My Military Experience, Part I – Subsection c

Promotion

There are unfortunate consequences to being a shit-hot linguist though, especially when your division gets stuck with not one, not two, not three, but four useless first class petty officers (E-6s – who are supposed to be supervisors).  In my case, as soon as I made E-5 (second class petty officer), my chain of command decided to make me a shift supervisor.  This was in spite of the fact that I had never even worked as an assistant supervisor (usually an E-5 position).  I had happily sat in my corner for two years, focused on my one or two tasks while blissfully ignoring all the big picture stuff as well as all the administrative headaches that go along with supervising.  So while I was thrilled with this obvious display of respect and trust from my chain of command, I really had no idea what I was getting into – but given the dearth of leadership in the division, I don’t think I would have been allowed to refuse the position even if I did know.  And to make it all even sillier – the Navy had a neat-o system of promoting people first, and giving them their pay raise much later.  So there I was, wearing two chevrons on my sleeve and administratively entitled to all the rights and privileges of an E-5, while working an E-6 position, and collecting E-4 pay.  That’s the military in a nutshell.

E-5 sleeve insignia for the utility uniform (no longer worn)

I wish I could say that I quickly and easily learned how to be a great supervisor, but I didn’t.  When other people are involved, people skills are necessary, and as a shy, quiet, nerdy introvert, mine were virtually non-existent.  My people skills consisted almost entirely of radiating formidable intelligence and standoffishness, and having little ability to engage in chit-chat, or even to live a life that would make for interesting chit-chat.  In other words, I came across as a snob on my good days and a cold bitch on my bad days.  This is not how one wins popularity contests, which as it turns out is an important job skill for supervisors of sailors on their first tour of duty, most of whom are in their late teens and early twenties and who still think life is supposed to be like high school.

I had my successes, though.  As I gradually learned the supervisor job and made awkward but consistent attempts to work with my subordinates and take care of them, I earned the respect of the people whose respect was worth earning.  Anyone who cared to look past the awkwardness could see that I wanted to do well and do right by my section.

A few months after I started, I made the challenging and enormously unpopular decision to fire my assistant supervisor, Mike.  Popularity-wise in our division, he was an affable homecoming king, who could sit in a bar for hours, chugging beer and telling great stories about his world travels (he was in his late twenties, a few years older than me).  However, not long after I became his supervisor, he explicitly stated his indifference to doing the job well. “Why should I have to work hard when Jack didn’t have to?”  Jack was his first trainer and not a very good one.  His second trainer, Gina, was smart and dedicated and also had a serious crush on him (which she advertised freely even though she was married), and therefore, apparently, was an inadequate role model.  She told me that Mike was great at the job, but he just required some supervision – in other words, he really couldn’t be trusted.  For my part, I was such a doormat at the time that I actually sympathized with Mike, because I’d had my problems with Jack too.  Mike also didn’t have a very good ear and preferred to make something up in producing his reports rather than ask for help.  His stated indifference may have been a cover for being embarrassed at not having a real talent for the work, I have to concede that – but I think that mostly he just didn’t care.  His personality and his abilities were not a good fit with being a linguist.

In Mike’s place I put Adam, a guy who was junior to Mike but who had enormous talent – and a puckish, snarky attitude that had not endeared him to our chain of command.  I don’t think my division petty officer and division chief liked the idea of Adam being a-supe (assistant supervisor), but they didn’t interfere.  Firing Mike was a decision that had long-term disastrous social consequences, but professionally, it was one of the smartest things I’d done – my job as a supervisor was much easier afterwards.  If I’d had any more charm back in those days, I might have been able to pull it off without the social consequences.  Or not – Mike was the homecoming king, after all – the whole division was crazy about him, but most of them had never had to supervise him.  Even after he was switched to another section, he didn’t change his habits (I know because I occasionally still had to read his reports), but his new supervisor insisted that Mike was really great at his job, just as Gina had done.  No one wanted to admit that Mike was a liability.  And just to make this situation more pathetic, Mike was also upset about being fired – even though he was open and unashamed about being a slacker.  I never understood that.

I had another subordinate who did poor quality work dumped on me when Mike was switched out.  Sean was nervous and jumpy and consistently wrote bad reports that I had to spend a lot of time correcting before sending them out.  I finally figured out that he was doing so poorly because he unrealistically thought that once he had finished his initial training, he wasn’t supposed to ask for help.  I convinced him that my job as supervisor was to support him in his professional development, which meant helping him when he had audio that he couldn’t understand, or a report that he wasn’t sure how to write.  I don’t think Sean’s previous supervisors had been so willing to work with him, probably because he was just so high-strung and insecure.  It took some time, but Sean started asking for help regularly, from me and Adam, and he really worked on getting better.  He also had the habit of making stuff up, like Mike, but unlike Mike, he wanted to do the job well.  Sean ended up becoming a reliable linguist and an asset to my section, which helped calm him down, build his confidence, and as a result he became much more pleasant to work with, too.

And then there was Lindsay, a totally hot blonde chick who was assigned to my section a few months after I started.  I’ll admit, I’d never had the opportunity to see how stupid guys could act around really hot chicks (not being hot myself, nor having had any friends who were either) so this experience was a real eye-opener.  Our work area was a joint watch section, where Army, Air Force, and Navy all had their separate sections doing their own thing, but we all worked the same schedule, so it was pretty common to socialize amongst the different sections when optempo was low, since we all saw each other every workday.  After Lindsay started in my section, there was a definite uptick in male Army and Air Force visitors as they came to meet the newest member of the section and just hang out.  One remarkably homely married-with-kids Army guy was so frequent a visitor (and so frequently encouraged to visit by Lindsay) that I finally had to tell him that Lindsay was just too busy to have so many visits, and they were going to have to limit their socializing to off-duty hours (which I’m pretty sure didn’t happen).  Lindsay clearly enjoyed the attention from the guys and encouraged it.  To a certain extent I don’t blame her for that, but she had that arrogance and sense of entitlement that so many beautiful people have – a shallowness of character that does not recognize that some things must be earned, rather than accepted as one’s due, especially when inappropriately given.  Fortunately, on a later tour of duty I had the privilege of working with and becoming friends with an equally attractive blonde chick who was a class act; not all hot chicks are like Lindsay.

My chain of command was also besotted with Lindsay and wanted to give her an award – normally given to CTIs who had been working at our duty station for a year or so and had consistently been good performers – while Lindsay was still in training.  One of my jobs as a supervisor was to help my subordinates get the recognition they deserved, and my division chief put me in the unenviable position of having to discourage him from giving Lindsay an award that she had not earned.  I don’t doubt that he thought I was at least a little bit jealous of Lindsay, which was not true – but at least he gave the award to someone who deserved it.  Lindsay would have been all too happy to receive it (she would have somehow justified it), and she would have rapidly become one of the least-respected members of our division.  You’re welcome, Lindsay.

As it was, she later attempted to manipulate our division petty officer into giving her another recognition that had been given to someone else by crying and telling him how upset she was that she didn’t get it.  He was so disappointed that he couldn’t help her – no kidding.  She lost a lot of respect when word of that got out (I might have had something to do with that).  She unashamedly informed me later that she was really mad at “whoever” had told other people about that.  I hope the incident taught her to at least be more careful about her manipulative behavior, though.  And if she really did know that it was me, it didn’t put a significant dent in her brown-nosing of me.

To give Lindsay her due, though, I will say that she worked hard at her job and became pretty good at it, and she was particularly well-known for her global language skills.  She was also good at handling the day-to-day workload and was reliable enough that if I had needed a replacement for Adam, she would have been a good choice.  I trusted her professional integrity when she was actually doing the job.  That’s the ironic aspect of her self-absorbed behavior – she was hardworking and capable, yet she still felt the need use her looks to be manipulative and put herself before others.  It really wasn’t necessary – she could, and did, earn other people’s respect the old-fashioned way.  But the old-fashioned way takes time and a lot of effort, and breezing by on good looks does not.

Why wasn’t I jealous of Lindsay’s beauty?  Because I had never been interested in receiving the sort of mindless attention that I saw showered upon her.  I’m an introvert, and I want my interactions with people to have substance, including any admiration that might come my way.  The flash and pop and empty gestures of extroverted interaction have never been satisfying to me, and the just-based-on-looks attention I saw Lindsay receiving eagerly was amusing at best – and annoying the rest of the time.  It looked to me like eating cotton candy – a little bit of a sugar rush, but mostly hot air with no real nutrition.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be considered attractive, because of course I do.  Being Lindsay’s supervisor, however, gave me abundant opportunities to confirm for myself that I really did not want to be heartbreakingly beautiful.  I’d much rather be Mary Ann than Ginger.  Mary Ann has more freedom to be herself, I think; Ginger has too many limiting expectations placed upon her because of her dazzling beauty, and the kind of empty attention that Ginger normally gets tends to warp one’s character rather than deepen it.  There was much more to Lindsay than her good looks – she had genuine substance and character –  but it seemed that even she had a hard time realizing that.

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Subsequent subsection d – Stay in or get out?  and what makes a good linguist

1 Comment

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  By Greg Tamblyn, September 11, 2011 @ 8:23 pm

  Okay, I’m really starting to get into these characters and subplots. Can’t wait for the next episode…

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