I frequently go to the Stripes website and read the Letters to the Editor section just to get a feel for what sort of things our troops are thinking and talking about. A few weeks ago, some of the people serving in Iraq started writing about the visits that celebrities make in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mostly, they were complaining that the contractors that are working there with them get in the front of the line to receive "goodies" that the celebrities bring along with them. For example, a pro baseball player might bring along some ball caps from his team. The chief complaint was that these should be reserved for the troops. In any case, there are almost daily letters in the pages of Stripes from our troops and from the contractors. Most, but not all, of the letters from the troops complain about civilian contractors. On the flip side, most, but not all, of the letters from the contractors point out the valuable services they provide for the troops.
Reading this has reminded me of a few of the experiences that I have had working alongside civilians while I was in the navy. Most of the people that I worked with on the waterfront were pretty good people, particularly while I was at Trident Refit Facility, Bangor (prior to the conversion to NRMD).
In fact, the only really bad experiences that I had were with civilians working in Personnel Support. When I transferred to Bangor, I had only 18 months or so remaining on my enlistment contract. My experience on my first boat had turned me against the navy and I was definitely looking forward to getting out of the club. Although my experiences on my second boat later changed my mind about the navy, my first day on Bangor only served to reinforce the anti-navy feelings that had been nurtured in me during my first sea tour.
The first person on the base that I talked to was a civilian at PSD. I sat down at his desk and he handed me a pile of paperwork and a pen and pointed to a table across the room for me to sit at and fill it out. Not a "Hello" or "Welcome Aboard", just a stack of papers, a pen, and a finger extended across the room. While I was filling out paperwork, I came across one that was a voluntary extension of service. I did not fill this out. I finished all of the other papers and took them back to him. He thumbed through them and noticed that I had not willingly signed away another 6 months of my life.
He put the voluntary extension in front of me and told me that I needed to fill this out. Those were the first words that he spoke to me. I refused. He said I can't refuse because I had accepted orders that required a 24 month commitment. I said I won't do it. He said I had to. I said that he wanted me to fill out a voluntary extension and that if I HAD to fill it out, it was INVOLUNTARY.
Next, he threatened to send me back to my previous command. I told him to go ahead and do that if he wanted to. Of course, I knew at the time that I had been one of the last five people to leave my last boat after we decommissioned it. I didn't think he would be successful in sending me back. I was right. He contacted me a few weeks later and told me that he would send me to another fast attack. I told him to go ahead and do that if he wanted to. In the end, I was assigned to the Trident submarine that I was supposed to be assigned to and no mention of an extension of service came up until more than a year later, when I decided to reenlist.
This left me with a pretty bad feeling about civilians working in support roles. Another bad one that happened at Bangor was actually just a few weeks before the one that I just described. I was on the crew that accompanied the boat that we had decommissioned from Mare Island Naval Shipyard to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. No facilities were available for us to sleep that evening so we were taken out to Bangor to get put up in the barracks there.
We got there at about 11 p.m. with strict orders to be checked out of the room and waiting for the COB at 5 a.m. to take us to PSNS in the morning. I went to my room, put the sheets on the bed and slept until about 4 a.m. Then I got up, took a shower, shaved, got dressed and went to check out of the room. The room that I had been put up in was occupied by a sailor that was permanently stationed at Bangor and it was pretty dirty. Toilet and shower were filthy, junk laying all over the room, big dust-bunnies lurking in the corners, and generally dirty. When I went to check out, they took my information and asked me to have a seat, along with all of the other sailors from my boat. They came back in a few minutes with a large list of items that we needed to complete before we could check out. My list included scrubbing the toilet, scrubbing the shower, sweeping and waxing the deck, cleaning up all the junk the other guy left in the room, making his rack with clean sheets, and other stuff to bring the room up to satisfactory conditions. All of the guys from my boat were given similar lists.
We wasted about two hours that morning arguing with the clerks working at the desk. Our thoughts were that we had spent less than six hours in the rooms and they could kiss our collective asses if they thought we were going to do their cleaning for them. Our COB came in and gave us some support, but it was not enough to release us. After we were about two hours late to the boat at PSNS, the Captain came in, found out what was going on, and extricated us from the situation.
Several years later, I found the support to be much better. When I checked into a boat at Pearl Harbor, a civilian clerk was fantastic. Minimal paperwork, friendly attitude, calls to the barracks to ensure that I was put up in the barracks, information about the area and off-base housing, and no pay problems. I don't know if I was just unlucky the first time, if the difference between me being an E-5 and E-6 was that big (I doubt it as E-6 is nothing special), or just that customer service was being taken much more seriously.
In the end, I am generally supportive of civilian in support positions. I just want them to remember that a civilian doesn't outrank a military member, no matter how low on the totem pole that enlisted guy is. I want them to treat military members with respect and would expect the military members to reciprocate.
Reading this has reminded me of a few of the experiences that I have had working alongside civilians while I was in the navy. Most of the people that I worked with on the waterfront were pretty good people, particularly while I was at Trident Refit Facility, Bangor (prior to the conversion to NRMD).
In fact, the only really bad experiences that I had were with civilians working in Personnel Support. When I transferred to Bangor, I had only 18 months or so remaining on my enlistment contract. My experience on my first boat had turned me against the navy and I was definitely looking forward to getting out of the club. Although my experiences on my second boat later changed my mind about the navy, my first day on Bangor only served to reinforce the anti-navy feelings that had been nurtured in me during my first sea tour.
The first person on the base that I talked to was a civilian at PSD. I sat down at his desk and he handed me a pile of paperwork and a pen and pointed to a table across the room for me to sit at and fill it out. Not a "Hello" or "Welcome Aboard", just a stack of papers, a pen, and a finger extended across the room. While I was filling out paperwork, I came across one that was a voluntary extension of service. I did not fill this out. I finished all of the other papers and took them back to him. He thumbed through them and noticed that I had not willingly signed away another 6 months of my life.
He put the voluntary extension in front of me and told me that I needed to fill this out. Those were the first words that he spoke to me. I refused. He said I can't refuse because I had accepted orders that required a 24 month commitment. I said I won't do it. He said I had to. I said that he wanted me to fill out a voluntary extension and that if I HAD to fill it out, it was INVOLUNTARY.
Next, he threatened to send me back to my previous command. I told him to go ahead and do that if he wanted to. Of course, I knew at the time that I had been one of the last five people to leave my last boat after we decommissioned it. I didn't think he would be successful in sending me back. I was right. He contacted me a few weeks later and told me that he would send me to another fast attack. I told him to go ahead and do that if he wanted to. In the end, I was assigned to the Trident submarine that I was supposed to be assigned to and no mention of an extension of service came up until more than a year later, when I decided to reenlist.
This left me with a pretty bad feeling about civilians working in support roles. Another bad one that happened at Bangor was actually just a few weeks before the one that I just described. I was on the crew that accompanied the boat that we had decommissioned from Mare Island Naval Shipyard to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. No facilities were available for us to sleep that evening so we were taken out to Bangor to get put up in the barracks there.
We got there at about 11 p.m. with strict orders to be checked out of the room and waiting for the COB at 5 a.m. to take us to PSNS in the morning. I went to my room, put the sheets on the bed and slept until about 4 a.m. Then I got up, took a shower, shaved, got dressed and went to check out of the room. The room that I had been put up in was occupied by a sailor that was permanently stationed at Bangor and it was pretty dirty. Toilet and shower were filthy, junk laying all over the room, big dust-bunnies lurking in the corners, and generally dirty. When I went to check out, they took my information and asked me to have a seat, along with all of the other sailors from my boat. They came back in a few minutes with a large list of items that we needed to complete before we could check out. My list included scrubbing the toilet, scrubbing the shower, sweeping and waxing the deck, cleaning up all the junk the other guy left in the room, making his rack with clean sheets, and other stuff to bring the room up to satisfactory conditions. All of the guys from my boat were given similar lists.
We wasted about two hours that morning arguing with the clerks working at the desk. Our thoughts were that we had spent less than six hours in the rooms and they could kiss our collective asses if they thought we were going to do their cleaning for them. Our COB came in and gave us some support, but it was not enough to release us. After we were about two hours late to the boat at PSNS, the Captain came in, found out what was going on, and extricated us from the situation.
Several years later, I found the support to be much better. When I checked into a boat at Pearl Harbor, a civilian clerk was fantastic. Minimal paperwork, friendly attitude, calls to the barracks to ensure that I was put up in the barracks, information about the area and off-base housing, and no pay problems. I don't know if I was just unlucky the first time, if the difference between me being an E-5 and E-6 was that big (I doubt it as E-6 is nothing special), or just that customer service was being taken much more seriously.
In the end, I am generally supportive of civilian in support positions. I just want them to remember that a civilian doesn't outrank a military member, no matter how low on the totem pole that enlisted guy is. I want them to treat military members with respect and would expect the military members to reciprocate.
4 comments:
Similar experiences here, and PSD Pearl was a joke...you got lucky, I was stationed there 11 years and they rarely got anything right.
In nuke school, we were checking into the NNPS barracks (after our leave following "A" school). I was given a form to fill out, one block (with a checkmark) said "I voluntary accept substandard/inadequate quarters". I didn't check the box. I was given back the form, told I "had to check the box". I asked why, when it clearly said "voluntary". The clerk got pissed, told me that if I wanted a barracks room I had to check the box. I replied that I did not voluntarily accept something substandard...and was told I would have nowhere to live unless I checked the box. So I lined out "voluntarily", initialed it, wrote in "involuntarily", checked the box, and added a note in the comments stating that I was forced to check the box on threat of not being allowed quarters. Clerk gets REALLY angry, calls in a Master Chief, who proceeds to chew me out for being a smartass. When he asks for my "excuse", I point out that nuke training emphasized integrity above all else...he looked puzzled, then I pointed out that, had I checked the box, I would have been lying (as it was not voluntary, it was mandatory). I would not check the box unless I either a) had a choice or b) had the ability to correct the erroneous statement. He then (being a nuke at a nuke training facility) gave in and allowed my statement to stand (and I still got inadequate quarters).
I once had a 5 day dispute with a civilian PSD clerk about SRB...he was mad that I would not sign a form, though I pointed out several times that his calculations were wrong (to the tune of $11,000). Had I signed it, I'd have been out that $11 grand. Took getting my CO involved to fix him, and afterward he was pissed at me for getting him in the shits...despite the fact that I politely pointed out nearly a week before the problem (it was an easy fix, would have taken about 5 minutes).
Had a civilian screw up "fixing" the doorknob in the barracks for one of my sailors when I was an LPO. Guy gets home after a duty day and VERY late day after (got to his room about 2230), his key doesn't work. We were in the yard, no berthing aboard ship...where was he to go for the weekend? The civilians running the barracks said they'd get to it Monday morning (he had duty again on Monday), didn't give a damn about him being locked out of his home for an entire weekend. But they sure were pissed when we forced the door, replaced the knob/lock (Home Depot), and our COB billed them for the hardware...and then made them fix it again the next week.
We pulled in to Pearl once (our home port), the guy running the crane (shipyard civilian) landed the personnel brow, then went to lunch (with the crane keys in his pocket)...without landing the shore power brow (before they had the booms installed on the piers). He then called his supervisor and took the rest of the day off...WITH the keys in his pocket. The crane was left with outriggers out/down/locked, they couldn't find the spare keys, couldn't tow it out of the way, and when they called him his response..."I'll be in at 0630, I'll take care of it then". Nukes got to steam until the skipper personally called him and managed to convince him that a submarine CO could probably get him fired if he kept being a jackass. Shutdown finished at around 2100, maneuvering watch was secured around 1400...about 4 hours of steaming we didn't need to do. Of course we all got to be back at normal time the next morning...
Fun times...
My first experience with Navy contractors was back when they decided to shift the tug boat crews and crane operators in Groton from Navy guys to contractors.
We spent a full month at sea doing exercises and some testing down at AUTEC. We were supposed to return to Groton on Friday, 14 Feb - Valentine's Day AND the beginning of a 3 day President's Day weekend. The Rec Committee put in a big order of roses for us so we could all give roses to our sweethearts on Valentine's Day when we pulled back into port.
We got delayed on AUTEC by one day and didn't make it back to the NBOA's until Saturday morning.
The powers that be decided they would not pay the overtime for the tug boat crews or the crane operators to come in on a Saturday for us to return to port. So we plowed circles in the North Atlantic for the duration of our 3 day weekend. (Did I mention we had been out at sea for a month already?) Tuesday morning, we pulled into port and immediately commenced upkeep. Talk about a huge blow to morale on board. Man that sucked.
WRT PSD, I've found a lot of PSD folks operate on tribal knowledge, not book knowledge or looking-up actual requirements or entitlements.
We had a crew-information night to put gouge out to everyone about our upcoming change of homeport when EVERYBODY would be moving all at once. We had reps from PSD, personal property, housing, the vehicle processing center, etc all come to talk to us about what we needed to do and what we were entitled to.
The PSD civilian lady got up there and just spewed total nonsensical and completely false GARBAGE. Luckily, I had the pertinent references with me in hand, and I was able to deflect a lot of flaming barbed arrows from the wives in the crowd by saying, "No, Ma'am, you're WRONG, here's what the MILPERSMAN / Enlisted Transfer Manual / Submarine Personnel Manual say in black and white."
Staffing crane operators requires attention to detail, work ethic, training, and pre work history. Construction Staffing companies specialize in Crane Operator Staffing for the commercial and industrial construction industry and recently for solar power industries.
Sadly, lots of lives have been lost in crane accidents lately. Certifications are becoming more stringent and rightly so, the focus on training is essential to the safety of the job and the life of the crane operator.
Crane Operator Staffing is a service of Grus Construction Personnel. Grus employees NCCER and NCCCO certified crane operators with proven work history and a clean work ethic.
The equipment in most of these accidents is the cause of the loss of life. Contractors must take necessary measure to inspect heavy equipment in much the same way as a pilot does a walk around of his aircraft before flight. A checklist should be used and standards for the inspection need to be developed. A walk around should be done before the day begins and before the equipment is stopped and started for any duration of time; lunch, pee break, all START and STOP actions should demand a walk around.
Crane Operator Staffing can be accomplished safely by following the exacting standards of OSHA, NCCCO, and other like minded peoples, groups, and organization.
http://www.gruspersonnel.com
Post a Comment