A title isn’t everything.

Sometimes, lived experience is worth way more – even in the military.

Like in this story, when a technicality in rank costs a new guy hours of headache.

Let’s see what the marching orders are…

Out Rank Doesn’t Mean Out-Know

The other day, my nephew was talking about joining the military and it reminded me of this incident from my Air Force days about 20 years ago.

Ah, good ol’ days of malicious compliance.

For a little background, when two people have the same rank you use the Date of Rank (DOR, which is the date your new rank became effective) to determine who outranks whom.

So, if one person gets the rank in April and the other in August, then the April outranks August.

Additionally, people who did time in JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp) in high school would be able to be immediately promoted to Airman 1st Class (E3 or A1C) upon completion of basic training.

Those who did not and enlisted started at Airman Basic (E1), which is what I did.

I predict someone is going to be petty over a couple months of rank…

Fast forward 2 years and I am a recently promoted A1C (working as a munitions technician) and had been at my current duty station for over a year.

In that time, I had seen and done every munition operation that my shop did and knew what to do when the equipment decided to not cooperate.

A month prior, two fresh airmen from basic & tech school arrive and one of them (who we will call Bob) was sporting A1C stripes.

One day, our sergeant orders the three of us to process a UALS (Universal Ammunition Loading System).

Sounds intimidating.

Basically, this is just a big ammunition cylinder on wheels that is used to load the bullets into the guns on the fighter jets (think TOP GUN when they “switch to guns”).

Alright, Goose.

To do this, you attach the “head” of the UALS to a table that consisted of a metal tray that fed into a little conveyor system that had slots which each bullet fell into, which then fed into corresponding slots in the UALS.

The whole thing is run on a pneumatic “gun” that controlled the speed of the conveyor – and the more you squeezed the trigger the faster it went.

They’re pulling out the big guns.

So before we start the operation, Bob says that he is in charge because he “outranks” me.

I shrug my shoulders and basically say, “whatever” and we get to work with me controlling the “air gun.”

We get into a pretty steady rhythm with them loading the ammo into the tray and it feeding nicely into the UALS. At some point, Bob gets cocky and orders me to speed up.

Of course, Bob’s gotta be a showoff.

Now, the UALS has this quirk that it does not like to be ran at full speed or it will jam.

When this happens, all you have to do is detach the UALS head and reattach it making sure this teeny tiny pin is in place.

If you don’t, then no matter how many times you take it off and put it back it will still be jammed.

Of course, seeing that I have done this exact operation countless times before, I knew this, but Bob was in charge so away we go.

Let ’em squirm was this OP’s MO.

As you can expect, the whole thing jams pretty quickly, and Bob and the other guy are confused why they can’t get it running.

I just sit there quietly waiting for them.

As it goes, what should have been a fifteen-minute operation takes almost an hour.

Our sergeant enters the bay and is surprised that we have not finished yet and decides to investigate.

My, what might his investigation reveal?

Bob tells him that the machine is jammed and we are trying to fix it.

The sergeant glances at me and I simply say, “Bob said he was in charge because he outranked me.”

The sergeant gets a half smirk (which Bob didn’t see) because he knows I know how to fix it.

He turns to Bob and says, “Well if you are in charge then it is your responsibility.” Bob gets flustered and basically tries to backpedal.

Can’t backpedal outta this one fast enough.

The sergeant says, “Well did you ask everyone on your team?”

He of course means me and when Bob shakes his head, he turns to me and says “OP, do you know how to fix it?”

I immediately say, ” Yes, sir,” and proceed to take ten seconds to fix the issue and get it running smoothly.

Bob understandably is subdued, and the sergeant orders us to finish up and places me in charge but not before telling Bob, “Outrank doesn’t mean out know.”

Wise words.

The sergeant leaves and five minutes later we finish.

From that day on, Bob never “pulled rank” on me again.

Sounds like Bob got put in his place.

What does the comments section have to say?

Somebody says, that’s movie magic!

Another person points out that good leaders know how to delegate.

Another person says, you gotta know who’s *really* in charge.

This user says of course experience matters more.

One poster appreciates the little things.

Pulling rank only works if you know what you’re doing.

Put that advice in your pocket and keep it.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.