I have mentioned my roommate before. Sgt. Nickey Smith joined Echo Company with a dozen other guys from Connecticut at the beginning of the deployment at Fort Sill. All the other CT guys in our company are fuelers and have mostly been assigned to remote bases to refuel aircraft. Nickey was the only CT guy assigned to the motor pool. And from his first day he was put in the squad with the squad leader who was already showing signs of being overwhelmed at Fort Sill. More and more as training progressed, Nickey found himself in charge of a team and picking up the slack as his squad leader fell apart. Shortly after we arrived in Iraq, Nickey got assigned to as the maintenance sergeant at one of the fueling bases. Life is a lot more Spartan on these bases, but one of Nickey's best friends was there and he was away from the drama of his squad. He was very happy to go and not so happy to be back.
When he got back, his squad leader fell apart completely and was assigned to another company doing and enlisted man's job. Nickey took over as squad leader and as a maintenance team leader. For a while he was the only sergeant double assigned that way.
Despite all this, he was rated as just average when he got his NCOER (NCO evaluation report). When many other sergeants, myself included, took jobs at battalion or somewhere else, Nickey stayed in the motor pool, worked at a job a pay grade above his own, and did everything necessary to continue the mission. When the PT Test loomed before us, and the maintenance soldiers had to report to the motor pool at 0600, Nickey was getting up at 0300 to work out at least three days per week.
Two nights ago when I came back from my work he was sitting on his bed surrounded by papers making sure all of his squad got good evaluations for the work they did here in Iraq. Earlier in the year he made sure they got awards when that ball had been dropped by his predecessor.
Nickey fits no definition of average. I encouraged him to appeal his NCOER. He was told it was too late and he would have to wait until we return to America. Nickey deserves better. There's a lot of things I will miss about my year in the Army when I return to civilian life, but I won't miss the way paperwork crushes reality.
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It goes the other way too sometimes, people who don't deserve it get fantastic paperwork.
ReplyDeleteSargent: I know what you do in the army and have a clue of your civilian work but paperwork crushes reality everywhere and no where as much as in the nursing (other medical specialties as well) profession. I always say that the patient is long dead but the paperwork lives forever and some nitwit - usually lawyer or state inspector - will pour over it with a fine tooth comb. I feel horrible when the paperwork is more important than the living, breathing, ill and needy human being. We hear documentation, documentation, documentation all day long. A nurse can never touch a patient but if she or he documents that something was done - it is as if it was. I hate it. Thank you for all of your hard work - you had better make sure that those aircrafts are actually fixed - not just documented as fixed. Take care and hope you get home without too many hitches. I have read some doozies of redeployment woes. lorraine
ReplyDeleteThe Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 12/28/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
ReplyDeleteThere's a wonderful book that deals with this if you want depressing reading:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Putts-Law-Successful-Technocrat-Information/dp/0471714224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288810722&sr=8-1
It distills down to, "you must fail at some level in order to be promoted since failure involves your command in developing your success."
The best advice to give him from the situation you described is to get his superiors involved in the problem rather than being such a great person. This may cause problems with his ability to sleep at night though.
At my last job I had the best bug status in the whole company. In fact, it was record setting. However I was seen as not "engaging" with others and that was enough to land me on the lay off list. My boss gave me this shortly before the layoff and actually asked that I fail more. It was one of the most depressing meetings I've ever been in.