When you think your job is difficult:
When I was in the military I worked on nuclear weapons. One of the night shift crews messed up and damaged a component, it was BAD!! (not allowed to give details). The whole facility and everyone in it was designated as UQ (unqualified), even us guys that were at home. We had to report to work for 12 hours a day 7 days a week for 3 months as everyone got re-qualified. In the interim we were ordered to use razor blades (on our knees) to scrape the all sealant off the facility concrete floors in an extremely large building (thousands and thousands of sq ft). We scraped the floors on our hands and knees for 8 weeks all because of one night shift crew.
We were lucky though....the night shift crew was basically arrested and hauled off that night and was never seen or heard from again by anyone at the facility. Some of those guys were our friends but they basically disappeared. We weren't even allowed to ask about them (orders). To this day none of us guys ever found out what happened to that night shift crew!!!!
Like I said, I guess all the rest of us were lucky!!!
treblig
Then we are brothers.
We also have shift work where we work 13-14 hour days. We prefer shift work over regular ordinance operations schedule and refit schedule. Get up at either 4 am or 5 am, at work before 6 or 7 and leave for home before 19:00 or 20:00 typically in refit when things go south like this. Not much time for anything besides food, gasoline, laundry, and sleep-let alone family.
At least this schedule is just 3-4 times a year for 5-7 weeks at a time.
Deployment is easier than in port periods with the boat, but when the other crew has the boat we are in trainers M-F 07:00-16:00 + whatever extra.
I have sold back 47 days of vacation that I'll never get (for chump change) and
have about 40 in the books to use right now.
Over a decade ago the Air Force forgot where they kept some bombs, grabbed a plane, and flew them out of state without permission. One of my co-workers used to work with at that base, with those men and we received more stand down training than they did. After talking to my best friend from the Army, despite making Lt. Colonel, he is getting out as fast as he can at 20 years because of the politically correct agenda being pushed and the blind confidence/expected success that is assumed by Army leadership in dangerous scenarios. He said the assumptions are deadly. I devoutly believe in what we do (mission), but some of the means of accomplishment or checks and balances leaves more than a bad taste in my mouth. As previously mentioned there is a tremendous amount of politics, but I expect that and try to write that off (despite being very painful) whenever possible.
My peer has to wait at least 3 days before non-judicial punishment and adjudication begins. That is ALONG TIME to sweat getting kicked out. I might have died from a heart attack from that treatment. Giving him the weekend to get drunk and screw up is a horrible idea.
The sailor that messed up marking off the procedure will transfer to an SSGN so his life will be better for a few years, but I guarantee all money that he gets out before the Navy needs him on our platform again. Two other extremely competent sailors that are possibly more brilliant than me allow this event to hammer the final nail in their service's coffin. We need bright people and the inspection and parent commands have no idea, no concern for the big picture-just visors to focus on their immediate responsibilities and worry about themselves.
It is not the same as corporate America for one important reason, the tax payers pay and the military invests so much time training these individuals that an increase in attrition is unaffordable. With such a large entity (too big too fail!??), leadership misses some of the large problems until they sinking the entire ship. My rate/MOS is manned in waves trying to keep up with the attrition.
