Whither the Shoe Clerk?

[HeyEng]

Since it’s been about ten months since the pullout from Afghanistan and the failure of wearing reflective belts and having our PT shirts tucked in to achieve total victory, has the shoe clerk moved on? Or is he/she doubling down? 
It would be unusual for your typical martinet to be introspective and re-evaluate his/her choice of leadership style but who knows.

[StoleIt]

1 hour ago, HeyEng said:

has the shoe clerk moved on?

The shoe clerk never left.

[HuggyU2]

Good use of a lesser-known term, HeyEng. 

[Danger41]

This individual is about to make an even bigger impact because there’s no real large combat deployments affecting vast swaths of the military. When there’s not those pesky wars, that’s when the Shoe Clerk rebuilds his empire.

Guarantee there was some Roman hassling some legionnaires about their sandals being tied correctly after they conquered Gaul. Nothing new.

[dream big]

Gotten much worse, just look at Chief Bass.  Still till this day, I don’t really understand what Chiefs do besides admin queep the commander doesn’t want to do.  It’s especially worse on a staff.  I know this thread is about shoe clerks but unfortunately many of the Chiefs I’ve met are perpetrators of that mentality.  

[HeyEng]

I posted this thread because I retired back in 2014 but this subject still eats at me like a corroded battery in a forgotten flashlight hidden in a junk drawer! 

I used to brag that that the people who joined the AF were those who scored high on their ASVAB but at the end of my career I realized that the AF was run by a bunch of dullards! 

I think the tipping point for me was when I was flying a local with our AD advisor. He was approaching 20 years of AD and for his reward for being a highly qualified examiner C-5 pilot, Big Blue was going to deploy him to Afghanistan to work in a prison! I think I was more pissed than he was!

He pealed me off the ceiling of the cockpit by telling me that he had a bad knee that he kept from the med squadron and that would be his ace card from being deployed. 

As a Reservist in a flying squadron who was already mobilized I was spared being deployed to the sand box and only had to RON in that shit hole for a night or two, but the amount of dead wood deployed in Afghanistan for the sake of checking off a box to advance your career basically jaded me from staying in any further than I could have. 

[Danger41]

19 hours ago, HeyEng said:As a Reservist in a flying squadron who was already mobilized I was spared being deployed to the sand box and only had to RON in that shit hole for a night or two, but the amount of dead wood deployed in Afghanistan for the sake of checking off a box to advance your career basically jaded me from staying in any further than I could have. 

I legit think we shouldn’t bring people home until the war is over, including mobilized reservists and guardsmen. Good luck politicians with these bullshit conflicts with that archetype.

[lloyd christmas]

On 6/28/2022 at 11:59 PM, dream big said:

Still till this day, I don’t really understand what Chiefs do besides admin queep the commander doesn’t want to do.  It’s especially worse on a staff.  I know this thread is about shoe clerks but unfortunately many of the Chiefs I’ve met are perpetrators of that mentality.  

Chief is an interesting rank.  All other enlisted ranks up to Chief are pretty well defined.  It’s almost like you hit a completely new rank structure when you look at how many different types of Chiefs there are.  It’s like that scene in Forrest Gump.  Shrimp gumbo, fried shrimp, shrimp scampi….  You see Chiefs out there in squadrons, groups, wings, first sergeants, staffs, etc.  There aren’t many Chiefs in the AF but yet they seem to everywhere.  

Some genuinely care and use the rank to better their organizations and their people’s lives.  Others are power hungry assholes just like some officers.  

[slc]

I highly recommend Bullshit Jobs:  A Theory by David Graeber.   Really ties into the AF quite well

[SurelySerious]

Chief is an interesting rank.  All other enlisted ranks up to Chief are pretty well defined.  It’s almost like you hit a completely new rank structure when you look at how many different types of Chiefs there are.  It’s like that scene in Forrest Gump.  Shrimp gumbo, fried shrimp, shrimp scampi….  You see Chiefs out there in squadrons, groups, wings, first sergeants, staffs, etc.  There aren’t many Chiefs in the AF but yet they seem to everywhere.  
Some genuinely care and use the rank to better their organizations and their people’s lives.  Others are power hungry assholes just like some officers.  

It’s almost like we made it up post Gulf War with no real purpose.

[Pitt4401]

Yesterday's reflective belt is today's preferred pronouns in the email signature block. 

[arg]

All ranks can be shoe clerks. I think I posted this here before. A LtCol saying that SOS was Red Flag for shoe clerks. I stole that and said the same thing at the NCO Academy at Tyndall. I was not voted class president. CPBO(remember that?) guy asking me why I had so many Air Medals and only one Commendation medal. My answer was I wasn't much for shoe clerk awards. Strangely enough him and myself wound up being pretty good buds.

[CaptainMorgan]

All ranks can be shoe clerks. I think I posted this here before. A LtCol saying that SOS was Red Flag for shoe clerks. I stole that and said the same thing at the NCO Academy at Tyndall. I was not voted class president. CPBO(remember that?) guy asking me why I had so many Air Medals and only one Commendation medal. My answer was I wasn't much for shoe clerk awards. Strangely enough him and myself wound up being pretty good buds.

At least they stopped using StarCraft as the wargaming sim.


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[arg]

2 hours ago, CaptainMorgan said:

At least they stopped using StarCraft as the wargaming sim.


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I've never heard of that