OT - Killings at Fort Hood

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Ah, yes; no officer (or NCO) wants to be the "Atlas Man." (Do OERs and NCOERs still use that little diagram?) But I've seen that happen too many times -- promote someone because he's a good schmoozer but otherwise a royal pain in the ass. If you promote him, you can get him reassigned outside your unit! It's really a lazy and stupid way to solve a problem with a soldier, and it gets used way too often, particularly with problem senior NCOs and mid-to-high-level officers.

Ironically, it's also used to get rid of another type of "problem" soldier" -- the one that sees problems and immediately starts working to fix them -- successfully. It's the sort of thing that makes his superiors pissed because he's exposing unit problems that his superiors were glossing over, ignoring, or actively trying to hide -- and it also makes them look bad because they couldn't fix the problems. A stupid and lazy senior NCO or officer will get rid of that guy because he "makes us look bad." A smart one will use that guy as his troubleshooter and go-to guy.

Well all too often it was the zero who got promoted and sent to other units. Yet, it seem the warnings were out there.