Problems with the Navy (Enlisted)
Continuing with my series, I will now talk about the problems I see with the enlisted people in the Navy. Since I’ve been enlisted for more than 13 years, I’ve seen a definite change in the quality of people coming in the Navy and I’m not the only one to notice it.
New people coming in are products of society, naturally. The problem comes from the fact that American society is becoming entitlement-driven; everyone thinks they are owed something, that they are entitled to whatever they want without having to earn it. You may have seen it personally or read books or studies that talk about it. For example, a lot of schools have removed competitive sports from PE because it would be “too traumatic” to children if they lost. Other places give all participants a trophy or other “you’re a winner” item so no one feels left out or has their feelings hurt. Self-esteem is all important to the new way of thinking.
However, life is not like that. There are winners and losers and rarely are someone’s feelings considered when choices are made, especially in the military. Kids growing up in the last 15 years or so have become used to simply getting their way. Obviously, it’s a disservice to people to not give them the life skills they need. Trying to help them feel better about themselves and have a good self-esteem is all well and good, but not to the exclusion of more important things, like how to deal with the world.
Getting back to the topic, new recruits have a problem dealing with authority. They have little respect for senior people or the chain of command. Their work ethic sucks; sometimes they seem like George Constanza’s character from Seinfeld, exerting more energy to not work than to just get the job done.
I’m not saying everyone coming in is like this, just enough that “old timers” have been talking about it. It affects work centers because jobs may not get done, or at least done on time. Sometimes the work is half-assed and needs to be redone properly, though this isn’t always a fault of the workers because sometimes the supervisor in charge pushes them to get the job done quickly rather than correctly.
Overall, the quality of people in the Navy is lowering. I don’t know if it’s because of a lowered threshold for recruits (the Army complained about lowering the bar after 9/11, so the Navy may be suffering also) but the Navy is slowly trying to fix it. They have implemented the Perform-to-Serve program, where enlisted people have to “justify their existence” to the Navy to reenlist. Even the Chiefs are being looked at, with the dead-wood, incompetent, and other “social parasites” being forced to retire.
It would be interesting to study whether the recruit quality of the military is more of a product of society or whether these types of people are more inclined to join the military rather than work in the civilian sector. Obviously the economy is forcing a lot of people to join who wouldn’t normally consider it, but the entitlement society of America seems to be having a significant impact on how the military is functioning.
