Promotions

I have had my Army job described, pretty accurately, as a troubleshooter. Part of the duties involve hearing soldier problems and complaints, and helping the soldier resolve them. I enjoy that aspect of the job, mostly. Only a few of the complaints are frivolous. I do get quite a few where the soldier has not tried to work the issue through the chain of command, or where the soldier wants me to be a private research assistant. I'm getting better at turning those down.

Lately, I've been getting lots of complaints about promotions. Soldiers want to be promoted. The Army promotion system, while not rocket science, is still pretty involved. I think that most soldiers don't understand it. It is vastly more complicated when National Guard soldiers go on active duty.

Each state maintains a list of who is first in line for promotion. It is separated by MOS (job description), and soldiers get points for various things. Unfortunately, each state does things a little differently than the others. And, it's not the same as the active duty system. And, things are more complicated because on deployment we have different jobs than before deployment.

Anyway, I'm working on helping soldiers understand the system, and with helping some of them get promoted. This is a morale issue; the ones who feel cheated by the system do not have good morale. If they don't understand the system, they feel cheated. Being the Army, sometimes they do get cheated, and that is where I can usually right the wrong.