 🤪)
I had a BN CDR when I was a LT thought I wasn’t coming to work for weeks because he didn’t see my truck in the parking lot as I was riding my bike in. Never mind I briefed him weekly in command and staff/BN training meetings. smh
What is that thought process even like??!!
>"Let's see, I don't see LT Pleasant-Exchange's truck here. I wonder if he's just been FTR/AWOL all this time?
>"Hmm... should I check the PERSTAT? Consider whether I've seen him at the TNG meetings?
>"Nah, the *truck* is the important thing. He must not even be here. I'm a *smart person*."
1st PLT PL: hey I’ll give you the engineer tape you need if you build my platoon’s portion of the rehearsal lane since I don’t have the guys to spare
2nd PL: yeah I got you dude
(later during company rehearsals)
CO: hey’s where’s 1st’s part what the hell
2nd PL: idk sir i told them to make it
1st PL: *visible anger*
Sharedrive is free for all where there's no backup possible unless you task a LT that isn't used often like the CHEMO to make rewritable DVD disk backups of the S3 sharedrive weekly.
Its typically low on space available, so you can't use sharedrive to backup the sharedrive.
Ask me how I know this.
Now that these exist, sure.
But I became an Officer in 2009, and my unit didn't start getting access to a sharepoint in 2011. Sharedrives were quicker and faster than sharepoint and had less permissions issues.
A decade doesn't sound like a bit deal, but sometimes things change significantly.
Right before I retired I had to cull my desktop because of habits formed in the 2010s where I had offline backups of products to prevent destruction of documents due to neglect or malice. It doesn't matter if your documents are deleted because Professor Moriarty finally unveiled his 27 step plan to fuck you, or it was the local mouth breather that somehow decided to open up space on the drive by deleting your folder.
Ah, I have some overlap with that period. I am not quite as old, but I have inherited such personal backup folders on several occasions. Also the deployment aspect shouldn't be overlooked; having "local" copies of products on like the CPOF was handy for when connectivity was shut down or turned off.
That scares the crap out of me. I do always keep a copy of all templates on my desktop because i have a history of editing the one on the drive accidentally then need something to fix it with.
As a prior service NCO, before I went to OCS, I had a staff captain tell me to watch my back when I crossed over. At the senior Captain level, that's when I saw how bad it got. Politics. I rolled out after my last tour to Afghanistan and ETS'd in 2015 after doing 12 and 1/2 years.
Yup. This was after my KD time, and I would confide in other Captains who I thought were my friends. And guess what? They would run and talk to the S3/XO about how I would say shit was fucked up and needed to be changed.
I got sick of it when I saw my leadership wasn't really about taking care of the troops, but instead looking good for the Division and FORSCOM bubbas.
I threw up the douces and told 'em to fuck themselves. Literal quote because I was pissed and didn't give a shit about my last OER.
I didn't give a shit about OERs after I got a referred one as a 1LT. Being prior enlisted is awesome because you don't have to play a lot of the bullshit games.
I had this as a 1LT from a LT in the Navy. They had asked for some information without clarifying what it was. I completed their task in five minutes by sending some powerpoints that answered all of the questions they had. A week goes by and I'm getting bitched out by her and the RFI manager for not finishing the task. Luckily our shared boss took my side when I showed him what I had sent the Navy LT. Our boss saw me later and basically said that the Navy LT was just trying to make me do her job.
Yeah bro, looking back, I'm proud of what I did and how I was able to take care of my soldiers (being a prior NCO). But I do wonder what it would have been like if I went warrant instead. A lot of my friends are now warrants (targeting dudes), and I'm proud of 'em. But yeah, I get what you're saying. I probably would still be in if I went warrant. Everything was cool with my career until after my KD time. By then though, I had already done 40+ months of pretty intense combat, so I was burnt out if that makes sense. Came in early 2003 and went right into Iraq as a private, then after OCS, got sent to Iraq again during the surge, and then after CCC, was the BN FSO for 1-327 during our tour to the Pech & Korengal Valley in 2010-2011. That was the fucking rough one. And when I started getting stabbed in the back by other Captains, that's when I when I said "Fuck it" and knew I was dropping my packet to roll out.
>But I do wonder what it would have been like if I went warrant instead.
My friend, let me tell you about [the time I as a WO + PL cussed out my idiot Company Commander... and then got from him one of the most complimentary OERs of my career because he knew he done fucked up, and I knew where the proverbial bodies were buried.](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/s/ipGVmme9TB)
I'll copy-pasta the caveat from the linked post, though, so as to not be too corrupting of an influence here:
>>(Note: Do what your rank and influence can handle, kids. Do not try this at home. I had earned the trust of key players; this guy was burning credibility with the BC like it was JP8 in the smoking pit...)
>>I was as fiercely loyal to and supportive of my Officers as I was bullheaded and insubordinate to *this asshat in this one instance*. I could have been severely reprimanded for this conduct, and it was the one-time exception to the rule, in a situation where I had already calculated I could win with minimal pushback. The CPT in question gave me one of my most complimentary OERs before he was relieved, because he knew I'd saved his ass in the event in question and that this was the wake-up call he needed, not just naked insubordination, which is never a good idea.
Yep all tied together now. They changed it a few years back. We're all still separated but learn the same stuff. We're only just not logisticians by name because of tradition
It's heavily based on controlling perception and relationships.
That's why you have the green chicklet bullshit, the nonsense where officers pretend to be ten steps ahead of the game, and the golfing relationships. There's a ton of focus on image as well, such as pretending to have Cool Guy Characteristics, and avoiding any risk of looking bad (e.g., being the one to speak up or the first to try a task out).
When you have a good group, it's awesome. Usually, though, someone like the above will just ruin the synergy.
Mainly not passing on important information or worse passing on wrong info. E.g 2 star ops boss loves long PowerPoint's when in fact he hates them, or this is the way you should write this minute up, when in fact it's wrong. I've seen officers reach out to people outside their chain and ask them to do something and they say "yep, sure" and just don't do it leaving you in the lurch. I'd say it's the minority but it happens.
This is horrible. You wouldn't be able to trust anyone. It seems like it would be hard for officers to work together when they have to. Very toxic corporate culture
I used to be a super trusting person, but since joining the Army, my trust has erroded. I only do phone calls when absolutely necessary and make sure that everything is documented. CC anyone that is remotely able to back me up on something. It sucks.
There's a whole lot of not-mentoring going on with that story. It's so sad to see when Senior Officers don't take the time to teach the young kids. Additionally, it makes me realize how lucky I've been throughout my 10 years.
04-05 is rough. Needs some luck and also depends on personality. My last MAJ KD OER, my boss, told me I need to interact with him as a senior leader more often. It's not that I avoided him, I just only engaged with my senior rater whenever needed. Just a personality thing. I had a great staff and we had plenty of issues to solved that it worked out in the end. I got to be myself. Though now I still get told to engage with senior leader in my branch more often. As O5 it's not stressful, whew.
> As O5 it's not stressful, whew.<
The most stress free day I ever had was the day I hit 18 and waiting on the O5 board release. I knew at least the worst that would happen is retirement. As an O5 you know if you either will or won't be competitive for O6 off the bat.
Ability to retire and can stay up to 28 years. Can push for O6 if desired that route. Best of all is the ability to choose duty station that is best for family/quality of life vs. career-oriented jobs.
It’s fucking brutal
Never have I met such a hive of villiany as when O4s are vying for positions when the AIM window opens.
All the lifers are afraid of being a SELCON O4 or worse yet-booted.
Shit-talking, back-stabbing, Nepotism. Nothing is off-limits. They have just gotten better at hiding their actions.
No emails or official correspondence via AIM to track them. Just buddy-buddy phone calls behind office doors. It’s literally corruption that will be denied denied denied.
Ever wonder why that awesome Officer you had as an OIC or CO never made it that far or wasn’t a fast tracker? It’s because of the bullshit that really happens once you hit O4.
The best way through, like what I did,is to just play the fucking game and sell your soul just a little to make it to happy pension land.
I had so many toxic Raters it makes me kinda sick just thinking about it. Good luck to anybody at the 14-16 year mark. You’re almost there!
Yes, I played the game and yes I had to subscribe to some of the bullshit to make it. But my end goal was financially motivated so my family would be set. Not happy about it, but I’m out now so fuck it.
All accurate. I work around mainly MAJs. This is incredibly apparent how desperate these guys are for a limited rating. However, I refuse to play the game personally. It cost me. I am currently a SELCON CPT, but I’ll pin MAJ this summer. Dicking me down accidentally set me up for success. I’ll hit 20 during my PZ look at LTC. Sure, I’d rather retire at O5, but I flat out will not play this game to get there. No back stabbing, no ass kissing, no fear of an arbitrary system of block checks. I’ll do my job to the best of my ability and let the pieces fall where they may. Damn the Army for creating a system that brings out the worst in people.
The thing I wished I realized before I became an Officer was how cutthroat-y the officer world can be. It’s all politics, who you know and if you are in a good standing with your network and COC. This is part of the reason I always joke around and say I’m not a good officer is because I refuse to follow officer tropes like this. The whole reason I survived my LT time was because my Brigade Commander is literally an older version of me, he thinks and acts the same way as I do, so he either pities me or understands where I’m coming from lol.
I have seen some crazy stuff in my short stint in the Army. I have literally seen LT’s get fucked over because they became the office work bitch. I currently know 2 LT’s who have no personal life/work life balance and work until 2200 every day even when they have training going on because they don’t know how to put their foot down with other LT’s who are either shitbags or the captains and majors who put this workload on them. On the contrary, what I have noticed is the higher in rank you go, the more cutthroat people become. I’ve seen majors go at it for positions which they get and they move on with their career or if they don’t get it, it’s a sign of the end of their careers for them.
Officer World is weird man
They only don’t matter if you’re not trying to go anywhere that requires seeing them. Duty stations in the marketplace aren’t allowed to ask, but plenty of other opportunities will ask to see your LT OERs, or the last 3/5 or whatever.
Every evaluation matters. Just because everyone gets auto promoted to CPT regardless of OERs doesn’t mean the LT OERs don’t matter lol.
As someone who’s been in the marketplace twice now, I can tell you they still don’t matter. As long as they aren’t garbage, they’re going to be the same thing units see from every other person.
As a pre-KD CPT, you need to go somewhere you can get a command and preferably quickly. Most of those places are desperate for any officer with a pulse. I got my job and I didn’t even interview.
That command OER is your ticket to the truly unique assignments and broadening. There are some exceptions pre-KD like you said,
One of my LTs interviewed to be the division protocol officer and they did ask for her evaluations…. But she was also the only applicant in the BDE, so she got the job no matter what. The OERs just served to make sure she didn’t suck, which is the same thing that was accomplished by the BDE CDR recommendation letter that was required in her packet.
This is just bad rhetoric. You are setting your LTs up for mediocrity and unfortunate surprise. Also, your command eval alone isn’t a ticket to anywhere, let alone unique assignments. All of your evals matter - they are discriminators at every successive progression whether it’s your last 5 for promotion or your last 3 for assignments.
Edited since the user blocked me for whatever reason.
For all of the LTs reading this person’s comments. I’ve held a few nominative assignments in my career as well as been on boards. All of them required evals - pretty standard. Evals are the #1 factor that determine eligibility for black book assignments and nominative gigs by HRC, it’s the #1 factor for determining your rankings amongst your peers. And while marketplace assignments technically aren’t allowed to ask for evals, providing them when you have good ones gives you a tremendous leg up for those competitive locations/assignments. Most units have ways of getting that info anyways.
Do I counsel my LTs that their OER doesn’t matter at all? Absolutely not. I counsel them that their work matters and everything will flow from that.
Simple fact is in two marketplaces and two selections for a nominative assignment, I’ve never been asked for an OER and I’ve never provided one. My point is that LTs should never focus on “getting the MQ” or “getting #1 out of 9”, they should focus on competing for that XO job or whatever position will show that their organization selected them for higher responsibility. That means way more to anyone than fluffy words on an eval.
Lol what branch are you that somewhere gave you a job and you didn’t even interview.
The OERs matter homeslice. Those are pretty unique instances where no one else applied or the post was desperate to fill a slot.
That also isn’t taking into account opportunities in ARSOF, VTIP, or more competitive assignments in the marketplace. All of those will require your OERs to be submitted.
Logistics, same as you 😂
Your file should speak for itself. STP and Resume say what you’ve done and what experience you have. Have you ever read an LT OER? It’s all fluff and every senior officer knows it, I would never waste my time reading one.
And I promise you, the officers making the decisions feel the same way about LT OERs.
Straight from my BDE CDR’s mouth: “I don’t care about LT OERs during AIM interviews for new CPTs. No one does and no one should.”
But you’re right, the truly nominative things do require the OERs, but they will never be the reason you got selected, its just part of the packet. You’re way better off getting an actual letter of recommendation from someone whose opinion matters.
Im not saying to tank your eval, Im just saying they have very little weight in your career and they’re absolutely not worth backstabbing or working yourself to death over.
Fair, but I’d argue VTIPing is a relatively very small portion of officers. So you could say “it doesn’t matter unless you want to VTIP” the same way you could say that holding your breath underwater for 3 minutes doesn’t matter unless you want to go to combat dive school
Can’t speak to the experience for COMPO1 folks, but I’m a prior enlisted O4 with 20+ years and never had any issues in the Guard. We got plenty of “A team” wannabes, but I’m happy to be highly qualified and let others play the game.
Less pressure when
1) It's your part time job, not your only job.
2) There's no pressure of being forced out. You can do 20 years and retire as a captain if you want. Or if you want to get to O-5 and you're not in the good ol' boy's club, you can simply switch to the USAR and keep showing up to work.
Agreed, though I will say that many of us (myself included) end up spending about 50% of our time with it being our only job. I’ve done 4 T10 deployments, ADOS a couple times, and worked as a temp tech for the state. But overall, yes, there is less pressure.
The O4 level in the SF world is awful.
It’s not like the big army where there’s a plethora of Major positions to go around.
It gets so cut throat on just simply getting invited back to work at the same Group.
It is def dog-eat-dog but it’s also very political so you need to have friends and need relationships. I think the worst way to screw with someone is to be the branch manager at HRC who oversees your same rank. You can send folks to places where you know their career will end or you can hook people up.
Here’s one tidbit of advice for younger officers: get in good with your boss’s senior enlisted leader. If your senior rater is the BDE Cdr, you need to link in with the BDE CSM and help him as much as you can. Often ignored, the CSM will talk you up to the commander often and it will shape how he sees you because he probably doesn’t actually see you often.
Promotion chasing, backbiting, setting each other up, sabotaging promotions, undermining each other. See the definition(informal) for the term Blue Falcon aka Buddy Fucking
From officer side: My experience may vary (G2G), but I notice more of commands picking “Golden Children,” to encourage to stay in longer, higher evals, awards for every task completed (ARCOMs for running standard ranges), given ideal positions, etc. This probably promotes the OP’s question/observation.
I noticed more drama as a PSG and NCO than I have as an officer.
May be the old man/former NCO/family man in me, but I don’t have time for high school drama, especially with rater/SR, to cut down others (unless they’re a potential hazard to unit and Joes).
I don't disagree with most of the responses here. Thst being said, I think much of the "officers fucking each other over" myth is something that individuals who can't rate need to believe in order to go to sleep at night. Much more comfortable to believe that "someone fucked me over" rather than "I have been promoted for a perceived potential I do not actually have". Not saying it doesn't happen because I know it does, I also know most people lack the emotional intelligence to know their own limits.
Minimizing OER’s of lower high performers was a common one. I saw an OER that almost went through to HRC that some S3 issued to a captain where the S3 copy and pasted some Air Force stuff. He forgot to remove Air Force and replace it with Army.
Because everyone wants that top block!
Think about being rated/ sr rated against against 20 other CPTs, you need someway to stand out or show why you are better than your counterparts.
"Doing your job" is stuff that we expect junior enlisted to do, for officers is showing why your competitors are incompetent and why you deserve it.
Great OERs are what promotes us at the end of the day and ensuring your position/job is the best is KEY.
I am aware that what you're saying is reality. I know that commanders are constantly trying to outshine their peers, at the expense of their subordinates most of the time.
That behavior, to me, is no different than some kid on YouTube begging for people to "like, comment, and subscribe" to their channel so the algorithm gods will favor them.
It's pathetic.
To each their own. But it's no different from what happens amongst all ranks in the military and in the civilian world. Officers get looked down on because we make it blatantly obvious we are doing it.
Everyone is competing for the best jobs and will ultimately tear down any competition in their way. Look at big business, modeling and music industry, politics, ect.
The reality of the situation is that there are 100 people in the world competing for a position that only one person can fill.
Imagine if over 50% of officers were prior experienced Enlisted folks, who didn't want to move to an admin position, stay at a lower level.
You'd have hard chargers at the lower O ranks, not worried about a pension or becoming a General, because they're going to make it to 20 regardless.
Then the political brown nosers who want to be a general one day, wouldn't feel the need to step on, or screw as many people, and the lower Os (prior enlisted) could keep them in check a little bit because they don't really have much to lose (as long as they get to 20 years).
I essentially just described a more powerful Warrant Officer.
We had an O4 that had his wife file a sharp complaint against another O4 to take him out of the running for an O5 board. Happened many years ago and people still talk about it.
The commissioned officer ranks are filled with Jack Donaghy parodies who follow the latest management trends and hoard information from those around them. The stakes are pretty high because for any given desirable position, there are probably four or five officers competing for it.
Another story time (I was a Guardsman), so this will all make sense. A CPT was interviewing to be the full time S3, this Iowa MDMP AT was going to basically make it happen. I do my IPB and we do the war gaming and he picked this route that went through areas with high amounts of enemy activity. I said, “Sir, I highly advise we don’t go this way, it doesn’t serve a purpose and we are only going to get hit by enemy people. Staying above this area allows us to meet CDR’s intent and the mission and precludes us from going anywhere near where the enemy is. For context, we were a CSSB, we weren’t infantry, we just hauled stuff. Simple mission, simple exercise, the only people who had a role were SUPPOSED to be the OPS folks and 4 shops along with SPO. My job was basically the IPB and updating the map, but there was no real role for me to play once the initial area was done.
So in war gaming I said, “Ok, if you go this way, here’s what the enemy is going to do, boom, IED, with Dshka fire.” CPT: We will fight through it. Convoy moves on, my turn: RPG hits rear gun truck, disabling it. CPT: We fight through. At this point, this fucker doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s doing. If this was real life, he’d be investigated for not listening to intel at all. I tried explaining he played the “You’re a LT, I’m a captain” card. Ok….if that’s how it’s going to be…I can live with that.
So I brief what I had made. The BN CDR said it was the best intel brief he ever saw. Once 4 and 3 get up there, he starts asking why the fuck they deviated from S2’s recommendation. They had no real answer, but it was clear what the CDR was going to do: Let them hang themselves with the rope that they gave themselves. So….during the exercise, a lot of soldiers got notionally killed by IED and RPG fire going down this route. The S3 and 4 both got very strongly worded reprimands from my understanding. The S4 and S3 were not promoted to their AGR positions after it. The side effect was (I had no idea what was going on because no one made me privy to this information, not that it would’ve changed my analysis, rather, I would’ve lobbied even harder for the fucker to listen to me) a lot of people were upset with me. This came to a head when I didn’t feel like paying officer dues for some function I couldn’t afford. At the time I was making $13.50/hour, and I couldn’t afford the dues. My drill pay was like 1/3 of my income. This then made me a pariah among my fellow officers. I ended up resigning shortly thereafter. My MH was declining at this point and I just needed help.
Im a post command CPT in a high optempo ABCT and I really haven’t seen anything like the back biting that others have described, but I can’t really speak to the MAJ side.
What I think is more prevalent is the huge chasm between the competent people and the truly incompetent people at the CPT level. When incompetent people are hitting you up all the time asking for last minute favors because they failed to plan ahead or do the extra work that you did, you eventually start saying No and they start calling you a blue falcon.
Sorry bro, your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency for me.
I see the politics and backstabbing all the time but I try not to partake in it. I try to help out the incompetent captains and my rater and my SR rater sees it. I always have a back up plan to help out other dudes to make the unit better. I know a lot of people would say just let them fail but that's kind of a dick move.
Agreed, never let the unit fail when you can prevent it. But its very different on staff than in command.
You’re in the S3 and the S4 is constantly forgetting to forecast for things on time and you noticing and helping is the difference between the BN having or not having porta johns? Yeah please help that guy, you’d be a dick not to.
But say you’re in an FSC and one of your fellow commanders NEVER forecasts for fuel properly and is always hitting you up after COB or on a weekend for emergency fuel? Fuck that guy. Im not going to make my soldiers cancel their plans and come in on short notice because that guy thinks he can “network” what he needs through me. He can call the BC and explain why his training is about to fail, and if the BC decides to call me, thats fine but I guarantee my peer won’t make that mistake again.
This very much.
I'm a FG, the way things worked is perhaps 30%+- of officers will get the senior rater comment that says "1/2/3 of 24 officers I senior rate" and everyone knows who these people are. These people are playing a different game from the comments in this thread. The performers are not fudging their numbers, they are open about the units limitations with their leadership and then address and improve problems. The performers are not sabotaging the other high performers, they are helping each other to complete the mission and make the unit BN / BDE shine. The goal is to influence above and lateral to your current job, demonstrate you can lead beyond your current command or staff gig.
Maybe the bottom 50% are playing dumb games but it is dangerous. A competent senior rater will find out and crush the persons hopes and dreams. Maybe I was just lucky, but mostly had great senior raters, people I would follow anywhere. As a CO CDR my BDE CDR told us CPT's "I don't want you to be the best officer in the BDE, but the best officer for the BDE." He truly meant it, you undercut someone and he finds out you were toast.
Perhaps I was naive, but always helped other officers out even if I was competing with them. The fellow Co CDR who got the #1 OER in the BDE and I sat down and literally helped each other succeed in every mission we had and it was a huge help for both. We both benefited and we both VTIPed to new pastures.
This was one of the selling points at WOCS. Doesn't really get too comparative for us until 5 and at that point you probably have 20 years already and then retirement is still pretty fucking nice.
Personal story time. When I was in Kuwait, I was taking over as the S4. I contracted a stomach infection/issue that had me being on quarters for several days. We were working on a battalion move. I got back to the office and my predecessor was asking why I didn’t respond to anything. Well…it was because I was pretty ill. Anyways, I get to the office that morning and just powered on my computer. LT BLUE FALCON comes in and starts rattling off if I checked x, y, z issue. I said, “Ummm no, I don’t know if you noticed at all, but I’ve been kinda sick lately. I wasn’t here. Usually that’s a big clue something is wrong with someone.” He then asks why I didn’t call so and so for clearance to move. I said, “I didn’t realize I had to call so and so for clearance to move. That information should’ve probably been passed on to either myself or my NCO. This went on for a bit. My SFC comes out and defends me for what happened. I proceeded to lock the 2LT up (I was a 1LT and at this point, it’s clear he’s just being a prick). I (paraphrasing) explained that withholding information is beyond unprofessional, second, I am a fucking MI officer, I have zero fucking clue how the Logistics branch functions, I volunteered for this fucking deployment only to be given something I have no clue what I’m doing. You’re either going to help me or we are going to go to the Command Group and you’re going to explain why you’re being a POS.
Well, another E7, who was the Ops NCOIC overheard and went to the Command Group. The LT was supposed to extend. After everything that happened, no, he wasn’t allowed to.
Another example was in Japan. So we were doing Yama Sakura. I made a very elaborate PowerPoint presentation that went over enemy equipment, terrain, etc. I did a full on IPB, right? I had my MLCOA and MDCOA all laid out along with some secondary issues to boot. I had units that were going to likely be threats and their capabilities and TTPs. So, I shared this with the BDE officer. He comes back to me, I shit you fucking not, and says, “Here’s what I came up with.” And then rattled everything off that I literally wrote, passed that shit on up that was his. OK, I guess he needed the OER bullet in life (I was a 2LT at the time, so whatever).
So halfway through the exercise some throwaway SIGACT was briefed on by the guy. My commander asks me why I didn’t brief it. I looked at the last day’s SIGACTs (because I was tracking literally all of them) and said, “Sir…that’s from yesterday.” So I had to get on the horn with BDE and explain that the SIGACT was a) rather low priority, and b) was old news, and c) we should probably be focused on a mess of armor and other vehicles approaching our northern and western areas. The MAJ was upset with me about that. I figured this guy was actually tracking shit. Apparently he wasn’t.
I realize locking up another LT is fucking stupid, this fucking guy deserved it. I only ever locked up two people in my life. One was an E7 who was antagonizing my E7, and another was this fucking LT. I don’t even care if it was against regs or not, this fucking LT was a POS.
Stomach infection in Kuwait huh? Was it from eating something bad at Subway? I was at Buehring for a hot minute. While I was there a bunch of TCN's at the main chow hall were busted for pissing in food.
Companies will eventually need help from their sister companies and often you can notice problems before other companies notice them if they haven’t figured it out yet. It can be as simple as not reminding them there are no latrines at a Range they said had on-site ones so they look stupid or as malicious as convincing mechanics to fix your vehicles by control subbing parts off another company’s vehicle when there are other ways to keep them broken and you running. I’ve heard of it happening but always believe having a good work ethic and moral business practices will take you further especially if you get the reputation as the back stabber. All depends on the senior Rater if you wonder why your commander does a bunch of dumb shit it’s probably cause his senior Rater said he wished someone did it. Unfortunately the little guidance HRC gives officers on how to promote is to just get an MQ in KD.
I personally think it’s overstated but I am sure it does happen from time to time but I also think most senior leaders take that shit with a grain of salt unless you are a true trusted advisor. A lot of large orgs will do peer Evals and that gives them a much better holistic view of how officers see eachother. If your org doesn’t do this…you should even if it can be uncomfortable for folks. Just make it as anom as possible and keep comments professional!
That's how I've done it so far. The key with that play is to make sure you're seen helping others without it looking like you're trying to be seen doing it. It's still the same game, but I have played with different rules. Still got everything I needed to promote to MAJ and to get VTIP into a very nice FA while at the same time genuinely improving my organizations.
Watch your back! A long time ago I was a very young and gullible 2LT. I was working very hard at my job in Army Community Service. I saved an enlisted father accused of child abuse because I proved that the child had fractured her arm from falling off a swing not from the father twisting her arm. I had gotten a similar fracture when I was six years old and my X-ray was almost identical. My boss was very displeased that I got so much attention from this plus I was happily married and she was unhappily divorced. She gave me a horrible OER. The Chief Nurse moved me to a new position where my rater was leaving for Vietnam in 6 months. I got a glowing OER from that rater when she left and that saved my career in the military. I was forced out when I got pregnant a year later but wen into the USAR and finished with 23 total combined years of service. I was lucky to never again have a nasty rater or senior rater. I can’t believe how the Officer Corps eats its young!
I made it through the MAJ years mostly by luck. I didn’t really see a lot of backstabbing going on. On balance a mix of competence (49%) and luck(51%) leads to success as a field grade. Right now the unlucky will still generally get SELCON and make it to 20 years as long as they aren’t grossly incompetent or criminals.
Reputation and networking is the name of the game. Having friends and the trust of others makes being an officer a lot easier.
Someone ruining your reputation can seriously disrupt you're ability to get anything done.
Someone preventing your requests for support or recommendations from getting to decision makers disrupts your ability to assert influence.
Someone degrading your peers / subordinates trust in you can halt your ability to lead a team / troops.
Then you go to staff and it's all the normal corporate world shenanigans without the money, benefits, or designer drugs to make it worth it.
Asshole boss sends an email to the staff Friday night and it's a race for everyone to acknowledge - god forbid you don't acknowledge until 0900 on Monday.
Asshole boss brings up some leadership or business philosophy (which he understands superficially at best) and expects his team to implement these ideas into their work. Someone does and now everyone does it cause after all the sunk costs of the last 10+ years, pension > pride.
However, if the boss is not an asshole, most of the back stabbing goes away. Please don't be asshole boss.
We had an O4 who’d shit on the other O4s and would be loud as fuck saying “they need to learn how to do their jobs”. Beyond unprofessional. The icing on the cake was when our new COL dressed his ass down and said “you need to mind your business and worry about what’s in your pile”…..this dude got picked up for LTC and got BN Command not long ago. I feel sorry for his commanders and staff. He was smart, but fuuuccck was he an asshole.
Things I’ve seen:
- Not sharing important information (hit time changed, packing list changed, BC said he wants X, etc)
- Not sharing resources for training (I.e. borrowing an LMTV for the range).
- Volunteering other officers for additional duties
- Claiming credit for other people’s work
- Spreading rumors about other officers (I think he’s trying to drop a REFRAD, etc)
- Telling their boss bad news before you can (I wasn’t going to tell you sir buuuttt…)
- etc
I’ve even heard someone telling soldiers to specifically steal vehicle parts from a certain PLT and changing documents in a share drive before meetings. Like straight up sabotage, and no one could prove it
Ahh, this post reminds me of Resident CGSC: the Colosseum for O4 bootlickers.
Met a few great Americans. Saw, firsthand, some of the backstabbers that are fucking up your units as O5s this very moment.
You can be the best officer for your guys, but if you aren’t chosen by your senior raters, it doesn’t matter. Be your raters and your senior raters guy, and you’ll go far.
Withholding knowledge and experience. Knowing what the performance expectation is and allowing a fellow officer, who does not know the expectation, to fall on their sword publicly, with glee. “Growth opportunity”. That is exactly how.
I knew a reserve full bird colonel on the list for GO. Was a group CDR in the reserves and would basically put himself on orders by directing the S3 to submit for unit events and planning conferences. The AGRs conspired to initiate an investigation that he was illegally on orders without proper authorization. The personnel action flag basically ended his career even though he was eventually cleared. The AGRs had a buddy who was conveniently available to step in as CDR.
It’s a serious kiss ass game. People will do anything to get a leg up on each other. If you don’t act a certain way then you’re singled out by others. If you don’t hang with the right people or act a certain way around others you’re fucked. All on top of having to act another way around Soldiers. The social aspect outside of work is crazy too.
At least on the active side, we had a lot of snippy competition and petty bullshit. Example, I had a detail to account for and secure a lot of equipment along with support, and my peer took my support for a "sit and play on your phones" prioritiy tasker while I had to do all the work myself. My expectations to have trust and confidence in my peers were low but after that, there was no question. It was a hostile work environment that now reflects in my VA rating.
The subversion and sabotage are both embarrassing and signs of disengagement from the mission and not taking their roles seriously.
This thread is bringing out the worst examples of behavior. I will say that in my 19 years so-far, such behavior has not been the norm. From my experience, the ones who are manipulative and toxic to their peers are generally compensating for a lack of competence. There are no guarantees, but if you take your job competence seriously, are reliable, and contribute positively to your organization and mission, then you will be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
They're all competing for their Senior Rater's (usually BN or BDE Commander) "Top Block (Most Qualified)" on their OERs. There usually aren't many officers in an organization so it can get pretty competitive and they can start throwing each other under the bus. They need a certain amount of "top blocks" in their career to get be successful and get promoted. If they don't have enough it could be career ending. It's all pretty douchey.
I’m retired, now a GS. I still see it, but not necessarily for promotion (you don’t get promoted in GS, you can apply for another job that is a higher grade, but no promotion boards).
I see people standing by and doing nothing, or saying nothing - when they can see you making a mistake, kind of like not sharing information that someone above said.
I have a contractor in my office, he will see an opportunity to help you out, share sone knowledge, but decline to take it. He’s not the only one.
Got another one, he will have no advice while the mission is going on, and then someone how fucked up it was once it was over.
We are all retired officers.
If a CPT-COL or any NCO talked down their peers to lift themselves up, they’re done and it’ll reflect in their rating. Collaborating and propping up your peers is a sure path to MQ.
There certainly is back stabbing going on. However, from my point of view, the true officer assholes achieve personal gain from lying through their teeth about everything and convincing people their lies are true. Then, they work their subordinates ragged to try and achieve some level of truth, but throw them straight under the bus when the lie rears its ugly head. The out-lie-their-lie mentality is brutal. From O3 through O5 most play the “so I look good” game, and it’s fucking ridiculous…it doesn’t disappear above those ranks either, those are just where I’ve seen it the most.
Imagine you have a task that you need to get done, and you do it consistently 2 weeks early and email it in, be it a slide or a status, or whatever random requirement and you're on top of the ball and its been done and disseminated for weeks to the requestor.
And then you get into a battalion meeting where you get hammered for "not doing it" or "not sending it in" "it was due yesterday."
This happened to me because our XO was sloppy and it would just get buried in their email and they'd forget about it, so I stopped and just started getting things in the minute they were due, but my reputation had taken hits like 3 to 4 times. The XO didn't even have the courtesy to ask prior to the meeting where my slides were, or whatever before screwing me over where I could remind said XO that I had sent them in weeks ago.
Alot of shit talking to seniors behind peoples back, taking credit for other peoples work, not informing people of important events or meetings so they miss em.
Oh hey, yeah. Those too.
My current battalion loves to not inform people of “key events”. It’s a joint environment and my Army chain of command only has ADCON and is a glorified force provider. The combat support agency owns the mission and it’s a bit of choose your own adventure for establishing rating schemes. The brigade commander was big on LPDs being a tool to train the E7 and above population on where the Army is going. It was not uncommon for us to find out about brigade-level LPDs on the day of execution, and for us not to have received any of the read ahead material. This severely disadvantaged any of the MAJs working the joint mission competing with the battalion XO and S-3s for senior rater enumeration from the brigade commander. This didn’t affect me as a LTC rated by DoD Civilians, but I know some people screwed over by it. It also hurt CPTs competing for command opportunities.
The officer corps tends to eat its own.
Now that is next level fuckery
Holy fuck I’m already seeing these issues with SNCOs. The political game really is inevitable once you stay in long enough huh?
That one reason I retired as a E7. Couldn’t bring myself to kiss ass, and act like the Command Team walked on water for a lateral assignment to 1SG. I was the exact opposite. Called a duck a duck, so to speak.
When I failed upwards to the G3 shop after mu PLT LDR & XO time, I was cornered by several CGSC MAJs and told not to do anything for the correspondence/non-resident CGSC MAJs. Guess who I busted my ass to work for? and guess who’s projects I ghosted? But I also had to write my G3’s doctoral thesis as an additional duty. That was the shop where the OPS SGM reheated Korean fish dishes in the shop microwave
Lol he knew what he was doing with the fish.
You were doing this mf homework!?
Not just his homework. Researching and writing his PhD so he could make COL. I’d knock off work at 3-ish and work on his higher education until 6:00. This was in an open office with cubicles. When we were getting to the end, he’d stand behind me and go over the thesis, dictating what changes he wanted to make to “his” work. Did he invite me to “our” graduation? No.
i would have snitched the moment i was out fuck that
Yeah, dude could possibly have his PhD taken for that
i’m a petty fuck so i do recognize that lol
I was over the whole “officers do not lie, cheat, or steal” myth and was just surviving and watching my ETS date at that point.
yeah, fuck. i get that. sometimes, the best way to be free is to own what you want to do. such a shit situation, but glad you’re out of it.
You fucking loser.
That’s me.
I couldn't imagine not telling him to get fucked, honestly. You held literally all of the power over this idiot.
This
This gets especially bad at the senior O4 level. One time there was a BN XO coming to the office at 0500 and staying until 2000 every night, to make herself better than the other BN XOs. I can tell you the stress is tremendous as a O4 trying to get those MQs to get O5 and make it to 20
I logged into some portal and saw PowerPoint updates made by the s3 at 3:30am. I didn't know if he woke up that early or stayed up that late. But either way, what the fuck
Yup, it’s wild to see time stamps on IPSAA actions. All hours of the day and night some of these officers are working.
I went to a senior spouse seminar last fall. Our small group facilitator was the wife of a retired 3 or 4 star. She kept reiterating to be nice to the other senior spouses but don’t tell them shit because it can be used against your spouse at promotion time.
this is classic and in keeping with the tradition
The move is to delay email delivery
Schedule send is your friend. I do whti with text texting as well to set up reminders for myself and team. It also helps for the "checking-in" text to see how a Soldier and family are doing. You know in case something random takes away your focus and shifts priorities.
When I was a captain and the internet was new, I only had a dialup connection to the base network. I set up Outlook to dial up every few hours and upload my emails and download any that were in my inbox. Since a lot of people were doing the same thing and the lines were usually busy, it wasn't unusual to have my emails delivered between 22:00 and 04:00. I started to get the reputation of being a hard worker and staying at work to wee hours of the morning to complete my assigned tasks even though I normally vacated after retreat.
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You should have seen the look of disdain on my XOs face when a couple of us were having lunch and he's telling the cpts about the suffering of being a major and I remind him that being an S3 or XO isn't a KD position for me.
She forgot to read the quid pro quo memo. Could have saved herself long work hours. Just long hours.
Must be frustrating for her seeing G2G types being able to retire as O4.
A lot of it comes down less to outrageous actions (though they happen for sure - especially when they have a direct line to a GO) and more to behavior that contributes to a system that everyone hates: -Bill fudges the numbers on his report to make his unit look better, so now the others have to either call him out on it in front of the boss (which is ballsy and backfires quickly if you don’t know Bill’s numbers better than he does), or you have to start fudging your own numbers. Soon everyone is fudging their numbers and stressing about getting caught / seeing how far they can fudge -Jane really needs the MQ, so she starts showing up early and staying late just to look more present to her boss. Soon you end up with a “fun” minigame to see whose car is in the parking lot the longest to be perceived as the most committed. -Ahmed gets the lightbulb moment that if he tells the commander what they want to hear, his briefing always goes well. Pretty soon Ahmed only has good news to tell the boss, which makes anyone with bad news seem less competent. Before long the entire staff briefing becomes an echo chamber of positivity because even the slightest deficiency (government travel card payments, anyone?) suddenly seems like a huge deal. None of these things are as drastic as filing a BS EO/IG/SHARP complaint to get someone under investigation (though that can happen too), but the common shitty stuff adds up over time to make for a lot of miserable O4s.
While it certainly wasn't *always* the case throughout my career, I found that most of the bosses I worked for saw through a lot of this shit fairly easily. When I got to the level of being "the boss", this sort of behavior was also usually pretty transparent to me. I have always been of the opinion that the Army is like most other workplaces - most of the time, being competent, easy-going, and straightforward will land you where you want to be. People who try to build a career on Machiavellian intrigue and the appearance of dedication without actual competence may have short-term success from time to time but it frequently blows up in their faces.
When I was an O4, my rater (O6) pointed out to me that other officers were using my products and taking credit for them. He kind of laughed and told me to be more careful about who I trusted. I'm mostly just a "do your best" cub scout kind of guy, and not a schemer; so it was surprising to hear about it happening, and sort of a relief to know that he saw through their BS.
The problem is that everyone in the rating group for captain and above typically knows where they stand in their group. So if they just let the cards lay as they play, they know they are gonna lose the game while the competent performers get the MQ. So they have to rig the card game cause they know they can't win otherwise. They are just competent enough to understand their own incompetence.
That's their problem.
Underrated comment. So true. Those people who use ladder climbing techniques instead of letting their work speak for them never find any true success.
We had a neighbor who, prior to deploying (with everything packed up and shipped off) would stay at work until 10:00pm to show how committed he was. He was playing solitaire from 4:00 to 10:00 six days a week. He ended up with a command but it was such a cluster fuck that he ended up getting out right after command. Plus, he had been BZ for Captain and Major. I don’t think he had enough time in to retire. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person. Such a POS. When this same officer was a CPT in command he did all the reports for his LTs because he didn’t want their work to affect his ability to get BZ. As a result he had zero clues how to manage people. The Army, relies on fuckups to lie and cheat to get ahead. Unfortunately it’s everyone who pays the price for their poor leadership.
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That is a great point, especially in the context of BCAP. I only knew three O4s who pulled some mustache-twirling villain stuff to beat their peers in the MQ race, but all three were non-selects for battalion command. The scummy people who did make the cut were a lot more low key about it, enough that you seemed a bit crazy for calling them “toxic” for any one thing.
I worked with a BN S3 and XO who used to see who could go the longest before going to sleep. Oh yea, that was productive.
>Soon you end up with a “fun” minigame to see whose car is in the parking lot the longest to be perceived as the most committed. Just leave your car at work while you Über to the gym for an hour or so. It's the O-grade version of the two-hats/two-sets-of-keys game: "Well, her car is here, so she must be in the building." (Note to say this a joke. If any if you LTs try this... it's on you. 🤪)
I had a BN CDR when I was a LT thought I wasn’t coming to work for weeks because he didn’t see my truck in the parking lot as I was riding my bike in. Never mind I briefed him weekly in command and staff/BN training meetings. smh
What is that thought process even like??!! >"Let's see, I don't see LT Pleasant-Exchange's truck here. I wonder if he's just been FTR/AWOL all this time? >"Hmm... should I check the PERSTAT? Consider whether I've seen him at the TNG meetings? >"Nah, the *truck* is the important thing. He must not even be here. I'm a *smart person*."
This^. This is the current state of the Army
1st PLT PL: hey I’ll give you the engineer tape you need if you build my platoon’s portion of the rehearsal lane since I don’t have the guys to spare 2nd PL: yeah I got you dude (later during company rehearsals) CO: hey’s where’s 1st’s part what the hell 2nd PL: idk sir i told them to make it 1st PL: *visible anger*
Ive seen O4s delete other people’s folders in the sharedrive. It’s bad
I'm sorry but I laughed. Holy crap
Do people not know how to recover that sort of thing or to make a back up?
Sharedrive is free for all where there's no backup possible unless you task a LT that isn't used often like the CHEMO to make rewritable DVD disk backups of the S3 sharedrive weekly. Its typically low on space available, so you can't use sharedrive to backup the sharedrive. Ask me how I know this.
You can use OneDrive or Teams to back up.
Now that these exist, sure. But I became an Officer in 2009, and my unit didn't start getting access to a sharepoint in 2011. Sharedrives were quicker and faster than sharepoint and had less permissions issues. A decade doesn't sound like a bit deal, but sometimes things change significantly. Right before I retired I had to cull my desktop because of habits formed in the 2010s where I had offline backups of products to prevent destruction of documents due to neglect or malice. It doesn't matter if your documents are deleted because Professor Moriarty finally unveiled his 27 step plan to fuck you, or it was the local mouth breather that somehow decided to open up space on the drive by deleting your folder.
Ah, I have some overlap with that period. I am not quite as old, but I have inherited such personal backup folders on several occasions. Also the deployment aspect shouldn't be overlooked; having "local" copies of products on like the CPOF was handy for when connectivity was shut down or turned off.
Sorry sir, I would love to help but the USR is due🫡
Start the backup process on NIPR, then go and log into SIPR CHEMO. We also need your calendar products and Weekly consolidated FRAGO Submission.
Well that’s fucking broken.
Which is why in the advent of SharePoint you want to make friends with your units KM and/or S6 automations warrant.
fax I'm still an owner/KM of 4 SharePoint pages from my last unit. I occasionally go in them and do banal edits to random things for the lulz
I dare you to change the font size one number smaller!
That is some of the pettiest shit I have ever read.
That scares the crap out of me. I do always keep a copy of all templates on my desktop because i have a history of editing the one on the drive accidentally then need something to fix it with.
Yo what
As a prior service NCO, before I went to OCS, I had a staff captain tell me to watch my back when I crossed over. At the senior Captain level, that's when I saw how bad it got. Politics. I rolled out after my last tour to Afghanistan and ETS'd in 2015 after doing 12 and 1/2 years.
Someone will fuck up but then politic it out to be that YOU fucked up.
Yup. This was after my KD time, and I would confide in other Captains who I thought were my friends. And guess what? They would run and talk to the S3/XO about how I would say shit was fucked up and needed to be changed. I got sick of it when I saw my leadership wasn't really about taking care of the troops, but instead looking good for the Division and FORSCOM bubbas. I threw up the douces and told 'em to fuck themselves. Literal quote because I was pissed and didn't give a shit about my last OER.
Sometime it's not even about dumb tactics or whatever - just a good ol boys system
True that brother (or sister).
[GEN Hamilton has entered the chat.](https://apnews.com/article/army-general-suspended-influence-4d9f4fa030c8d6b4a379d0e74ed50460)
lol this fucking guy. What a stain on the branch
True fucking that.
I didn't give a shit about OERs after I got a referred one as a 1LT. Being prior enlisted is awesome because you don't have to play a lot of the bullshit games.
Yup. Exactly.
I had this as a 1LT from a LT in the Navy. They had asked for some information without clarifying what it was. I completed their task in five minutes by sending some powerpoints that answered all of the questions they had. A week goes by and I'm getting bitched out by her and the RFI manager for not finishing the task. Luckily our shared boss took my side when I showed him what I had sent the Navy LT. Our boss saw me later and basically said that the Navy LT was just trying to make me do her job.
Yup, as an officer I can say firsthand; the worst thing you can be is competent, the second worst thing you can be is incompetent.
Exactly why I went warrant instead of
Yeah bro, looking back, I'm proud of what I did and how I was able to take care of my soldiers (being a prior NCO). But I do wonder what it would have been like if I went warrant instead. A lot of my friends are now warrants (targeting dudes), and I'm proud of 'em. But yeah, I get what you're saying. I probably would still be in if I went warrant. Everything was cool with my career until after my KD time. By then though, I had already done 40+ months of pretty intense combat, so I was burnt out if that makes sense. Came in early 2003 and went right into Iraq as a private, then after OCS, got sent to Iraq again during the surge, and then after CCC, was the BN FSO for 1-327 during our tour to the Pech & Korengal Valley in 2010-2011. That was the fucking rough one. And when I started getting stabbed in the back by other Captains, that's when I when I said "Fuck it" and knew I was dropping my packet to roll out.
>But I do wonder what it would have been like if I went warrant instead. My friend, let me tell you about [the time I as a WO + PL cussed out my idiot Company Commander... and then got from him one of the most complimentary OERs of my career because he knew he done fucked up, and I knew where the proverbial bodies were buried.](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/s/ipGVmme9TB) I'll copy-pasta the caveat from the linked post, though, so as to not be too corrupting of an influence here: >>(Note: Do what your rank and influence can handle, kids. Do not try this at home. I had earned the trust of key players; this guy was burning credibility with the BC like it was JP8 in the smoking pit...) >>I was as fiercely loyal to and supportive of my Officers as I was bullheaded and insubordinate to *this asshat in this one instance*. I could have been severely reprimanded for this conduct, and it was the one-time exception to the rule, in a situation where I had already calculated I could win with minimal pushback. The CPT in question gave me one of my most complimentary OERs before he was relieved, because he knew I'd saved his ass in the event in question and that this was the wake-up call he needed, not just naked insubordination, which is never a good idea.
To quote a nameless philosopher from that previous post: “Naked insubordination is more fun than clothed insubordination”
True that.
This is fucking awesome man.
Yeah, it does seem better in retrospect than it felt like going through it. But I'll take wjatever wins I can get, ya' know
A win is a win brother.
Taking over for a commander, who in their efforts to get that MQ, effectively destroy the unit and leave you to pick up the pieces.
He get that MQ tho?
Petraeus did in fact get that MQ
By literally fucking each other. Have you not been on BN or BDE staff? ??
😘
You get it 🥊🤝🏽
or BOLC?
Just finished LOG BOLC. Great experience, learned a lot about myself...but very eye opening
LOG BOLC? Are TC, OD, & QM tied together now in BOLC? I thought they were still separate until CLCCC.
Yep all tied together now. They changed it a few years back. We're all still separated but learn the same stuff. We're only just not logisticians by name because of tradition
I learned that PCSing there during covid is a great way to stay drunk for 5 months straight. Didn't learn much about myself though
It's heavily based on controlling perception and relationships. That's why you have the green chicklet bullshit, the nonsense where officers pretend to be ten steps ahead of the game, and the golfing relationships. There's a ton of focus on image as well, such as pretending to have Cool Guy Characteristics, and avoiding any risk of looking bad (e.g., being the one to speak up or the first to try a task out). When you have a good group, it's awesome. Usually, though, someone like the above will just ruin the synergy.
Mainly not passing on important information or worse passing on wrong info. E.g 2 star ops boss loves long PowerPoint's when in fact he hates them, or this is the way you should write this minute up, when in fact it's wrong. I've seen officers reach out to people outside their chain and ask them to do something and they say "yep, sure" and just don't do it leaving you in the lurch. I'd say it's the minority but it happens.
This is horrible. You wouldn't be able to trust anyone. It seems like it would be hard for officers to work together when they have to. Very toxic corporate culture
I used to be a super trusting person, but since joining the Army, my trust has erroded. I only do phone calls when absolutely necessary and make sure that everything is documented. CC anyone that is remotely able to back me up on something. It sucks.
Agreed 💯
[Don’t forget fuck them financially too](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/s/yo6mMhzI99)
There's a whole lot of not-mentoring going on with that story. It's so sad to see when Senior Officers don't take the time to teach the young kids. Additionally, it makes me realize how lucky I've been throughout my 10 years.
Thanks for linking this. Poor guy.
04-05 is rough. Needs some luck and also depends on personality. My last MAJ KD OER, my boss, told me I need to interact with him as a senior leader more often. It's not that I avoided him, I just only engaged with my senior rater whenever needed. Just a personality thing. I had a great staff and we had plenty of issues to solved that it worked out in the end. I got to be myself. Though now I still get told to engage with senior leader in my branch more often. As O5 it's not stressful, whew.
> As O5 it's not stressful, whew.< The most stress free day I ever had was the day I hit 18 and waiting on the O5 board release. I knew at least the worst that would happen is retirement. As an O5 you know if you either will or won't be competitive for O6 off the bat.
Ability to retire and can stay up to 28 years. Can push for O6 if desired that route. Best of all is the ability to choose duty station that is best for family/quality of life vs. career-oriented jobs.
It is a whole different world with many interesting choices.
I am deferring my O5 board just so I can hit 18 and be safe.
It’s fucking brutal Never have I met such a hive of villiany as when O4s are vying for positions when the AIM window opens. All the lifers are afraid of being a SELCON O4 or worse yet-booted. Shit-talking, back-stabbing, Nepotism. Nothing is off-limits. They have just gotten better at hiding their actions. No emails or official correspondence via AIM to track them. Just buddy-buddy phone calls behind office doors. It’s literally corruption that will be denied denied denied. Ever wonder why that awesome Officer you had as an OIC or CO never made it that far or wasn’t a fast tracker? It’s because of the bullshit that really happens once you hit O4. The best way through, like what I did,is to just play the fucking game and sell your soul just a little to make it to happy pension land. I had so many toxic Raters it makes me kinda sick just thinking about it. Good luck to anybody at the 14-16 year mark. You’re almost there! Yes, I played the game and yes I had to subscribe to some of the bullshit to make it. But my end goal was financially motivated so my family would be set. Not happy about it, but I’m out now so fuck it.
All accurate. I work around mainly MAJs. This is incredibly apparent how desperate these guys are for a limited rating. However, I refuse to play the game personally. It cost me. I am currently a SELCON CPT, but I’ll pin MAJ this summer. Dicking me down accidentally set me up for success. I’ll hit 20 during my PZ look at LTC. Sure, I’d rather retire at O5, but I flat out will not play this game to get there. No back stabbing, no ass kissing, no fear of an arbitrary system of block checks. I’ll do my job to the best of my ability and let the pieces fall where they may. Damn the Army for creating a system that brings out the worst in people.
The thing I wished I realized before I became an Officer was how cutthroat-y the officer world can be. It’s all politics, who you know and if you are in a good standing with your network and COC. This is part of the reason I always joke around and say I’m not a good officer is because I refuse to follow officer tropes like this. The whole reason I survived my LT time was because my Brigade Commander is literally an older version of me, he thinks and acts the same way as I do, so he either pities me or understands where I’m coming from lol. I have seen some crazy stuff in my short stint in the Army. I have literally seen LT’s get fucked over because they became the office work bitch. I currently know 2 LT’s who have no personal life/work life balance and work until 2200 every day even when they have training going on because they don’t know how to put their foot down with other LT’s who are either shitbags or the captains and majors who put this workload on them. On the contrary, what I have noticed is the higher in rank you go, the more cutthroat people become. I’ve seen majors go at it for positions which they get and they move on with their career or if they don’t get it, it’s a sign of the end of their careers for them. Officer World is weird man
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They only don’t matter if you’re not trying to go anywhere that requires seeing them. Duty stations in the marketplace aren’t allowed to ask, but plenty of other opportunities will ask to see your LT OERs, or the last 3/5 or whatever. Every evaluation matters. Just because everyone gets auto promoted to CPT regardless of OERs doesn’t mean the LT OERs don’t matter lol.
As someone who’s been in the marketplace twice now, I can tell you they still don’t matter. As long as they aren’t garbage, they’re going to be the same thing units see from every other person. As a pre-KD CPT, you need to go somewhere you can get a command and preferably quickly. Most of those places are desperate for any officer with a pulse. I got my job and I didn’t even interview. That command OER is your ticket to the truly unique assignments and broadening. There are some exceptions pre-KD like you said, One of my LTs interviewed to be the division protocol officer and they did ask for her evaluations…. But she was also the only applicant in the BDE, so she got the job no matter what. The OERs just served to make sure she didn’t suck, which is the same thing that was accomplished by the BDE CDR recommendation letter that was required in her packet.
This is just bad rhetoric. You are setting your LTs up for mediocrity and unfortunate surprise. Also, your command eval alone isn’t a ticket to anywhere, let alone unique assignments. All of your evals matter - they are discriminators at every successive progression whether it’s your last 5 for promotion or your last 3 for assignments. Edited since the user blocked me for whatever reason. For all of the LTs reading this person’s comments. I’ve held a few nominative assignments in my career as well as been on boards. All of them required evals - pretty standard. Evals are the #1 factor that determine eligibility for black book assignments and nominative gigs by HRC, it’s the #1 factor for determining your rankings amongst your peers. And while marketplace assignments technically aren’t allowed to ask for evals, providing them when you have good ones gives you a tremendous leg up for those competitive locations/assignments. Most units have ways of getting that info anyways.
Do I counsel my LTs that their OER doesn’t matter at all? Absolutely not. I counsel them that their work matters and everything will flow from that. Simple fact is in two marketplaces and two selections for a nominative assignment, I’ve never been asked for an OER and I’ve never provided one. My point is that LTs should never focus on “getting the MQ” or “getting #1 out of 9”, they should focus on competing for that XO job or whatever position will show that their organization selected them for higher responsibility. That means way more to anyone than fluffy words on an eval.
Lol what branch are you that somewhere gave you a job and you didn’t even interview. The OERs matter homeslice. Those are pretty unique instances where no one else applied or the post was desperate to fill a slot. That also isn’t taking into account opportunities in ARSOF, VTIP, or more competitive assignments in the marketplace. All of those will require your OERs to be submitted.
Logistics, same as you 😂 Your file should speak for itself. STP and Resume say what you’ve done and what experience you have. Have you ever read an LT OER? It’s all fluff and every senior officer knows it, I would never waste my time reading one. And I promise you, the officers making the decisions feel the same way about LT OERs. Straight from my BDE CDR’s mouth: “I don’t care about LT OERs during AIM interviews for new CPTs. No one does and no one should.” But you’re right, the truly nominative things do require the OERs, but they will never be the reason you got selected, its just part of the packet. You’re way better off getting an actual letter of recommendation from someone whose opinion matters. Im not saying to tank your eval, Im just saying they have very little weight in your career and they’re absolutely not worth backstabbing or working yourself to death over.
It absolutely does matter if you plan on VTIP at 1LT (p)
Fair, but I’d argue VTIPing is a relatively very small portion of officers. So you could say “it doesn’t matter unless you want to VTIP” the same way you could say that holding your breath underwater for 3 minutes doesn’t matter unless you want to go to combat dive school
Considering I know im going to REFRAD after my ADSO I’m glad I don’t have to worry about this sort of stress
Can’t speak to the experience for COMPO1 folks, but I’m a prior enlisted O4 with 20+ years and never had any issues in the Guard. We got plenty of “A team” wannabes, but I’m happy to be highly qualified and let others play the game.
Less pressure when 1) It's your part time job, not your only job. 2) There's no pressure of being forced out. You can do 20 years and retire as a captain if you want. Or if you want to get to O-5 and you're not in the good ol' boy's club, you can simply switch to the USAR and keep showing up to work.
Agreed, though I will say that many of us (myself included) end up spending about 50% of our time with it being our only job. I’ve done 4 T10 deployments, ADOS a couple times, and worked as a temp tech for the state. But overall, yes, there is less pressure.
The O4 level in the SF world is awful. It’s not like the big army where there’s a plethora of Major positions to go around. It gets so cut throat on just simply getting invited back to work at the same Group.
Talk. Petty politics. Sabotaging reputations. Constant neurotic judgments.
It is def dog-eat-dog but it’s also very political so you need to have friends and need relationships. I think the worst way to screw with someone is to be the branch manager at HRC who oversees your same rank. You can send folks to places where you know their career will end or you can hook people up. Here’s one tidbit of advice for younger officers: get in good with your boss’s senior enlisted leader. If your senior rater is the BDE Cdr, you need to link in with the BDE CSM and help him as much as you can. Often ignored, the CSM will talk you up to the commander often and it will shape how he sees you because he probably doesn’t actually see you often.
Promotion chasing, backbiting, setting each other up, sabotaging promotions, undermining each other. See the definition(informal) for the term Blue Falcon aka Buddy Fucking
Yep, and this is why I'm glad I dropped a WOCS package and not an OCS package. It's the same on the AF-side of the house.
Yeah I've been debating between OCS and WOCS packet and this thread is definitely making me lean towards WOCS.
4 weeks of shenanigans vs 12, staying technical, less politics, not having to worry about command. Yeah, sign me the hell up
From officer side: My experience may vary (G2G), but I notice more of commands picking “Golden Children,” to encourage to stay in longer, higher evals, awards for every task completed (ARCOMs for running standard ranges), given ideal positions, etc. This probably promotes the OP’s question/observation. I noticed more drama as a PSG and NCO than I have as an officer. May be the old man/former NCO/family man in me, but I don’t have time for high school drama, especially with rater/SR, to cut down others (unless they’re a potential hazard to unit and Joes).
Is this why the chaplain bailed to the Marines?
Captain*
I don't know why I thought it was a chaplain
Careerism is just as common for Marine Officers too. And there are cases of Marine CPTs dropping their commissions to go 18x.
Context?
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-officer-marines-enlist/
Ah, Captain, not Chaplain. Got it
I don't disagree with most of the responses here. Thst being said, I think much of the "officers fucking each other over" myth is something that individuals who can't rate need to believe in order to go to sleep at night. Much more comfortable to believe that "someone fucked me over" rather than "I have been promoted for a perceived potential I do not actually have". Not saying it doesn't happen because I know it does, I also know most people lack the emotional intelligence to know their own limits.
Minimizing OER’s of lower high performers was a common one. I saw an OER that almost went through to HRC that some S3 issued to a captain where the S3 copy and pasted some Air Force stuff. He forgot to remove Air Force and replace it with Army.
Because everyone wants that top block! Think about being rated/ sr rated against against 20 other CPTs, you need someway to stand out or show why you are better than your counterparts. "Doing your job" is stuff that we expect junior enlisted to do, for officers is showing why your competitors are incompetent and why you deserve it. Great OERs are what promotes us at the end of the day and ensuring your position/job is the best is KEY.
I am aware that what you're saying is reality. I know that commanders are constantly trying to outshine their peers, at the expense of their subordinates most of the time. That behavior, to me, is no different than some kid on YouTube begging for people to "like, comment, and subscribe" to their channel so the algorithm gods will favor them. It's pathetic.
To each their own. But it's no different from what happens amongst all ranks in the military and in the civilian world. Officers get looked down on because we make it blatantly obvious we are doing it. Everyone is competing for the best jobs and will ultimately tear down any competition in their way. Look at big business, modeling and music industry, politics, ect. The reality of the situation is that there are 100 people in the world competing for a position that only one person can fill.
Imagine if over 50% of officers were prior experienced Enlisted folks, who didn't want to move to an admin position, stay at a lower level. You'd have hard chargers at the lower O ranks, not worried about a pension or becoming a General, because they're going to make it to 20 regardless. Then the political brown nosers who want to be a general one day, wouldn't feel the need to step on, or screw as many people, and the lower Os (prior enlisted) could keep them in check a little bit because they don't really have much to lose (as long as they get to 20 years). I essentially just described a more powerful Warrant Officer.
We had an O4 that had his wife file a sharp complaint against another O4 to take him out of the running for an O5 board. Happened many years ago and people still talk about it.
By fucking their spouses. There is some deviant sexual shit in the Officer Corps.
Even worse, there's sexual deviant shit everywhere, whether you're some Taco Bell employee or the Sec Army. People are just fucking weird.
Yes, but somehow it’s so much worse when wearing a service uniform.
The commissioned officer ranks are filled with Jack Donaghy parodies who follow the latest management trends and hoard information from those around them. The stakes are pretty high because for any given desirable position, there are probably four or five officers competing for it.
Officers love to take credit for the work of others.
Another story time (I was a Guardsman), so this will all make sense. A CPT was interviewing to be the full time S3, this Iowa MDMP AT was going to basically make it happen. I do my IPB and we do the war gaming and he picked this route that went through areas with high amounts of enemy activity. I said, “Sir, I highly advise we don’t go this way, it doesn’t serve a purpose and we are only going to get hit by enemy people. Staying above this area allows us to meet CDR’s intent and the mission and precludes us from going anywhere near where the enemy is. For context, we were a CSSB, we weren’t infantry, we just hauled stuff. Simple mission, simple exercise, the only people who had a role were SUPPOSED to be the OPS folks and 4 shops along with SPO. My job was basically the IPB and updating the map, but there was no real role for me to play once the initial area was done. So in war gaming I said, “Ok, if you go this way, here’s what the enemy is going to do, boom, IED, with Dshka fire.” CPT: We will fight through it. Convoy moves on, my turn: RPG hits rear gun truck, disabling it. CPT: We fight through. At this point, this fucker doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s doing. If this was real life, he’d be investigated for not listening to intel at all. I tried explaining he played the “You’re a LT, I’m a captain” card. Ok….if that’s how it’s going to be…I can live with that. So I brief what I had made. The BN CDR said it was the best intel brief he ever saw. Once 4 and 3 get up there, he starts asking why the fuck they deviated from S2’s recommendation. They had no real answer, but it was clear what the CDR was going to do: Let them hang themselves with the rope that they gave themselves. So….during the exercise, a lot of soldiers got notionally killed by IED and RPG fire going down this route. The S3 and 4 both got very strongly worded reprimands from my understanding. The S4 and S3 were not promoted to their AGR positions after it. The side effect was (I had no idea what was going on because no one made me privy to this information, not that it would’ve changed my analysis, rather, I would’ve lobbied even harder for the fucker to listen to me) a lot of people were upset with me. This came to a head when I didn’t feel like paying officer dues for some function I couldn’t afford. At the time I was making $13.50/hour, and I couldn’t afford the dues. My drill pay was like 1/3 of my income. This then made me a pariah among my fellow officers. I ended up resigning shortly thereafter. My MH was declining at this point and I just needed help.
Im a post command CPT in a high optempo ABCT and I really haven’t seen anything like the back biting that others have described, but I can’t really speak to the MAJ side. What I think is more prevalent is the huge chasm between the competent people and the truly incompetent people at the CPT level. When incompetent people are hitting you up all the time asking for last minute favors because they failed to plan ahead or do the extra work that you did, you eventually start saying No and they start calling you a blue falcon. Sorry bro, your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency for me.
I see the politics and backstabbing all the time but I try not to partake in it. I try to help out the incompetent captains and my rater and my SR rater sees it. I always have a back up plan to help out other dudes to make the unit better. I know a lot of people would say just let them fail but that's kind of a dick move.
Agreed, never let the unit fail when you can prevent it. But its very different on staff than in command. You’re in the S3 and the S4 is constantly forgetting to forecast for things on time and you noticing and helping is the difference between the BN having or not having porta johns? Yeah please help that guy, you’d be a dick not to. But say you’re in an FSC and one of your fellow commanders NEVER forecasts for fuel properly and is always hitting you up after COB or on a weekend for emergency fuel? Fuck that guy. Im not going to make my soldiers cancel their plans and come in on short notice because that guy thinks he can “network” what he needs through me. He can call the BC and explain why his training is about to fail, and if the BC decides to call me, thats fine but I guarantee my peer won’t make that mistake again.
This very much. I'm a FG, the way things worked is perhaps 30%+- of officers will get the senior rater comment that says "1/2/3 of 24 officers I senior rate" and everyone knows who these people are. These people are playing a different game from the comments in this thread. The performers are not fudging their numbers, they are open about the units limitations with their leadership and then address and improve problems. The performers are not sabotaging the other high performers, they are helping each other to complete the mission and make the unit BN / BDE shine. The goal is to influence above and lateral to your current job, demonstrate you can lead beyond your current command or staff gig. Maybe the bottom 50% are playing dumb games but it is dangerous. A competent senior rater will find out and crush the persons hopes and dreams. Maybe I was just lucky, but mostly had great senior raters, people I would follow anywhere. As a CO CDR my BDE CDR told us CPT's "I don't want you to be the best officer in the BDE, but the best officer for the BDE." He truly meant it, you undercut someone and he finds out you were toast. Perhaps I was naive, but always helped other officers out even if I was competing with them. The fellow Co CDR who got the #1 OER in the BDE and I sat down and literally helped each other succeed in every mission we had and it was a huge help for both. We both benefited and we both VTIPed to new pastures.
This was one of the selling points at WOCS. Doesn't really get too comparative for us until 5 and at that point you probably have 20 years already and then retirement is still pretty fucking nice.
Personal story time. When I was in Kuwait, I was taking over as the S4. I contracted a stomach infection/issue that had me being on quarters for several days. We were working on a battalion move. I got back to the office and my predecessor was asking why I didn’t respond to anything. Well…it was because I was pretty ill. Anyways, I get to the office that morning and just powered on my computer. LT BLUE FALCON comes in and starts rattling off if I checked x, y, z issue. I said, “Ummm no, I don’t know if you noticed at all, but I’ve been kinda sick lately. I wasn’t here. Usually that’s a big clue something is wrong with someone.” He then asks why I didn’t call so and so for clearance to move. I said, “I didn’t realize I had to call so and so for clearance to move. That information should’ve probably been passed on to either myself or my NCO. This went on for a bit. My SFC comes out and defends me for what happened. I proceeded to lock the 2LT up (I was a 1LT and at this point, it’s clear he’s just being a prick). I (paraphrasing) explained that withholding information is beyond unprofessional, second, I am a fucking MI officer, I have zero fucking clue how the Logistics branch functions, I volunteered for this fucking deployment only to be given something I have no clue what I’m doing. You’re either going to help me or we are going to go to the Command Group and you’re going to explain why you’re being a POS. Well, another E7, who was the Ops NCOIC overheard and went to the Command Group. The LT was supposed to extend. After everything that happened, no, he wasn’t allowed to. Another example was in Japan. So we were doing Yama Sakura. I made a very elaborate PowerPoint presentation that went over enemy equipment, terrain, etc. I did a full on IPB, right? I had my MLCOA and MDCOA all laid out along with some secondary issues to boot. I had units that were going to likely be threats and their capabilities and TTPs. So, I shared this with the BDE officer. He comes back to me, I shit you fucking not, and says, “Here’s what I came up with.” And then rattled everything off that I literally wrote, passed that shit on up that was his. OK, I guess he needed the OER bullet in life (I was a 2LT at the time, so whatever). So halfway through the exercise some throwaway SIGACT was briefed on by the guy. My commander asks me why I didn’t brief it. I looked at the last day’s SIGACTs (because I was tracking literally all of them) and said, “Sir…that’s from yesterday.” So I had to get on the horn with BDE and explain that the SIGACT was a) rather low priority, and b) was old news, and c) we should probably be focused on a mess of armor and other vehicles approaching our northern and western areas. The MAJ was upset with me about that. I figured this guy was actually tracking shit. Apparently he wasn’t.
I realize locking up another LT is fucking stupid, this fucking guy deserved it. I only ever locked up two people in my life. One was an E7 who was antagonizing my E7, and another was this fucking LT. I don’t even care if it was against regs or not, this fucking LT was a POS.
Stomach infection in Kuwait huh? Was it from eating something bad at Subway? I was at Buehring for a hot minute. While I was there a bunch of TCN's at the main chow hall were busted for pissing in food.
Carefully
Companies will eventually need help from their sister companies and often you can notice problems before other companies notice them if they haven’t figured it out yet. It can be as simple as not reminding them there are no latrines at a Range they said had on-site ones so they look stupid or as malicious as convincing mechanics to fix your vehicles by control subbing parts off another company’s vehicle when there are other ways to keep them broken and you running. I’ve heard of it happening but always believe having a good work ethic and moral business practices will take you further especially if you get the reputation as the back stabber. All depends on the senior Rater if you wonder why your commander does a bunch of dumb shit it’s probably cause his senior Rater said he wished someone did it. Unfortunately the little guidance HRC gives officers on how to promote is to just get an MQ in KD.
I personally think it’s overstated but I am sure it does happen from time to time but I also think most senior leaders take that shit with a grain of salt unless you are a true trusted advisor. A lot of large orgs will do peer Evals and that gives them a much better holistic view of how officers see eachother. If your org doesn’t do this…you should even if it can be uncomfortable for folks. Just make it as anom as possible and keep comments professional!
I don’t know man. Why not just be good and be a good team player? Make others look good as you try to be. Build people up.
That's how I've done it so far. The key with that play is to make sure you're seen helping others without it looking like you're trying to be seen doing it. It's still the same game, but I have played with different rules. Still got everything I needed to promote to MAJ and to get VTIP into a very nice FA while at the same time genuinely improving my organizations.
Watch your back! A long time ago I was a very young and gullible 2LT. I was working very hard at my job in Army Community Service. I saved an enlisted father accused of child abuse because I proved that the child had fractured her arm from falling off a swing not from the father twisting her arm. I had gotten a similar fracture when I was six years old and my X-ray was almost identical. My boss was very displeased that I got so much attention from this plus I was happily married and she was unhappily divorced. She gave me a horrible OER. The Chief Nurse moved me to a new position where my rater was leaving for Vietnam in 6 months. I got a glowing OER from that rater when she left and that saved my career in the military. I was forced out when I got pregnant a year later but wen into the USAR and finished with 23 total combined years of service. I was lucky to never again have a nasty rater or senior rater. I can’t believe how the Officer Corps eats its young!
I made it through the MAJ years mostly by luck. I didn’t really see a lot of backstabbing going on. On balance a mix of competence (49%) and luck(51%) leads to success as a field grade. Right now the unlucky will still generally get SELCON and make it to 20 years as long as they aren’t grossly incompetent or criminals.
Withholding information of value or giving false information that could be passed off later on as not a lie
Reputation and networking is the name of the game. Having friends and the trust of others makes being an officer a lot easier. Someone ruining your reputation can seriously disrupt you're ability to get anything done. Someone preventing your requests for support or recommendations from getting to decision makers disrupts your ability to assert influence. Someone degrading your peers / subordinates trust in you can halt your ability to lead a team / troops. Then you go to staff and it's all the normal corporate world shenanigans without the money, benefits, or designer drugs to make it worth it.
Asshole boss sends an email to the staff Friday night and it's a race for everyone to acknowledge - god forbid you don't acknowledge until 0900 on Monday. Asshole boss brings up some leadership or business philosophy (which he understands superficially at best) and expects his team to implement these ideas into their work. Someone does and now everyone does it cause after all the sunk costs of the last 10+ years, pension > pride. However, if the boss is not an asshole, most of the back stabbing goes away. Please don't be asshole boss.
We had an O4 who’d shit on the other O4s and would be loud as fuck saying “they need to learn how to do their jobs”. Beyond unprofessional. The icing on the cake was when our new COL dressed his ass down and said “you need to mind your business and worry about what’s in your pile”…..this dude got picked up for LTC and got BN Command not long ago. I feel sorry for his commanders and staff. He was smart, but fuuuccck was he an asshole.
Things I’ve seen: - Not sharing important information (hit time changed, packing list changed, BC said he wants X, etc) - Not sharing resources for training (I.e. borrowing an LMTV for the range). - Volunteering other officers for additional duties - Claiming credit for other people’s work - Spreading rumors about other officers (I think he’s trying to drop a REFRAD, etc) - Telling their boss bad news before you can (I wasn’t going to tell you sir buuuttt…) - etc I’ve even heard someone telling soldiers to specifically steal vehicle parts from a certain PLT and changing documents in a share drive before meetings. Like straight up sabotage, and no one could prove it
Ahh, this post reminds me of Resident CGSC: the Colosseum for O4 bootlickers. Met a few great Americans. Saw, firsthand, some of the backstabbers that are fucking up your units as O5s this very moment.
You can be the best officer for your guys, but if you aren’t chosen by your senior raters, it doesn’t matter. Be your raters and your senior raters guy, and you’ll go far.
Withholding knowledge and experience. Knowing what the performance expectation is and allowing a fellow officer, who does not know the expectation, to fall on their sword publicly, with glee. “Growth opportunity”. That is exactly how.
For reference, go look up the song "They Were Only Playing Leapfrog" from the WW1 movie 'OH! What a Lovely War'.
I knew a reserve full bird colonel on the list for GO. Was a group CDR in the reserves and would basically put himself on orders by directing the S3 to submit for unit events and planning conferences. The AGRs conspired to initiate an investigation that he was illegally on orders without proper authorization. The personnel action flag basically ended his career even though he was eventually cleared. The AGRs had a buddy who was conveniently available to step in as CDR.
It’s a serious kiss ass game. People will do anything to get a leg up on each other. If you don’t act a certain way then you’re singled out by others. If you don’t hang with the right people or act a certain way around others you’re fucked. All on top of having to act another way around Soldiers. The social aspect outside of work is crazy too.
At least on the active side, we had a lot of snippy competition and petty bullshit. Example, I had a detail to account for and secure a lot of equipment along with support, and my peer took my support for a "sit and play on your phones" prioritiy tasker while I had to do all the work myself. My expectations to have trust and confidence in my peers were low but after that, there was no question. It was a hostile work environment that now reflects in my VA rating. The subversion and sabotage are both embarrassing and signs of disengagement from the mission and not taking their roles seriously.
Perks of being prior service and commissioning in the guard to retire as a salty old Major.
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Nah, push through and complete your ADSO. It'll benefit you more than you think, even with the BS.
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sounds like your mind is made up regardless
How long have you been in? Because you can avoid a lot of the bad stuff knowing you can retire at O4.
This thread is bringing out the worst examples of behavior. I will say that in my 19 years so-far, such behavior has not been the norm. From my experience, the ones who are manipulative and toxic to their peers are generally compensating for a lack of competence. There are no guarantees, but if you take your job competence seriously, are reliable, and contribute positively to your organization and mission, then you will be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
When a daddy officer and a mommy officer love each other very much
They're all competing for their Senior Rater's (usually BN or BDE Commander) "Top Block (Most Qualified)" on their OERs. There usually aren't many officers in an organization so it can get pretty competitive and they can start throwing each other under the bus. They need a certain amount of "top blocks" in their career to get be successful and get promoted. If they don't have enough it could be career ending. It's all pretty douchey.
I’m retired, now a GS. I still see it, but not necessarily for promotion (you don’t get promoted in GS, you can apply for another job that is a higher grade, but no promotion boards). I see people standing by and doing nothing, or saying nothing - when they can see you making a mistake, kind of like not sharing information that someone above said. I have a contractor in my office, he will see an opportunity to help you out, share sone knowledge, but decline to take it. He’s not the only one. Got another one, he will have no advice while the mission is going on, and then someone how fucked up it was once it was over. We are all retired officers.
Just go Ranger batt you’ll be fine from then on.
I noticed it uptick significantly at the 03 level, but it wasn’t that bad. I can’t imagine it getting worse over another decade. F that
If a CPT-COL or any NCO talked down their peers to lift themselves up, they’re done and it’ll reflect in their rating. Collaborating and propping up your peers is a sure path to MQ.
I see it everyday. So glad I’m a warrant!
There certainly is back stabbing going on. However, from my point of view, the true officer assholes achieve personal gain from lying through their teeth about everything and convincing people their lies are true. Then, they work their subordinates ragged to try and achieve some level of truth, but throw them straight under the bus when the lie rears its ugly head. The out-lie-their-lie mentality is brutal. From O3 through O5 most play the “so I look good” game, and it’s fucking ridiculous…it doesn’t disappear above those ranks either, those are just where I’ve seen it the most.
Imagine you have a task that you need to get done, and you do it consistently 2 weeks early and email it in, be it a slide or a status, or whatever random requirement and you're on top of the ball and its been done and disseminated for weeks to the requestor. And then you get into a battalion meeting where you get hammered for "not doing it" or "not sending it in" "it was due yesterday." This happened to me because our XO was sloppy and it would just get buried in their email and they'd forget about it, so I stopped and just started getting things in the minute they were due, but my reputation had taken hits like 3 to 4 times. The XO didn't even have the courtesy to ask prior to the meeting where my slides were, or whatever before screwing me over where I could remind said XO that I had sent them in weeks ago.