Funny military memes, B.S., and shotgun club!

She sure was good at racking up the awards...

 

To be fair, the Army hands them out quite freely. I have two Army Commendation Medals, three Army Achievement Medals, and an Army Meritorious Unit Commendation. I've never been in the Army.

 

Hmmm, I too also have an Army Achievement Medal, nor have I ever been in the Army... Until now I was really proud of that medal.

 

I once pinned a meritorious mast letter to my Alphas during a uniform inspection when I found out that is was literally a good job letter which means absolutely jack fuck. My Gunny thought it was funny. My 1stSgt did not share my sense of humor.
In retrospect, perhaps my 1stSgts reaction is what my Gunny found hilarious. At the end of the day all that letter ever got me was weekend duty for a few weeks in a row.

 

Not sure how or why you get the legion of merit but the rest are just gimme awards. Enlisted get a good conduct medal every three years so she made it 21 years before getting caught doing something dumb. AAMs and ARCOMs for everything from showing up to work, doing your job on a deployment or just working somewhere a couple years and then PCSing.

 

I have a cousin that’s in the guard. My family is always like “look at all the medals he has”. Meanwhile I’m like yeah well. They don’t mean shit and he never did shit. Fucking army!
Meanwhile my shadow box has several CAR’s (well, 1 with a couple stars on it back when you had to be in combat to get one) and a NAM with stars and a V on it. With campaign ribbons from OIF and OEF but this MF got one for heating up an MRE in a climate controlled room. Or something to that effect. LOL. I’m not bitter at all.

 

LoM is a PCS award for Sr leaders, unfortunately. Ditto how the ArComs are ones for mid grade leaders.

 

During my short time in ('85-'88), awards/medals were pretty rare, except for the Viet Nam era folks who had been in a long time, and also served during times of hostilities. The most SMH situation I ever saw, this one E4 buddy of mine in my unit, he scored a 100% on his annual SQT - Skills Qualification Test. I don't know if other branches has those, or if even every Army MOSD did, but mine did. It was like a 30 - 50 question written test you had to take every year, to demonstrate you were still "capable" of doing the expected functions of your MOS. It was an open book test, so you would literally have to make an effort to not pass it. I think a passing score was like 70%. Our Squad Leader (young E5) was so impressed hat this particular guy got a 100% score that one year, he put the guy in for an ARCOM, and he got it! Can we all say it together - "Participation Trophy"????

 

I've more often faced the opposite problem, where I've had to fight for people to get awards that they deserve only for them to get denied or downgraded because the Coast Guard sets an unreasonably high standard.

 

That's kind of refreshing to hear.

 

Tbh I'm okay with that. Didn't deserve half the shit I got, didn't get awards (or really, needed them) for half the shit I did. And the SWE 'what did you do since making the last promotion' reset was nice in that regard. Even if I lost out on maxed points every time, lol

Shoot, did good? pat on the (stern) and impact 96s >>>>> bullshit a couple of months later.

 

Get a paycheck every two weeks? That’s your reward for doing your job.

 

Spoken like a Marine.

 

I turned down several Silver Stars. Deployment awards. "did job good, time for go home time" awards.

The reason for being recommended?
Officially? not stated.
Unofficially? to remain competitive with my peers for promotion.

Like, my rater felt he needed to (in good faith) recommend me for a damned Star for service to keep me abreast of the fucking pack. I understand why he did it, I just saw accepting that sort of thing as being part of the problem instead of the solution.
Others (peers) told me I was a fucking dumbass for turning them down.

Thanks, I'll get promoted on my merit, not someone else's inflated sense of self.

Still promoted, lolkthxbai.

 

See, inconsistency is what makes it an exciting game.

"Ooh, what's in the bag this week? Is it another handful of shit or is it a candybar?"

"oh, it's a candybar wrapper full of shit"

 

Join the National Guard where you too can get an achievement medal for making sure all of your section's equipment was inventoried into the computer correctly. Really, someone got a medal for this. But why? Well, our section chief was upset that no one in our unit was getting any awards. So they wrote an award for someone whos only job it was to make sure all of the equipment was inventoried into the computer. Thats it. Thats all they did. Now this award package has to get routed through the chain of command. So an E-7 wrote it, an E-8 ok'd it, at least two E-9's ok'd it, an 0-4 ok'd it, then an 0-5 ok'd it, finally got sent to an 0-6, who approved it.