My Military Experience – The Terrible Tour Two, part c

Since this was the tour from hell, I couldn’t just have social problems, health problems, and problems with an important member of my chain of command; I also had to have a crazy subordinate who convinced everyone that I was “out to get her”, all while she was begging me for attention every work day.  Varena was a homely, awkward chick a few years older than me who was so easily overwhelmed by the stress of our job that she struggled to pass even the easiest of our three job qualification requirements (JQRs).  She barely passed it on the third try after some very intense tutoring by a guy she had a pretty intense crush on.  Although she passed that JQR, she could never be relied on professionally; her ear was poor, and she couldn’t even manage her computer screen well enough to produce a decent transcript.  She was so obviously emotionally unstable that even the gruffest male sailors in our division walked on eggshells around her (including McVader).  Our chain of command didn’t know what to do with her; she was incompetent but pathetically sincere, and wasn’t breaking any rules.  They couldn’t send her to a different division to do a different job, and they couldn’t “fire” her.  So any watch team that she worked with pretty much had to babysit her.  The cover term for this was that she just needed “more training.”  Varena played along with this conceit, in an understandable attempt to preserve some self-respect, and therefore she was very consistent in her demands for more attention, i.e. more training.

Varena suffered pretty badly throughout her entire tour at Kunia; she was acutely aware of her incompetence and lost few opportunities to flagellate herself for it.  She was a gifted artist who was also highly intelligent and sensitive; she simply had no business doing this particular job.  I warned my chain of command that I thought she was a suicide risk, even though she had never talked about suicide; I really was worried about her.  One incident in particular highlighted her emotional instability for me.  Varena had thick, dark, shoulder length hair that she was very proud of; when in uniform she had to style it in such a way as to wear it above the collar, according to uniform regulations.  Her hair was so thick, though, that it often worked its way out of its bobby pins and fell below her collar.  Our work environment was informal enough that this happening on occasion was no big deal.  One evening when Varena was particularly stressed out at work, McVader humorously (and with no malice) pointed out that her braid had worked its way loose; Varena’s response was to grab a set of scissors and chop it off.  McVader, of course, was shocked at the inappropriateness of Varena’s behavior (women who are proud of their hair do not violently and arbitrarily chop it off in such a manner) but he didn’t know what to do – it’s not like she took a knife and cut herself, although in my opinion it is pretty damned close – so he walked away.  I doubt the incident was ever addressed.

If she was simply incompetent, it would have been a chore to deal with her, but nothing too bad; it wasn’t unusual to have a few people in the division who couldn’t do the job well.  Unfortunately, she also developed an odd obsession with me.  I was one of the few people who attempted to engage her, rather than ignore her or walk on eggshells around her.  I expressed belief for a fair amount of time that she was capable of improving her job performance, if she could just manage her stress better.  I also had asked her to housesit for me once when I was off-island on a month-long trip (to Russia – paid for by the Navy), and I think she decided from this that we were supposed to be best friends, or something.  As her supervisor, I was supposed to provide her with more training, which she demanded pretty regularly, and pretty regularly had no demonstrated effect on improving her competence.  I finally begged off by pointing out to her that obviously I wasn’t a very good trainer for her, and I asked one of the other members of my section, Treya, to work with her – a member that Varena didn’t seem as likely to harass as much as she was harassing me.

Varena also realized pretty quickly how unpopular I was in the division and at some point started telling the other members of our watch team that I was out to get her.  They didn’t believe her at first, but she was so persistent in her complaints, and since I was no charmer, they eventually believed her.  Never mind the fact that they could see with their own eyes how I interacted with her during work, which was generally calm and polite; she somehow convinced them that I was doing all this harassment on the sly, via computer chat or somesuch.  I found out about this much later, at the very end of my tour.  I didn’t know what was going on; I just knew that my subordinates went from being decent towards me to being cold and distant, and I had no idea why.  I didn’t question it, though, because I was accustomed to being treated that way by pretty much everyone.  I know now that I at least should have asked, although who knows if I would have gotten an honest answer.

Of all the problems I had during my second tour, Varena’s behavior was the most frustrating because it was the one I had the least power to change.  Given what I know now about personality disorders (I’m pretty sure she had one, probably paranoid personality disorder), which tend to be remarkably resistant to treatment or any other external changes in environment or the behavior of others, I don’t think there was a lot I could do.  I set boundaries when I could, but Varena could choose to not respect those boundaries, and there was nothing I could do about it – and she knew it too, and often ignored them.

What Varena was doing could also be labeled harassment or creating a hostile work environment, but whatever it might have been, it didn’t matter.  We both knew the chain of command wouldn’t back me up if I made a complaint about her behavior – so I didn’t.  That, at least, is one thing I did right – not get my chain of command involved (other than expressing my concerns about her committing suicide, which was blown off), because it was no use.  My division chief had already made it pretty clear that she was my problem, not his.  The division chief’s indifference aside, Navy conflict resolution/harassment regulations are best applied to personnel problems that are clear cut and easy to resolve.  The average military leader doesn’t want to recognize the complexity of most real-world, genuinely messy situations, the kind that, in the absence of clear, incontrovertible evidence, are too easily boiled down to “which party is more trustworthy and valuable?  And which party do I dislike the most?” which were almost all the situations I found myself in during this tour. (To be fair, a lot of civilian leaders don’t like those kinds of problems either, but military leaders tend to be even more averse to “people” problems than most.)

I did eventually come up with an idea that turned the focus of Varena’s attention to someone else (I admit without pride that this was my primary consideration in hatching this scheme) which ended up exposing an even deeper vein of her instability.  Treya and I were transferring out of Kunia at roughly the same time, in mid-2001.  Treya was an E-5 who had never worked as a supervisor.  I suggested that she be allowed to take over the watch team, and I would work as her assistant supervisor.  That way, she’d get some supervisor experience on her transfer evaluation, and she’d have me around to support her.  Varena had previously expressed a high opinion of Treya and (in my defense) I figured that Varena would chill on the crazy stuff once Treya was in charge.  That’s not what happened, though – Varena’s craziness just got transferred to Treya, in a very dramatic fashion, and Treya and the rest of the watch team finally realized that I was not Varena’s problem – and I had the relief of realizing that as well.  Varena also started acting strange towards the other team members too.  One of them was mature enough to later apologize to me for thinking so badly of me (and treating me badly), and told me a little of what Varena had been doing behind my back.

Again, given what I know now about personality disorders, it is not surprising that Varena just picked up with Treya where she left off with me, but I was convinced, just like the rest of the section was, that I was a big part of Varena’s problem – and I wasn’t.  The only thing I could have done day-to-day regarding this situation was for myself – to recognize that I wasn’t personally responsible for Varena’s behavior towards me, find a place of peace inside myself whenever I had to deal with her, and let things be.  (I might have managed that every once in a while, but not very often.)  It’s one level of self-education to see and understand the ordinary behavior of other people reflecting yourself back at you.  It’s another level entirely when you enable crazy people to latch on to you in expressing their own dysfunction.  Thanks in part to Varena’s behavior towards me, I am more aware now of my tendency to try to “rescue” people (which says a lot more about my own problems than the people who supposedly need help) and of my false belief that if I am not strong and reliable and stoic, then everything will go to hell in a hand basket.  Turns out the world doesn’t need me to rescue it, and it’s even okay to ask for help once in a while, or admit I can’t handle something – thank God!

~o~o~o~o~

next and last installment:  The Terrible Tour Two, part d – some progress, and moving on