More Silly Bullshit

I haven't posted in a while, I know.  I've been pretty busy, and when I wasn't busy, I was lazy.  Plus nobody pays me for writing this shit, so lay off. Anyway, I decided to do something a little different with this one.  Sort of a photo-essay/bitch session thing.  

It's no secret that the military has a lot of weird rules.  When I first joined, I just accepted a lot of these seemingly arbitrary rules as a necessary evil, or thought that there must be a good reason for them that I was just too inexperienced to grasp.  But it's been more than 24 years now.  As I spend more and more time in the Marine Corps, the more I am becoming aware that there often isn't any good reason for the rules.  This is further aggravated by trying to explain to civilians why I behave the way I do sometimes.  Read the Monkeys, Menswear, and Marines post to get an idea of what I mean.  This time, I'm looking mostly at rules posted on signs, usually at places on base that are run by government-employed civilians.  I'm convinced most of them just come out of the minds of the hundreds of petty tyrants that our bureaucracy has produced, and ought to be eliminated.  To illustrate my points, I took a series of pictures at Camp Lejeune, NC and Quantico, VA.  These are actual snapshots taken with my cell phone.  Enjoy.

Above is an example of a good, logical rule.  This is at Onslow Beach in Lejeune.  I understand why this one exists.  I am in favor of it being enforced and I'm glad this sign is here.

Another example of some great advice being delivered in sign form.

Okay, this one seems like common sense to me, but still good advice.

Important thing to be aware of.

Not sure what we're supposed to do with this information, but it's good to know, I suppose.
(Full disclosure: I didn't take this picture.  I meant to go back and take one, but never got around to it.)

Now, let's get more negative.  The pictures below were taken after I spent a good 15 minutes driving all around the medical clinic at Quantico looking for a place to park so I could go in and get one of the many shots they are always making us get.  Lovely things, like bubonic plague, yellow fever, smallpox, and dozens of others I can't even recall.  If those conspiracy theorists are right, I'm due to catch autism any day now.  But back to my point: Reserved parking spaces for high ranking officers.

For those uninitiated in military lingo, an O-6 is a captain in the Navy or a colonel in the other services.  The "full bird" colonel it's called.

A "flag officer," as these signs are for, means you have to be a general or an admiral to park here.  There were six of these spaces in all.  How many colonels and generals are possibly going to go to this little medical clinic simultaneously?  Add these to the eight or so handicapped spaces, and a big portion of the lot was empty.

 The reason I got pissed off and broke out my camera at the time was because as I was driving past all these empty spaces for the senior officers, I saw a very pregnant young woman with two very small children parking all the way across the street and trying to walk through the whole parking lot to the clinic (strolling through at least 12 empty spaces for handicapped people and generals on the way).  I don't want to attack the Americans with Disabilities Act, at least not here, but the spaces for generals thing just pisses me off.  Aren't these the very people who are supposed to take care of the junior troops?  And it's not just at the medical clinic, either.

Here they are at the gym.  The spaces that is, not the generals.  These spaces are almost always empty.

Seriously, there are only a handful of generals on the whole base.  Do they all really need their own space at every facility?

Here we have the PX at Quantico.  They don't restrict reserving spaces just for generals.  They throw in a few spaces for the high ranking enlisted as well.  about 14 in all.  I think the message here is, "Screw the junior troops."  The words "abuse of position" come to my mind.

 But this post isn't supposed to be all about parking spaces.  It's supposed to be about arbitrary rules delivered via signage.  So let's now take a look at the new multi-million dollar football stadium and track at Quantico.

Pretty nice.

Of special note here is rule #7.  

The CFT referred to in that sign is the Combat Fitness Test, which all Marines must take every Fall.  It consists of several events, including an 800m run, an agility-type course on the football field, and an overhead lift.  Some dipshit decided to spend the taxpayer's money to make this little football field into an astroturfed multi-million dollar facility so that the tiny little Quantico High School football squad would have a place to play that's nicer than where the Redskins play.  That's pretty wasteful, but the part that really bugged me was that they had the audacity to prohibit MARINE CORPS TRAINING on the field.  I guess they don't want the expensive turf to get damaged, so they outlaw the whole reason they needed a track to begin with.  Who's in charge around here, anyway?  It seems they might have forgotten why the base exists.  Hint---it wasn't to facilitate a high school freaking football team.  It's kind of hard to listen to speeches about austerity and how we need to cut back on training ammunition and such while walking around this expensive track with an astroturf field.  How much ammunition could we pay for with what this field cost?  But I digress...

Let's walk back over to the Quantico Gym for a moment, and see what we find along the way...

There's this example of a sign I agree with completely.

And here's another that seems pretty stupid, at the entrance to the weight room area.  No gym bags allowed in the gym?  Instead you are supposed to carry your towel, your lifting belt, your wrist wraps, notebook, and what nots loosely around with you.  No shit, that's what the attendant told me when I asked him.

Good sign usually, but the floor actually wasn't wet, and the only real trip hazard around was the sign itself.  But I'll give that one to them, since maybe it was wet when they put it out there.  Two weeks ago.

DON'T WEAR A HAT IN THE GYM, OR WE'LL LOSE THE GODDAMN WAR.
I like the way they reference the Marine Administrative message, like they are quoting scripture.

There are lots of rules for going to the gym.  Notice that "boots and utilities" are outlawed.  This is the Marine Corps UNIFORM for crying out loud.   I asked why, and was told that the boots would tear up the mats...

But you already can't wear shoes on the mats.  Can't you also take boots off?

Rules for playing raquetball

There are even rules for going outside.

Want to run outside in the fresh air?  Better wear a reflective belt.  It's noon and sunny?  We don't give a shit.

Judging from the number of signs, this is the most important rule of working out in the gym on base.  I brought this up in a discussion with another officer, and he told me he agreed with this sign.  When asked why, he said because it's insulting for a man to wear his hat indoors.  This same man admitted that he wears ball caps indoors off-base all the time.  WTF?

Apparently spitting on the floor is frowned upon.  Urinating on the floor isn't mentioned, so I guess that's fair game.

Take off your damn hat!  Do you want the terrorists to win or something?

So why does any of this stuff matter?  Why am I wasting my time taking pictures of silly stuff like this?  Because I think it is an important indication of how much restriction we put on young Marines.  Some would say that heavy regulation and strict discipline is to be expected in the Marine Corps, and so it's fine.  I agree with them.  The problem is, when you have so many silly rules that it seems impossible to obey them all, and you can discern no reason for their existence in the first place, you are prone to start breaking them.  When you get accustomed to breaking the rules, then the rules themselves lose their power.  That means there is less discipline when there are lots of silly rules, not more.

Lots of First Sergeants are probably going to chime in and say that what we need is more people enforcing these silly rules.  They call it having "moral courage" to go up to a Marine who is choosing to do physical training on his own time and give him shit for wearing a baseball cap or a watchcap.  Maybe it is courageous to stand up for a rule and insist it is followed.  I am all for having rules and regulations, provided they are for a good reason.  I'm also for ruthless enforcement of those types of regulations.

But I think that every time a leader is forced to impose a rule that makes no logical sense, he loses some of his credibility with the led.  So when we make people wear reflective belts in broad daylight and other such nonsense, we make people feel juvenilized and resentful, and we actually are reducing the discipline of the troops.

So my message is this:  1) Have only the rules you need to have, and then enforce them.  2) Eliminate old fashioned and nonsensical rules.  3) Watch discipline improve.