XO relieved over video

While being liked is cool and all, its not as good as it sounds. You can be a complete shitbag as a leader, and your subordinates will like you because you're chill and fun, but your team may pick up your bad habits and perform horribly because they've never gotten some sense beat into them.

Just as well, you can be well liked, and be a competent leader/subordinate that had earned the others' trust.

There's a flip side to that. When I first got to the fleet, my senior guy was a Terminal Lance bastard. We fucking hated him. He was strict about everything that one could be strict about. We'd be hazed (well, it wasn't hazing because he did everything with us, but it was a very small technicality) for the tiniest fuck ups: anything from not saying the proper greeting of the day to someone having a pocket unbuttoned, and it only got worse the more severe the fuck up. Whenever you fucked up, you were victim to more personally demeaning rants than anyone on this forum, barring the military tropers, has ever heard in their lives. He was the biggest hardass in the company minus some 10-year salt dog Sergeants. But he did everything in his power to make sure we were squared away and capable of doing our jobs.

We hated our lives because of him. But when we realized that yes, we were intact the most competent squad and team in the entire company, and also the closest, as evident through our performance, we realized that it was all because of him. He had gone out of his way to take care of us more than a team leader should ever have to. He was more demanding than any other team leader is. Furthermore, he was a total dick. But it was all for a very good reason, and when we saw that manifest, he had nothing but respect for him. We still kind of hated him, but we respected him.

Being liked isn't really important. Being trusted is.

edited 5th Jan '11 5:01:50 PM by Scrye

Its partially why assassination or sniping works better again gurilleas than in modern conventional armies, because you can replace Captains easily enough, but a charasmatic leader is MUCH harder to bring back.

I'm not too sure about it being hard to replace a charismatic leader, given the whole saying that "situations and conditions make leaders" seems true in a lot of places, e.g. Che Guevara was a doctor and there were examples all over of well-known partisans who were pilots, mechanics, etc etc until the Callof Duty cameup.

I don't think you need charisma, as much as the enemy doing shit that feeds your cause, and other socioeconomic factors....like sheer luck xD

^^ Basically, yes. They're not there to win popularity contests, they're there to ensure that you can do your job. It's the jerks that are also ate-up like a soup sandwich that I really can't stand. I call those people stripe-wearers.

edited 5th Jan '11 5:04:47 PM by pvtnum11

edited 24th May '12 12:58:19 AM by JosefBugman

^that is true.

also, the fact that a captain of a US aifcraft carrier made the video is cool in a way, even if it's not 'serious business' as officers should. Also the posts here remind me where the military scares me - e.g. assholes chewing you out

You get used to it.

I know that logic, it's the same logic people use to justify things done online......having spent years in internet flamewars, i can say 'no that feeling does not go away'....

If Major Tom manages to go from Green to Gold, he'll learn all about that first-hand.

Yep. I already know that if I go officer I have to know when to draw the line and separate myself from the enlisted folks. Lead by example and performance, not by being buddies.

I'm having trouble envisioning a job or career that won't involve someone getting in your grill to let you know that they're displeased about your work performance. We hold the CEO's of corporations to the fire when they give out pay raises with stimulus money. Mess up giving a patient medication, you'll be counseled about it. You burn too many batches of french fries, you'll be getting a talking to. You mis-file too many administrative records, you'll be getting a talking to.

May or may not involve getting screamed at. I had only one NCO that did a bunch of yelling, the rest were actually pretty civil about enforcing the standards.

Chain of Command isn't just a military concept, honestly.

there is a difference between 'you are doing this wrong, here this is a better way to do this' or 'please fix this' and the ghetto-ass "MOTHERFUCKER YOU DID THIS THIS AND THIS WRONG NIGGA WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED YOU MOMMA DROPPED YOU ON YOU HEAD" blah blah blah.....or for the military version "YOU ARE SHIT NOT FIT TO BE IN A SEWER GO FUCK YOURSELF UNTIL YOU REALIZE WY YOU ARE SO FUCKING DUMB" or whatever people do for 'chewing out'........

....That's why I am LOATHE to be ghetto/bitchy/mean to customer service for my college, even though they have been incompetent in getting my FAFSA done several months later. Also it didn't piss me off, but even if it DID piss me off I am slow to anger naturally it seems (ive heard people say they could stab me and i'd still be their friend... -_-).

Even when I DO get angry it takes a lot of aggravation to make me want to go postal/take out a baseball hat to the head/take out flammable sprays to burn the motherfucker.....

uh my point is 'there's a difference between feedback to fix a problem and being a douchebag'

edited 5th Jan '11 9:56:51 PM by BalloonFleet

But military ass chewings are so creative and soul-crushing. A lot of them are fun to listen to. Even on the receiving end.

^^

You only get those types of chew outs in boot camp, or if you're really retarded beyond all reason.

^

Agreed. I love a good and creative ass chewing. Mine were always the quiet and foreboding ass chewings though, Scrye knows the type.. Where you pull in real close and use a really intense voice that is at the same time very calm. Those ones always scared me way more than the loud and obnoxious tu;e.

^Boot camp has nothing on our fleet ass-chewings.

edited 24th May '12 12:58:34 AM by JosefBugman

Nothing is spared.

edited 24th May '12 1:03:48 AM by JosefBugman

Heh, the best turn around on that I'd ever seen was when my friend was in boot camp, he got a letter that had his name written on crayon on the envelope. The Sergeant made some joke about how this must be why he isn't allowed within three blocks of a school, and he said "Oh, that's from my girlfriend sir, she has cerebral palsy."

He got kind of quiet and apologized, never brought it up again.

At Amnesty hour when he graduated, he told his MTI that he didn't have a girlfriend, it was actually his little sister.

For the most part, yes, they know about family situations. That doesn't really stop them. They may come back ten minutes later and apologize, but never in public. The point of an ass chewing is to let you know you suck and you're wrong, no matter how long your grandmother's been dead.

edited 24th May '12 1:04:07 AM by JosefBugman

Because if you simply acknowledge you made a mistake, you might do it again. Nothing gives you incentive not to fuck up like all the bullshit you go through for the last time you fucked up.

edited 24th May '12 1:04:17 AM by JosefBugman

The video wouldn't have been offensive had those douchebags not been acting like complete dickheads at the beginning. Honestly, the liberal bashing of the right gets tiresome.

One of the contributing factors in my decision not to go into the Army after all.

edited 6th Jan '11 5:57:37 AM by CommandoDude

Did you ever learn how to block out your parents when you were a kid?

^^That's a two-way street, sweetheart.

Josef: I've learned to block them out after years of carefully cultivated belligerence. Most people can't. There's something to a military ass chewing that I've never seen in the civilian world. These guys are damn good at making you pissed off at yourself for fucking shit up. Like I said, its creative and soul-crushing.

edited 24th May '12 1:04:36 AM by JosefBugman