One of the Guys

As much as I love the structure of the military, it has its drawbacks. One of the structures in the military that I like the most is the rank structure—it allows everyone instant knowledge of who is senior to who, who renders a salute to whom, who can socialize with who, and a general understanding of what is required or entailed (in terms of demonstrated leadership, mission accomplishment, expertise, authority and responsibility) to achieve each specific rank. It is amazing how satisfying and stress reducing it is to wake up every morning knowing where you fit in the world, what you need to do to stay competitive with your peers, and how to act towards everyone else you interact with. There are plenty of people who are not successful in the military, rarely is it a case of these people not knowing what they needed to do or how they needed to act to be successful, it is usually a case of them deciding not to act in accordance with that knowledge.

That being said, the rank structure in the military is extremely annoying. Besides the fact that all the branches of the service should decide on one structure and one set of symbols so all the civilians, contractors, advisers, foreign military personnel, etc., could more easily figure the silver-is-senior-to-gold and stars-are-senior-to-oak-leaves things out, it is just tough to be ‘one of the guys.’ The best that one can attain to is ‘one of the non-commissioned officers (NCO’s),’ ‘one of the staff non-commissioned officers (SNCO’s),’ etc. Now that I have achieved a certain rank (mostly by the simple virtue of years of service), I can’t just ‘drop in’ on some folks with whom I have a professional relationship and see how things are going. They are doing the same thing I was doing twenty years ago, and in most cases doing it better, faster, and more efficiently, but they defer to me, call me ‘Sir,’ and generally make it clear that I am not ‘one of the guys.’ Not that I ever was—I guess that’s part of the problem, but also a topic for another blog…

Semper Fi, Jon G.