The military has a lot of rules, but sometimes things happen that make them impossible to follow.

In today’s story, a former Marine shares a tale from military life that involves his friend, car trouble and making the best of a bad situation.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Great Military MC

Around 20 years ago I was in the Marine Corps.

This was not my MC but a buddy of mine.

In the military, for holidays you are usually granted leave in block we call 72 for 3 day and 96s for 4 day weekends.

I don’t remember what it was for but we had an upcoming 96 and my buddy was driving back home for it.

Their unit cut the vacation time short.

Most units would say you are getting Friday-Monday off, let everyone leave Thursday night and be back for Tuesday formation.

Our unit did not.

They insisted on a formation at 8am on Friday morning for a safety brief and 5pm Monday evening to check back in.

This cut down on a lot of time for many of the guys.

His friend called to explain he had car trouble.

My friend had car trouble, called our platoon SGT to let him know and said he can’t make the Monday formation.

He will do his best to make it by Tuesday morning and will keep him updated.

Most reasonable SGT and above would be ok with this but not here.

He told him if he doesn’t make formation he will make sure he gets a NJP for being UA.

UA is unauthorized absence, same as AWOL in the army.

He explains how NJP works.

NJP is nonjudicial punishment and is common for less severe infections.

Usually you lose pay, rank and maybe go on restriction or get extra duties or both.

The thing is there is a max punishment for NJP to your COs discretion and there would not be much of a difference between say 1 day UA or 28 days.

Any longer you fall into the deserter category and this is much more serious.

His friend was going to get NJP anyway and took advantage of the time off.

So my buddy took a few weeks off at home before coming on back to his UA punishment.

He did lose rank and pay but everyone had to agree it was a great f u to our platoon SGT everyone hated.

I’m not sure what the SGT expected the friend to do about car trouble. At least the friend made the best of it!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader approves of the malicious compliance in this story.

Another reader compares the situation to school bullies.

This reader shared a story about asian generals.

Another reader shares a warning…

This reader shares how things possibly could’ve turned out differently.

As long as the friend was happy with how things turned out, that’s all that matters.

You can’t please everyone.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.