"Customer Service???"

So here I am about to retire and I'm still dumbfounded by all the cockamamie brainless ideas the Navy comes up with in the event of change. I've got lots of silly stories about people being stupid in the name of professionalism but I swear I'd get better customer service from a bunch a gaudamn high school stoners in a Jack in the Box Drive thru than at Navy PSD!

Someday, some enlightened M.I.T. graduate will figure out how to modernize our Naval Institution without paying civilians to do in a week what a gaudamn seaman can do in fifteen minutes. With so many of them sons-a-bitches roaming our hallways the white hat will soon become extinct and end up transferred to the big lucky bag in the sky.

The Navy I knew is slowly being removed and replaced with ridiculous ideas that have no sense of tradition or reason... even if it is to save a few bucks. How the hell can you justify saving money to contract millions of dead presidents out to civilians when we've got the know how to do it ourselves!!!

Kids today must look at their rating badges and wonder why the damn thing doesn't say civilian subservient! Same Navy, same location, but like everything else in the government, the idiot bastards filled it full of bureaucracy for some dumb reason known only to God and some rich retired fat ass admiral with a made up billet so he can sit around gett'n his coffee cup filled by an E-3 yeoman!!

It's depressing, boys and girls… No, it's worse than that. It's the legacy we are leaving future generations. They will never know the pride we had in what once was.

I'd already seen the senseless debauchery at work while on shore duty with all the gaudamn Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC)!! With the transfer of authority from one hand to the other our facility was placed under the control of someone three states away with no gaudamn concern for our welfare. All our support was pulled from the local base in the name of the all mighty dollar!! That retired Admiral sitt'n on his ass drinking coffee & bullshitt'n about noth'n use to audit our records once a month. But now he doesn't have to because we don't fall under his cognizance... I mean what gaudamn difference does it make? We're all gett'n paid by big Navy anyway...so what sense does it make to fly someone up from San Dog to audit our records once a month...Do you follow what I'm say'n???

So three weeks ago I tried call'n five different numbers to set up a simple appointment to finish my paperwork for retirement!! Not asking a lot in the large scale of things you wouldn't think! But I couldn't get the answers I was look'n for over the phone so I walked my happy ass over yonder to accomplish a littany of deeds prior to hang'n my hat!!! Wouldn't it figure the most junior E-1 straight outta bootcamp is at the front desk running things! Not a gaudamn Chief in sight! Maybe anchor to anchor I might have gotten some real service... To every question I threw at her she had to take a trip to the back of the office to ask someone else. Finally I got an appointment for 1330 on a Thursday the following week.

Well I shit you not...the following week I show up at 1245 and they don't have me scheduled for an appointment. The young man at the front desk walks me back to talk to some gaudamn civilian who gave me the airman salute and told me I'd have to call Petty Officer "Who Gives A Shit" in the morning to reschedule! No apologies, explanations, not even a reasonable excuse... just a proverbial screw you and try again later kinda thing!!

So I call Petty Officer "Who Gives A Shit" at 0800 the next morning and he gives me a laundry list of things to bring with an appointment date a week out in advance, so I thought to myself,

"I'd better not show up with another proverbial screw you or I'll be stick'n my foot up someone's proverbial ass!!"

So the day comes and I show up with a stack of papers in hand accompanied with my medical & dental records ready to rock-n-roll!! Petty Officer "Who Gives A Shit" verifies my paperwork and says,

"Chief, We'll schedule you for another appointment at 1300 on Thursday, three days from now."

...like he's doing me a gaudamn favor!!! So I ask him,

"What the hell was this appointment?? An appointment to make an appointment???"

He told me he guess's so if I want to look at it that way!! I mean does anyone besides me see a gaudamn problem with this? 22 Years in this gaudamn canoe club and this is the service I get??

Another fella I work with went to PSD to get his kiddos signed up for the New "911 GI Bill"... They tell his sorry ass he had to re-enlist for two years to be eligible. So he does what he's told. Then they tell him,

"Oh, you have to extend for six more months in order to qualify!"

That's two years and six months now, so he does what he's told!!! Then they tell him,

"Oh we're sorry, but your rate is overmanned so you have to get a waiver to extend!"

He's got two weeks to do this before his extension will be no good! So our Senior Enlisted Advisor had to call some "Great Master Chief in the Sky" up at personnel headquarters in Millington, Tennessee to get the job done!! Talk about jump'n through hoops!!! So this fella goes into PSD with all his paperwork in a row jump'n through every hoop they've put out and PN1 says,

"I can't grant your extension or the waiver because BUPERSINSTRUCTION umpty squat says something or rather about you not being able to do that."

Really??? I mean "WTF" Over' !!!

Finally some civilian "from somewhere in the back" told PN1 to enter his waiver into his record because that's what it's for!!! So PN1 reluctantly sat down smashing his fingers into the keyboard obviously pissed off because he had to do his gaudamn job!!! Is this a sign of what our young sailors are looking forward too?

US Navy Manual for Customer Service NavedTra 14056 states:

no matter how simple or unimportant you consider a request, the customer depends upon you to provide a service. Answering a question or looking up information may require a little effort on your part, but the extra effort is a mark of good service. As stated earlier in this manual, customers usually have only one place they can go for a particular service.

But that's not what I'm seeing!

Another fella told me the first person on the base he talked to was a civilian at PSD. He sat down at his desk and was handed a pile of papers & pen and pointed to a table across the room to sit and fill it out. Not a "Hello" or "Welcome Aboard", just a stack of papers & pen, and a finger extended across the room. While he filled out the papers he came across a voluntary extension of service. He didn't fill this out but put it aside while he finished the others. Upon turning in the paperwork the civilian thumbed through the papers and noticed he didn't sign the extension papers.

He put the voluntary extension in front of the sailor and told him he needed to fill it out. Those were the first words that he spoke. The sailor refused. The civilian said he couldn't refuse because he had accepted orders that required a 24 month commitment. The sailor said he wouldn't do it. He said it was a voluntary extension and that if he had to fill it out, it was "INVOLUNTARY."

Next, the civilian threatened to send the sailor back to his previous command. He told the civilian to go ahead and do that if he wanted to. Of course, he had been one the last people to leave his last boat after it was decommissioned. In the end, the sailor was assigned to his appointed place of duty and the civilian lost out. Needless to say the sailor decided to reenlist a year later...it was all based on principle!

US Navy Manual for Customer Service NavedTra 14056 also states:

“Speaking down” implies that you consider the customer to be less than your equal. That attitude may make the customer feel that the service you provide is less than your best.

So I ask..."Why can't we follow our own Gaudamn Rules in customer service?? I suppose we as the customer are there to serve them!!!