| >> | 1612505958117.jpg -(46330B / 45.24KB, 800x550) Thumbnail displayed, click image for full size. ![]() >>538056
>so the blame might more easily fall to you,
I think you misunderstand. I'm not being blamed for his being shit, other people in the section just acknowledged his shittiness before I did.
I'm not in any trouble. The trouble is from within, it's that I feel both like I'm failing this kid for being a poor trainer but also I'm frustrated that I've been given someone who is nowhere close to the standard I was at when I started out. But let me reiterate that I'm not in trouble or anything; I was trying to illustrate that the people above me were talking shit more freely and more of it than me. But not about me. About this lil' pvt. dood. (which is all 100% warranted so far, kid is a shit-ass zoomer)
>if this person has been in the military for a while and still doesn't get it.
I haven't asked too many personal questions but afaik he's regular force (as opposed to being a reservist) which means he's not been in for very long if he's still a private-equivalent and just got off his trades course.
Though that should mean he's freshly off of boarding school like environments where he's expected to be in tip-top shape despite commuting through snowstorms or tromping around in the bush. Wearing shiny parade boots and a well-formed beret with your work clothes, ironing razor-sharp creases in, that kinda thing. It's expected that new guys are, if anything, OVERLY formal and dressy but are utterly clueless. Without getting too much into it, this kid obviously lacks that. Dress and deportment are one thing, but there's a certain lack of caring and drive; like he's treating it like being in Cadets (the youth program) when at the end of the day, he's getting paid for his time. He's as clueless as any other OD/Sailor 3nd Class/Private, but even about simple things that they used to check for even at the recruiting centre, and doesn't have the benefit of the sharp professionalism they're supposed to instill at basic and on your first trade course.
For example, again, this kid was introduced to me as "a programmer" on his first day after his first meetings with the others before I met him. I joked that he's going to give me a run for my money as the local wannabe hacker. I've since seen that he didn't even know how to copy/paste without right-clicking and going through the context menu. When I put my application in, I put down what are essentially sea infantry, engineer, or radar operator (Bosn, MESO, or NCIOP) on my application as my top choices of trade, and drew the nerdy IT/signals/"information management" type trade instead because on my cover letter and CV I said I do light scripting and was in a robotics club. Meanwhile, this kid is here and can barely operate a computer. [/i]He had never even heard of Internet Explorer before. IE may be a laughable shitshow but it's not THAT old. (by contrast, the modern Microsoft internet browser only useful for downloading other browsers is MS Edge, which went gold only in 2015)
Though also now that I think about it, I may be taking it a bit personally; the kid is indeed shit and my coworkers and boss resolved to that before I did, but they did introduce him as programmer; in response he said something about just scripting in roblox and I figured it's actually fairly ideal. I don't discriminate on that front of nerding; I got my start in GMod through Expression2 shenanigans, and the best friends I've made have irl have invariably been similar "Building Game" nerds that emulate actual programming and engineering. Our trade is heading away from Master And Commander bullshit towards IT/IW too. It's an ideal start before SysAdmin crap that mostly shakes out to shell scripting to automate the boring bits and schmoozing to get administrative stuff pushed through. I saw a bit of myself in him and I guess I got let down that he's not so eager to learn and prove his worth (or even is just not so desperate) as I was when I first joined the fleet. It's especially frustrating that he's not good at the parts of his job that we can objectively say he should know based on the courses he is listed as passing. That he's so utterly incapable of doing basic gopher shit is just even worse. Kid doesn't even carry a pen. Forget the military, one of the first things my dad taught me was to always carry a pen, in case you need to take notes on something. On anything. Then at basic, it's however many push-ups for not producing a pen and pad when you have orders to take more complicated than "fix your collar".
I'm very tempted to painstakingly explain to him what a Prinny is, that he is one, and needs to appreciate as much.
A Prinny is a uselsss soul of some human sent to go be a penguin in hell, in the hope that they develop some skills and spirit and ascend to something better. Usually, they stay useless and become the vassals of their humanoid (if cruel) betters. Best case is eventually leaving hell and reincarnating somewhere else as a better thing, but many end up staying and either taking up a more powerful form or growing fond of the life and finding fulfillment in newfound worth.
In-game, they're middle-of-the-road units with poor stat growth, but they explode when thrown, so you can just throw them at a problem enemy to get that problem off your plate for the damage you'd have taken anyway. Very much throwaway units at first. But with nurturing, they can become hilariously powerful since they're not locked out of any skills, have access to versatile abilities, and seem to get help on attacks very easily (There's a group bonus free action attack mechanic mostly based on being adjacent to units they're similar to they've fought with before, but prinnies ignore unit type differences in those calculations and are generally likelier to trigger) but only once pretty high leveled. A very good metaphor for the unending struggle of man, y'know? Most of us start at the bottom as useless spirits not even good enough to go wandering, struggling like penguins in hell, and the solution is to strive and either make hell your heaven or git gud enough to get out and do better elsewhere.
Anyway, unlike those Pvt. Prinnies, we've thrown this new guy at simple problems, but still have to confirm our kills made that way, so to speak. Even with careful guidance and detailed instructions, he fucks up very simple tasks and doesn't seem to learn from mistakes or mentoring. He can't even draw or return keys (literal keys for literal locks on literal doors) without us hearing about him being rude to the Officer of the Day or saying he's turned them over to "Some Guy" without even providing a name (or whether or not it's even a fellow sailor!). He's abandoned secure spaces full of classified shit, even. I hate to be one of those BACK IN MY DAY types but the first thing they taught me even at basic was "You're responsible for a lot of controlled shit. Leave it unsupervised or unlocked and, believe it or not, JAIL.". The most common punishment at basic training aside from push-ups is having to carry your heavy-ass locker everywhere because you couldn't be trusted to keep it locked.
Worst yet, he doesn't seem to understand his position as being objectively and literally a low-ranking new member of the force who, if he can't prove some kind of worth, will be thrown at problems no one else wants to deal with, and is much more liable to get charged or even go to Edmonton if he fucks up hard enough.
I also want to ask him if he has any dumb basic stories like I did. Blue-on-blue incidents, fucking shit up on his own initiative, and what he took away from the experience. I know I'm a fucked up guy, but I can safely say I've grown from my fuck-ups. I wonder if this kid has had any fuck-ups of his own, and if he's so blaise and casual because he's just not initiated into this kind of thing well, if he took away the wrong lessons, or has just been too comfy in life and doesn't have the same crackhead energy people at my rank and above have.
...Fuck. I'm feeling it. I can only hope it goes this way if I have a nice supervised talk with him;
> ...My throat hurts.
>Well done, Seaman. ...A bit crazed, but well done.
>Sorry. I got a bit carried away there.
>Believe it or not, emotion has a place on the battlefield. Kid, were you listening? You need to feel it. Maybe not the same way he does, but at least as much as he does.
On a lighter note,
>Fuck the troops
Please ~ <3 |
