Shot

Every morning, when I check the updated waiver log I'm getting shot in the back of the head by my battalion OPS. I've had a freaking DUI waiver in their clutches for a week now. A simple DUI waiver. A DUI that occured 15 years ago. All it needs is for the battalion commander to sign the waiver. That's it. The BC's office is right down the hall from OPS. They can see it from their desks. If they're waiting on distro to take it from their desk to the BC's, let me know. I'll drive to OPS and take it to the BC's desk my self.

Maybe I shouldn't say that so loud, maybe they'll hear me and think it's a good idea.

I'm a 42A Human Resources Specialist myself. Came in as a 75B, promoted to 75H, and I switched my code to 42A when the Army told me to. I like admin. I like the Adjutant General's Corps. I like being in a very unappreciated MOS. I'm a glutton like that. I pride myself on being a good personnel sergeant. I don't need praise when I do my job well, it's my job to do so. I take constructive critism well and it's my personal mission to never make the same mistake twice (I like to make whole new, bold, glorious mistakes! VIVA LA ERROR!!!!).

Having 10 years in admin I can usually tell a good admin geek from a poor one very quickly. Poor admin clerks make my job harder. When someone in the Army has a bad experience with a personnel clerk they carry the scars for a long time, and the grudge about as long. I have to overcome those problems every time someone else jacks up someone's pay, promotion, leave, whatever. Something Soldier's sometimes don't realize is that a lot of their problems are self-inflicted or cause neutral. When you change your bank account, and don't tell anyone, don't be surprised when your money doesn't go to your new account. Computers do have problems sometimes. Numbers are entered incorrectly, data is overwritten. It happens. A good clerk is about to make sure that the affect Soldier(s) understand the problem and it is remedied ASAP.

Long story short (too late [Clue reference]), I hold a special dislike for poor personnel clerks and S1 shops. They hurt Soldiers and make my job more difficult. My battlion's S1 is filled with them.

They are the worst type of personnel clerk. They are the one's who don't do their job well, and when they do their job at all they make it seem like they went out of their way to get it done. The gauge I use for S1 effectivness is NCOERs. If they NCOERs are tracked, up-to-date, maintained you're working with a squared-away shop. As the quality of the NCOER system degrades, so does the performance of that shop. Few, very few, of the recruiters in the field feel that their NCOERs are being handled properly. Now, for those not in the Army, and even those in it, there are a lot of people who have some responsibility for an NCOER. The Rater, Sr. Rater, Reviewer, the admin folks, the first sergeant, CO, and ultimatly the rated NCO. I must suppress the urge to slap any personnel clerk who blames a busted NCOER system on it not being their responsibility, and instead the responsibility of the rating chain. True, the responsibility for the NCOER being completed is on the rating chain. However, that does not abdicate the personnel sergeants of their responsibility to account for the rating system. The responsibility of the individual report is on the individual, but the whole system is on the clerks.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Our S1 is broke. There is no hope on the horizon unless an experienced S1 NCOIC is inbound and no one knows it. I'd like to think that simply that one shop was broken, but it seems that their evil has spread to OPS, and that is now affecting me and my production.

*UPDATE* I'd felt like I'd made some spelling errors but nothing happened when I ran blogger's spell check. When you find them let me know. Too tired to do a good proofread.