Lazy Sunday

It literally is a lazy Sunday, but in a few ways it's more dreary than it is lazy. Overcast, 56 degrees F, José González's cover of Teadrop playing through my laptop's cruddy speakers...you know.


This weekend I participated in an event called Staff Training Weekend for a 10-day event that will be taking place in the summer called Tri-Wing Encampment. This event is essentially a boot camp for Civil Air Patrol cadets. Last year I went to Encampment as a First Sergeant, which meant I oversaw two Flight Sergeants while acting as the embodiment of fear and discipline to our thirty-something cadets.


This year I applied for a similar position. You see, there are two kinds of staff: line staff and executive staff. Line staff consists of those who directly oversee and train the cadets. They are flight sergeants, flight commanders, first sergeants, and squadron commanders. Then there's executive staff, which equates to "support staff." Exec staff handles all the things behind the scenes to make sure line staff can function.


I've always been a line staff kind of guy. I'd like to think I was a good First Sergeant judging by the outcome of my squadron last year, and so this year, as I said, I applied for a similar position. I really didn't care to be exec staff at all.


Well, I got put on exec staff. Not even close to what I applied and worked for. They put me in charge of Logistics, which means I'm in charge of making sure everyone has and gets what they need to do things. We'll be working closely with Mess Operations (who have named themselves "Call of Duty: Mess Ops") to ensure that food is on time and in good supply.


Fuck. Whatever. I'll do my job. I wasn't even close to wanting it, but I'll do it because this will be my last Encampment as a cadet and I'll go ahead and see what it's like. Staff Training Weekend wasn't wonderfully encouraging though.


I arrive on Friday night and do the whole meet and greet, talking with other NCOs (non-commissioned officers) and officers. Mostly everyone is pretty likable, but I have a problem child under my command. Let's call him Captain Hannibal Lecter.


I'm in charge of Logistics and Capt. Lecter is under my command along with a Lieutenant who is from my home squadron, so we already get along well. Upon meeting Capt. Lecter, I begin to see problems arising. Capt. Lecter doesn't like to talk, he just likes to stand in the corner, stare, and smile. Within the first few hours of meeting him I was slightly afraid he was going to stab me to death in the middle of the night. Thankfully, he didn't, but that doesn't mean everything was peachy from there, although generally when you're not getting stabbed, things are likely going well.


The entirety of the next day, Capt. Lecter spends his time deliberately trying to be alone. He sits in his room when I'm trying to get Logistics to work with Mess Ops, he intentionally lags behind everyone when we're going somewhere, and I swear to you, the whole time he don't speak more than a full paragraph of words to me.


Worse than that, he goes out of his way to avoid duty. He even becomes insubordinate. At one point I decide to get him to do something since all he's been doing has been self-serving, so I tell him to vacuum a hallway because I did the other one and we need to clean up where we were staying because it's an Army base and we should leave it as we found it, if not in better condition, because the Army is letting us use the complex essentially for free.


Anyway, I tell him to vacuum the hallway, I give him the vacuum and then I go to do something, trusting he'll do the job. I come back a few minutes later to find a Sergeant--let's call him Sgt. Wiggly since he moves around a lot--from Mess Ops vacuuming. I ask him why he's doing it and he tells me Capt. Lecter ordered him to vacuum the hallway.


Hell. Fucking. No.


That shit don't fly with me. I gave Capt. Lecter an order and he is to follow it, not order someone outside his chain of command (although a Captain, he has no authority over someone in Mess Ops). I tell Wiggly to stop, I go find Lecter, and then I get him back on it. Then I take a chair and sit down at the end of the hallway to watch him clean.


Should I really have to do that? No. That's bullshit, and I gotta deal with this kid. Let's not even mention (or let's, actually, since I'm writing it) that I ask him questions three or four times and he doesn't even answer, which is outright disrespect, his little "lone wolf" game is exactly what we don't need in an environment that requires communication and teamwork.


After talking with a senior member who held a class about approaching and interacting with cadets when they aren't subordinate or when they are having problems, I started to think I was perhaps approaching Capt. Lecter in a manner that was too authoritative and abrasive. After all, I was frustrated with him. So, I decided to go at him nice and easy, asking him simple questions like what his favorite color was and all that, just as simple, goofy conversation. He didn't really answer any of them. I told him that I want to be able to work with him so if there was anything I could do to facilitate a good relationship between the both of us, he could tell me. He nodded. Again, didn't say anything, but I think it was a step.


I can't wait to work with this pain in the ass. How he managed to rank up to Captain is beyond me.


Then there's Lieutenant Loudmouth. I met Lt. Loudmouth at Staff Selection Day, which was the day where those who applied for Encampment positions got to try to prove they were worth them. Overall, Loudmouth is a funny guy, but he is ten times more irritating than he is worthwhile. He's actually the guy from a previous post who said he had a Harley, but it was actually his father's.


Well this guy is definitely a class clown type, but he's hardly funny most of the time. He can make some really good cracks, but often he's just trying to seek attention. He likes to sing cliche, overused tunes like "Don't Stop Believing" or "Another Brick in the Wall" to try to seem funny, even though he doesn't know any of the lyrics usually. He's also very insulting. He missed the night of Staff Training Weekend because he was at prom but texted me as a joke that he was kicked out of Civil Air Patrol. I wish he was.


He shows up the next morning and they first thing he says to me is, "I wasn't kicked out ya dumbass," like that's some kind of funny thing to say. Fuck you, asshole. Then he starts going after me because I ask if anyone has any moisturizer because my face is dry. Look motherfucker, my face is dry, it's uncomfortable, and I use moisturizer to make that go away. There's nothing feminine or gay about it, and even if there was, I don't care, I don't like having a dry face.


I learn later that he is going to be a Flight Commander at Encampment, the exact position I wanted. That's bullshit. A staff member from Administration tells me he was a Flight Sergeant one year and did horribly. That gives me some comfort, knowing I'd probably do better than him. I just wish I had gotten his job.


Oh well. At least pretty much everyone else on staff this year seems alright.