{"id":33677,"date":"2013-01-19T06:30:46","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T10:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=33677"},"modified":"2013-01-19T12:31:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-19T16:31:10","slug":"military-bureaucracy-ya-gotta-love-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=33677","title":{"rendered":"Military Bureaucracy \u2013 Ya Gotta Love It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

All of us here at TAH probably have funny stories about run-arounds, SNAFUs, and the like involving military bureaucracy or paperwork.\u00a0 So it occurred to me that posting an article on the subject and inviting comments from TAH’s readers might be worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019m posting the article, I guess that means I’m “on the hook” for the first such story.\u00a0 Fair enough; here goes.<\/p>\n

Each service has its own admin practices and procedures.\u00a0 Most of the time, they actually work fairly well.<\/p>\n

Even the Army\u2019s orders process generally works \u2013 though like a dancing bear, it often does so somewhat less than gracefully.\u00a0 Once it took 3 tries for DA to slide a reporting date of mine 30 days \u201cto the right\u201d (later).\u00a0\u00a0 I guess that change must have had the same clerk-typist processing it that had trouble spelling \u201cFort Rucker\u201d in this article<\/a>.\u00a0 (smile)<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the funniest admin SNAFU that ever happened to me personally.<\/p>\n

In 2007-2008, I was ordered back to active duty for a tour in the CENTCOM AOR.\u00a0 I spent virtually all of that year serving in either Afghanistan or Iraq.<\/p>\n

During January 2008, my duty station was in Iraq \u2013 Baghdad, to be precise.\u00a0 Except for R&R, I’d been there since August and in theater since April.<\/p>\n

Well, in January 2008 I got the following amendment to the orders recalling me to active duty and sending me to the sandbox.\u00a0 It was sent to me at my home of record; my spouse forwarded me a copy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve redacted PII and a couple of other bits of info.\u00a0 Take a look at the text in the red box.\u00a0 (Click on the image to enlarge it.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep, you read that right.\u00a0 I\u2019m deployed to the sandbox, stationed in Baghdad and have been there for months, in the middle of a no-joke shooting war.\u00a0 And the Army sends me an amendment to my freaking orders\u00a0telling me I need to check in with Post billeting and reminding me that if I want to live “on the economy” I need a statement of nonavailability<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I got a really<\/em> good laugh out of that bit of bureaucratic idiocy.\u00a0 (smile)<\/p>\n

— — —<\/p>\n

OK, there have to be better stories than that out there.\u00a0 Fire away!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All of us here at TAH probably have funny stories about run-arounds, SNAFUs, and the like … Military Bureaucracy \u2013 Ya Gotta Love It!<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,121,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit","category-war-stories","category-who-knows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}