My Military Experience – The Terrible Tour Two, part b

There had been some personnel changes in my division at Kunia during my brief flirtation with civilian life, the most dramatic being that it had a new division petty officer, PO1 McVader (not his real name, of course; but McVoldemort seems a little too clunky).  McVader was really impressive at first; I remember thinking with relief that we finally had a decent, proactive and hard-working E-6 in our division, after a long string of bad luck.  He was a tall, thick-built guy, and since he shaved his head bald, his nickname was “Mr. Clean.”  He was charismatic and outgoing, and he bore a striking resemblance to the actor Tom Hanks – he even sounded like him! – and most importantly, he seemed dedicated to taking care of his sailors.  After only a few months, though, I realized (along with everyone else) that the only problems he was willing to take care of for his sailors were the ones that helped him look good – and we were on our own if they didn’t.  He also didn’t spend a lot of time in the division because he was out schmoozing chiefs and officers, swapping sea stories (he was aircrew, and they always have good stories about clunky old P-3 Orion malfunctions or POW training or really wild aircrew parties or something).  He also had the expectation that all the female members of the division should flirt with him, even though he was our supervisor and he was married and had kids.  Something he liked to do, when a female linguist requested help with some audio, was stand directly behind her chair and rest one arm on the desk on each side of her, hunched and hovering over her at a very close and intimidating distance.  And he was smart enough to do all this stuff in such a manner as to make it impossible to make a complaint about him.

There was probably some assertive yet tactful way of dealing with McVader and also preserving my dignity, but I quickly grew to dislike him so much that I didn’t even entertain the thought of maintaining a decent working relationship with him.  I did not flirt with him and made it perfectly clear that I was never going to kiss his ass.  That sounds all courageous and defiant, but it was really just boneheadedness.  My unwillingness to even consider any options that might have made life easier for me was plain stupid, and I paid dearly for it – he made sure of that.  The negativity of my relationship with him was an enormous source of stress for me – and probably little more than an annoyance to him.  I was the one who paid the price for my inflexibility, not him.

We had a kind of odd dance, back and forth, during the two and a half years we worked together (one that he got to lead most of the time due to his rank and position).  He actually nominated me for a Navy Achievement Medal for some useless work that I did at his direction.  I didn’t want the award, though, because I felt it was about him and making himself look good, not me.  I suppose it was possible that it was an attempt to earn my respect – I did receive the award.  However, I was in a really bad place then, and I mistrusted him more than anyone else in the division.  I’ve only ever received two counseling chits for bad behavior in the military, and they were both due to my defiance of orders from him.  The really interesting thing to me was that for the second one, when I was looking particularly angry and self-righteous, he was clearly nervous; I understood, somewhat dimly, that he was actually intimidated by me, but there was nothing I could do with that knowledge to my advantage.  He left Kunia in November 2000, just after making chief, and I was defiant until the bitter end.  I never addressed him as “chief” because I didn’t feel he deserved it; I called him “chief petty officer” with a slight emphasis on “petty officer.”  I had taken a play from his playbook; I was disrespectful to him in a way that no one could say broke any rules.  He knew it, and it bothered him, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Several months before McVader left Kunia, I found out from a co-worker that he had been telling our whole division some very bad and untrue things about me, mainly claiming that I could not be trusted.  I had already had some other problems with him, and with this information I realized I probably had a valid harassment (hostile work environment) complaint against him.  I won’t bother enumerating those problems; suffice to say that in talking with a female E-6 that I respected, she agreed with me, and I decided to make the complaint.  But the whole thing went really, really badly – some of it I probably should have anticipated, and some of it I could not.

I wrote up my complaint, and it was several pages long – really bad idea.  Even I recognized then that it was just too much verbiage, but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible.  I should have just stuck to providing a brief, one page summary, and filled in the details later when I actually had a chance to talk to someone.  Writing a book about this problem, as complicated as it was, just made me look like a hysterical little girl.

I took my complaint to a chief just outside of my chain of command, Chief Bishop (his division worked with ours).  This was actually a good idea on the surface; my division chief, who I had named in my complaint, was part of the problem, so I couldn’t take it to him, and I had reason to fear reprisals (a fear that later turned out to be justified).  I even asked around to make sure Chief Bishop was cool, and he was.  However, as I mentioned earlier, PO McVader did a lot of schmoozing, and unbeknownst to me, Chief Bishop was one of McVader’s biggest fans.  Chief Bishop had a few days to read my complaint, and when I met with him again, he condescendingly informed me that I was overreacting, but strangely did not give me back my complaint document right away, even though I asked for it.

From a chance remark made by an E-6 co-worker several months later, I figured out that (apparently) Chief Bishop went straight to my chain of command with my complaint – and for anyone who knows anything about handling harassment complaints, THIS WAS A REALLY BAD THING TO DO – as in, I could have called the Inspector General once I found out, and some heads might have rolled.  It’s likely that both McVader and my chief had the opportunity to read that document, which is probably why I didn’t get it back right away when I asked for it.  The E-6 I mentioned above knew about my complaint, too, and there’s no reason why he should have; so chances are a lot of people knew who had no business knowing.  But I didn’t find out about Chief Bishop’s violation of my confidentiality and trust until this E-6 made his comment.  By this point, McVader was already in the process of getting involuntarily discharged due to medical problems, so attempting to re-submit the complaint would have been a waste of time.  And it didn’t even occur to me to make a complaint about Chief Bishop, as justified as my complaint would have been; he was well-respected at our command, and I was still very unpopular, and now a troublemaker on top of that.  Not taking this drama any further was a smart thing for me to do.  It saved me further stress, and perhaps even some official consequences more severe than counseling chits.

The silver lining in my horrid relationship with McVader was that my naïve, conservative small-town golly-gee unquestioning obedience and respect for authority was thoroughly broken; that was a not inconsiderable gift McVader gave me, one that I very much appreciate to this day.  I had never thought myself capable of being so independent as to defy orders and be disrespectful to a superior.  I know that I could have conducted myself better, and certainly in a respectful manner more advantageous to myself if I had made the effort to at least try; but maybe this was the only way I could get rid of my deeply ingrained awe of authority.  Several years later, after I started studying A Course in Miracles and really learned the importance of forgiveness, McVader was one of the main people I had to do a lot of work on forgiving.  I eventually had a dream where I hugged him and forgave him, with joy.  That is one of my better memories, and something I think about when I am struggling to forgive others; I at least know what is possible.

~o~o~o~o~

next installment:  The Terrible Tour Two, part c – the subordinate from hell