Perfect snapshot of what it’s like working in the military
When someone asks, “What’s the military like?”, you can now point to this memo. What you see above is from a senior master sergeant (E-8) in the US Air Force. He/she is the Operations Superintendent for the 379th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron. They’re at some deployed location and the Senior here decided to clear the air and direct his NCOs on how he’d like things run. No problem, right? Well, some of the things they demand they violate in their own memo.
Under bullet “g.”; “Paperwork, specifically [letters of evaluation] and decorations, are expected to be flawless before upchanneling from your flight. Spellcheck and the Dec Writing Guide must be used.”
Notwithstanding “upchanneling” isn’t a word, in the very next bullet the senior NCO says; “Airmen arrive on-time to all appointment.”
Task & Purpose reports on this and notes other errors;
Besides that error, the letter also has a few misplaced apostrophes, such as “most likely scenario’s that may take place,” and two instances of “LOE’s,” where it should read LOEs.
Other errors include “When it doubt, ask,” and “see my personally,” and a few instances where the subject does not agree with its pronoun or indefinite article. For example, the senior master sergeant wrote “an airmen” where it should read “an airman,” since airman is singular and airmen is plural.
In the next sentence, the senior master sergeant writes “that airmen” where it should either read “those airmen” or that airman” depending on whether the senior master sergeant wants the subject to be singular or plural. It’s unclear based on the way the sentence is written now.
…
“Airmen only know what they see occur on flight, peer input, and technical training,” the senior master sergeant wrote. “An Airmen [sic] who is not competent or excellent at their corresponding level of knowledge of their post … is a direct reflection of their chain of command.”
You can’t make this up.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Air Force
Remember when the buzz word on the school systems was “Why can’t Johnny (read Quentavious) read”? Punk can’t spell either. Did the spapos seagulled major moonbat write that? 😆
Most of here, when commenting, have had typos, grammatical, structure, or syntax errors. It happens. ’bout the only perfect one might be OAM, but then again, that one has her “stuff” together. Way back yonder, my busynezz perfersser (sic) in collage (sic) would count off a full letter grade for each misspelled word, or other errors in our practice “this is going out into the public or to someone else” letters. And yes, it became part of your final grade for the course. Proofreading and a dictionary became my best friend.
What’s worse, someone this Senior putting out a piss poor quality of work, or them signing their name to something they had done for them? And with most of this kinda stuff being done on a ‘putor these days, the auto corrupt/edit functions on most machines will nudge you when something doesn’t look just right. One thing to be uneducated…anothing thing to be stoopid. Dumbazz!
Autocorrect is digital tyranny.
Machine proofing is very fallible, too. Too-to-two, there-they’re-their, all spelled correctly but not interchangeable. Apostrophes? Don’t go there.
Not to nitpick, but the style manual says the the end quote (“) always goes after the punctuation mark, unless ol’ perfessor E.B. White got it wrong.
Unchannel?
Be careful what you ask for.
I see night shift manager at a newly opened
Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in his future.
Of course, if anyone E-4 or below points out the error, there will be trouble.
I remember making fun of the following sign homemade sign posted one morning at the mess hall during BASIC:
DO TO DRY CEREAL SHORTAGE AT TESA, TAKE ONE BOX.
Granted, I was in BASIC so I should have kept my mouth shut, but I did share my observation with a fellow trainee that even mess sergeants should have gone to high school. One of our sainted drill sergeants overheard my observation, and I received some on-the-spot “correction” (a minor smoking but no further punishment).
Totally worth it in this case.
The most misspelled thing in the Army is “Dinning Facility” with “Portable Water” a close second.
I received blueprints for my house direct from the architect that included a ‘Dinning Room’.
The most misspelled thing in the Air Force is the big building that aircraft are parked in 😐.
I’m an Air Force brat. I never understood that word as a kid. Had visions of a big building with B-52’s dangling by their noses, like a big closet full of airplanes.
Favorite Basic Story was day one: Technical Instructor is chewing some guy out royally as I’m standing at attention with the rest of the flight, when suddenly his face in in front of mine “Can’t you hear me Boy!” I respond, “Sorry Sergeant, I just can’t understand you!” He cracked a smile, and proceeded to yell every command right into my ear. Never missed another one. Thank you SSgt Hartman.
During my AD days, I had a functionally illiterate Squad Leader who would write monthly counseling statements that read like “”SPC Infidel you do good bootsbut beter [sic] unifrom” and he was an NCO! Given how that high schools colleges these days primarily want to politically indoctrinate instead of teaching, it doesn’t surprise me.
When Hack Stone was at 1st Tracked Vehicle Battalion, the Company Office has a folder of “extention forms” for the Jarheads who didn’t want to leave Camp Schwab. 1st Tracks also had the Company Gunny who told a wiredog that he failed the PFT because his chin was not paralyzed to the bar.
I promise you, if someone came to this E-8 and tried to make use of line 2A, they would be yelled at and would be called stupid for not knowing “X” and for even asking. Just a feeling.
On first review, I don’t disagree with much in the memo. I learned long ago not to expect grammatical perfection in army correspondence. Yet, if this had my signature block on it, it would be going back for significant editing before I signed it. Many years back I almost, but did not, put a sign on my wall that said “what you put in my inbox is a reflection of you. What I put in my outbox is a reflection of me.”
A Sergeant is never wrong
He may be inexact, fickle, bullheaded, and even wrong
But
Never wrong!
I still remember that one the day room wall in C-2-502 INF….
and I still laugh every time I think of it.
second line should read
“abnormally stupid” instead of wrong
had to go find the original wording..LOL
I saw a version of that in a hangar at an RAF base in northern Germany.
This post reminds Hack Stone of a senior executive formerly in the employ of All Points Logistics who would come onto this blog and remind all of us Adorable Deplorables how intellectually superior he was to us by posting comments that were littered with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. He had the only computer in the Western Hemisphere that did not have auto correct.
Greengrocer’s plurals and Oxford comma abuse in a memo telling us to write gooder. Yup, livin’ the dream!
Poor grammar is a long-standing military tradition.
I’m SO glad I have my DD-214!
“An Airmen [sic] who is not competent or excellent at their corresponding level of knowledge of their post … is a direct reflection of their chain of command.”
“I understand Senior Chief. You think I goofed up. But after all, I am a direct reflection of my chain of command.”
My intro to military spelling and grammer was in boot camp in 78. We’re in this room (still in our civilian clothes) getting processed. The career E-3 in front of everyone is telling us to put all our civilian stuff in a cardboard box for storage.
If we didn’t have any civie items to place in the box, then write the letters “MT” on the side. I raise my hand and ask “what does MT mean?” He looks at me and screams “ it means the box is EMPTY!!!”.
And so the adventure began.
Reminds me of my brother telling me about a drill sergeant yelling at him asking if he was “highly motivated and highly delegated.” My brother didn’t know how to answer that so he got a smoking. The same DS told him that his face should be “highly shaved.” Wouldn’t that mean that it wouldn’t be a close shave?
Try going from a submarine where QA packages were rejected for punctuation or references in error, to a command (tender) where the CMC (Command Master Chief) had to practice reading award letters written at a fourth grade level and STILL screwed it up, along with a Safety Officer who used more made-up words than Don King.
Yeah, CCTV on Friday mornings was more entertaining than Ren and Stimpy.
Long ago in a galaxy far far away I got a lesson in never say never that has stuck with me. Up front I’ll state I only made it part way through pilot training as the USAF and I had different standards as to what constituted am acceptable landing. Apparently shiny side up rubber side down that everyone walked away from and the plane still could fly wasn’t quite up to snuff. So I had to spend my remaining time aviating at the mercy of someone else landings. While at UPT in those days we learned to fly in T-37s which were equipped with an ejection seat. One of the nn-nos was to fail to install the seat pins safing the ejection mechanism after flying before departing the aircraft. The standard penalty for doing so was a public shaming and having to buy the crew chief a case of beer for the first offense. A friend of mine who was also a college classmate was the first in my class to accomplish this fete. While the vast majority of us were second Lieutenants we had a sprinkling of 1 Lts and Captains. A typical week at UPT in those days was 12 hr days Mon – Friday and a couple hours of group study on Sunday afternoon. About a week after my buddy sinned at our Sunday study session one of our Capts felt it necessary to give a lecture in Airmanship and checklist discipline, and using my buddy as an example he said he would never make that mistake as he religously opened the checklist and followed the after engine shutdown checklist. The following week we were on early week that started with a simulator hop before the crack of dawn and one or two flights before lunch. After lunch we were in Academics for a couple hours. We had been in class for about 10 minutes when there was a knock on the door. It was our class commander and he asked for Captain M. He then had the good Captain check his flight suit pockets and retrieve… Read more »
Mustang Major said:
Poor grammar is a long-standing military tradition.
100% on this.
One of my first duty stations, HHC 1st AD in Germany, the “Barracks policy letter” (drafted by the 1SG and signed by the Commander) stated that we were not allowed to post any “obscene” photos on our barracks walls, where “obscene” was defined as “any photo that depicts public hair or gentials.” (that’s the exact spelling.)
Same unit, weapons cleaning area adjacent to the arms room had a sign posted that instructed soldiers using the cleaning tables to “put all cleaning supplies back in the draws.”
1997, getting ready to deploy to the Former Yugoslavia (Operation Joint Guard) we were doing our mobilization training at Fort Benning, GA (for my fellow old-timers, this was in the old NCO Academy area in Harmony Church, now long gone.) It was August, so it was blistering hot. In the mess hall (sorry, “DINNING FACILITY”) there was a purple juice. Hand written sign on the juice read “Electric Light Drink.”
It took me at least a minute to realize they meant “Electrolyte drink” AKA Gatorade.