Paperwork

Today's grand accomplishments involved paperwork.

I resubmitted supply paperwork with the proper signatures. Now it can be passed around, signed by more people, and then hopefully passed to the guy with the purchasing authority.

I foolishly thought I'd have the equipment in hand by now when I was told it would be no problem a few weeks ago. Now I'll be lucky if we have it before I leave.

This led to a bunch of us complaining about the silly supply and budget bureaucracies in the military. You can use this ammo, but not that ammo because that ammo was purchased from a different type of funds. You can buy this more expensive jacket with these funds, but not the cheaper just as effective one because it's part of a different program that needs different funds.

It's a dark art.

I'm still waiting for the paperwork to get bounced back to me again because something isn't right. Which would be mildly amusing because I've had two different supply guys look over my shoulder while I filled it out, and the guy who would be bouncing it back this time is one of those two.

I also re-learned that valuable lesson of always going to the man who is actually in charge and not the man formally in charge. In most military organizations, that is the operations senior NCO. He will tell you who to go to and tell the boss if it is something that must be done.

One of my projects got stalled waiting in the operations officer's inbox. I forwarded it to the NCO.

Then magic happpened.

I am pretty confident that the NCOs get more crap dumped on them and more junk filling their inboxes than the officers they shelter. But they seem to get through it all a lot faster.

Generally speaking, any positive adjective used to describe an officer is really a description of the NCOs working damn hard to make that officer look good.

Not that there aren't some true winners in the NCO corps. Just like there are some complete morons earning officer pay... the jury still being out on this one.

But as a whole, if an officer can provide the necessary top cover, command direction, and then get out of the way... the NCOs will get the job done, and do it well.

Which I guess brings me back around to the supply NCOs I've been working with. Most of my problems are probably the result of not being as smart as I should be on their voodoo. Yes, a weatherman just called someone else's job voodoo. They definitely know their stuff, manage multiple systems, and none of them have been arrested to the best of my knowledge.

Still, I want my stuff.

And in my world, an easy purchase involved going to a store or website, throwing something in my cart, and checking out. It doesn't involve a staffing sheet that needs the commanders of multiple sections to sign it. It doesn't involve writing a justification memo for yet another person to sign. And it definitely doesn't involve doing that all twice.

And so I complained about supply.

But all is forgiven because they manange to maintain an endless supply of cookies 'n cream.