Deep Shit.
House sitting for a friend this weekend, which is a good thing for me as it will help keep me out of trouble and not out spending money I don't have right now. I just broke down and bought a new car a couple weeks ago. I needed it bad and was tired of not having one. So the prospects for my weekend are pretty much watching his TV and drinking, alone on the the couch. Fuck. Yes.
I'm still stuck at my old unit because my motivated LT was (I suspect) convinced by my Master Sgt to not let me go. I guess I'm too "important". By importnant I mean they need me to sit around and not do anything all day. Everyday. I think I'm going to take up knitting.
I ran a mock PFT (Physical Fitness Test) on the 24th. Now, during a mock PFT they take down your score and see where everyone is standing at that time. Most units do this once evey six months or so, three months off the offical PFT that is required to be run for "score" every six months. This unit makes us do one every month. Whetever, stupid but, no worse than regular daily PT. Here's the kicker: At another unit if you fail any portion of your PFT the unit puts you on an unoffical program to get you back to where you need to be so that by the time your "for score" PFT comes up you can pass and therefore remain eligible for deployment, promotion, additional orders, etc and are not put on the mandatory fat-body program. Not this fucked up unit though, oh no. This unit immediatly puts you on that program, and kills you chance at promotion, deployment, TAD orders, etc. This turns the "mock" PFT into something that used to be a chance of making sure your Marines are where they need to be to an event designed to fuck over their Marines as soon as possible. There is no "get your self back up to speed before we have to put you on the program" time only a "oh, good, now we can put so-an-so on BCP".
This is the only unit I've ever been to where they try and fuck their Marines. I just don't understand it at all. There was a Lieutenant that said, the unit "needed to find something" to get a Marine on so they could put him on this career damaging program. They are going after people as if they were hunting.
Which brings me back to my little story. I was running this mock PFT and after I had completed the dead-hang pullups I, it would seem, dismounted the pullup bar in an "unmotivated fashion" and was immediatly berrated by an Officer for "just doing the miniumum and jumping off". I informed the uninformed "leader" that I had, in fact, done more than the minimum. Nothing else was said at that point.
We, next, went over and did our crunches. It would seem that my pull up episode had caused a ripple through our great leaders and the Commnding Officer made sure to come by and critisize my form on the crunches not once but twice. A little back ground on Marine Corps culture: Crunches onthe PFT are a give away. They are counted and everybody always "gets 100", the maximum socre. It is pretty much the base 100 points for the rest of the events that everyone counts on, regardless of how many you actually do. As a matter of fact anyone that says their partner did less that 100 is considered to be a "buddy fucker". Everyone at every level of command know this (as they once too where laughing off the event) and it is a joke in the Marine Corps. Yet, all of a sudden, my "form" on the crunches was of great concern to my Commanding Officer. Very well.
Next came the 3 mile run portion of the test. I had been feeling a little fucked up in the guts but I couldn't just say "Hey, yeah, I'm feeling a little poor today, I'm going to just sit this one out." So, off I ran. Soon after I started the run I felt a shit coming on of an apocalyptic nature. I tried to keep going and made it over half way throughthe run before I had to stop running. I'm not going to shit my pants to finish a run, sorry sir. So I get a ride back in the safety vehicle and almost as soon as I get out our new Staff NCO in Charge comes up and starts making insinuations that I'm, pardon the pun, full of shit. This guy just got to the unit, he doesn't now anything about me but he's ready to suggest I'm a liar and a malingerer. It would seem that the rest of the "leadership" was prepared to do the same. Shorly after getting back a little bird that worked up in the Head Shed told me that, failing documentation from medical, that "the Command" was going to run me as having failed a PFT, despite the fact I already had a passing PFT on the record for that time frame, never having failed a PFT in my life, never haveing been on weight control, and never having failed to finish a run inmy entire life up to this point, they were going to use this mock PFT to put medown as a fail, kill any promotions, deploymets, orders, etc. It would seem, according to my friend, that "they" thought I was a liar and a malingerer and stopped the run "just because I didn't feel like running any more".
So I went down to medical and talked to a Chief Petty Officer who had assigned herself to deal with all out medical problems after our unit had problems with our "leadership" in the past and told her what had happened. Needless to say she was upset with the idiocy and poor leadership in the unit and wrote me the paperwork I needed.
To all my great leaders that I am supposed to look up to and folow: Thanks Alot. You're are greats examples to us all. Fuck your Marines, right?
I have to be honst when I say I have not been this angry in a long, long time. Our group CO, a Colonel, came down but that is a whole diffrent story to go over and lunch beckons. Cheers, Gents.
posted by Tom @ 14:01
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