It’s a good rule of thumb for managers to understand that the people that work for them are individual human beings with their own thoughts, feelings, goals, etc.
If you read enough Reddit, though, you quickly realize that a good portion of them don’t.
OP was an enlisted member of the Navy serving overseas in a hospital. One day, he got a note from a coworker about how awful the new doctor was, and with a picture of an insulting note.
I was a Navy enlisted service member and was stationed in Yokosuka, Japan for a few years before I got transferred back stateside. I worked in the main hospital that cared for service members and their beneficiaries. It’s a small hospital so everyone knows everyone.
Shortly after I left, I caught wind of a new physician officer working in the radiology department. My friends would say he’s horrible to work with but that’s nothing new.
However, someone saw him print a letter and he left it on his desk and took a picture of it and send it to me.
He’s requesting to move from enlisted housing to officer. (Edit: found out it’s not a private letter, he did actually sent it to housing, and most of housing is ran by enlisted members)
There is housing for enlisted men and housing for officers, and it is up to the serviceman to request their spot, etc.
For context, military housing is available for those who are married, have a family, or are qualified based on their rank and depending on the military base itself.
Typically, officer housing is much nicer than the enlisted. In Yokosuka, housing is basically the same all around because it’s overseas. But most of the housing are apartments and each apartment complex is called a tower, example: Fuji Tower. There are 9 towers and 2 are for officers since enlisted members outnumber officers by a lot.
Now, one thing about the military, stuff happens. When getting stationed, it is the active duty members’ responsibility to either apply for housing on or off base before arriving, depending on what is allowed.
If there is limited space and you don’t apply for housing on time, then you get put where there is space. So our new officer got placed in an enlisted tower.
Mind you, enlisted members have families of their own and other officers have been placed in enlisted housing before without an issue.
Well, apparently this guy thought he was way too good to share space and air with mere enlisted men.
Here are some quotes in his letter: (and yes, this guy has a PhD)
I have many valid objections to living in a building of almost all enlisted and even many lower enlisted being an officer.
There is a lot of crime, violent actions, drug use and alcoholism that happen in enlisted housing. There are also heinous assaults and other horrible things happening.
I have a good-looking family, a wife and 2 daughters age 3 and 4. They are prime targets to be victims for these enlisted deviant activities. My family should be safe in housing that is with officers.Officers are much more respectable and these types of deviant activities are incredibly rare compared to the deviant activities of enlisted being common place.
Other officer families will not want to visit us because our family lives on enlisted housing.
My children need to make friends with other officer children. My wife needs to make friends with other officers wives. I need to make friends with other officers.
Forcing an officer to live in a large apartment building with almost all enlisted is unethical.
You get the idea, so this guy basically looks down on all enlisted service members assuming every single one are drug users, perverts/pedos, criminals, etc. The kicker? He was an enlisted Army member before going to Officer school!
So, OP put him on social media blast.
In civilian terms, think of a manager that discriminates and calls all of his subordinates criminals, violent, alcoholics, pervs, drug users, etc based on your job position. Forgetting that some have a family and you know, maybe aren’t any of those things.
And he not only have the authority to ruin your work life, he can ruin your personal life (deny days off, make you stay late, write you up if he doesn’t like you and not letting you promote).
Safe to say, everyone was angry and I have nothing to lose. I was separating soon and figure I’d have some fun before I get out. I created a burner Facebook account and posted the letter and the officer’s picture on a popular military enlisted group page.
Within 2 days, it spread like wild fire. But I wasn’t done yet.
He made sure the guy couldn’t go anywhere at work or home without remembering what he did.
The military has some thing called challenge coins. Think of trading cards but custom coins that come in many shapes and sizes. I designed one with his face and a big middle finger in the back.
On top of that I designed stickers to show how proud us deviants are. Other coin designs came from other people as well but so far I think mine was more popular.
I sold over 70 coins to the initial person who originally send me the picture at a huge discounted price so she can sell them for a profit for herself. So the officer’s face is everywhere because most people keep their coins displayed on their desk.
No matter where the officer went at work, he would see his face on someone’s desk. And since it didn’t have his name on the coin, can’t officially say it’s him. I sold more stateside and even some got sent to Europe. I made about $3k overall which was nice.
The story even got featured on the online Naval newspaper and on 2 popular YouTube channels. And if you’re military, you know the only time big military care is when it’s too big to sweep under the rug.
Even though the guy’s wife tried to take the blame he was eventually kicked out and had to repay the money for his doctorate.
This story got the officer sent up to Captain’s Mast which is like Navy court. He tried to say his wife was the one that wrote the letter but no one is buying it because her writing style is way worse. She even tried to take the fall but no one believed her. They both ended up deleting all social media. Due to this, he got served 3 UCMJ articles which basically are his offenses.
But there’s more! When you’re in the military, you have a deadline on how long you can be a certain rank. If you dont pick up, then you’re kicked out. And because he’s new and got served UCMJ Articles, he won’t be up for promotion and therefore was involuntarily separated.
Also the officer program he went through pays for his PhD. When the military pays for your PhD, you have to serve 10 years to pay them back, if you don’t complete 10 years, you have to pay the military back with money instead of time.
So he lost his job and now has to pay back the military for his PhD and since it takes awhile for the paperwork to have him and his family sent back stateside, you can bet he socially suffered because no one worked with him.
This Redditor was happy to have the details.
If you’re wondering, he did actually send the letter.
No one in the military felt sorry for this officer.
They say the guy could have taken care of all of this if he’d wanted to spend the money.
I guess the moral of the story is don’t mess with this guy.
He was relentless!