Well, this is interesting…

You’d probably think that folks in military units would always work together to achieve goals…but not the guy you’re gonna read about in this story from Reddit!

Check out what happened when this guy didn’t act like a team player with his fellow soldiers.

Tank driver tells me he doesn’t want to see or hear from me, so he doesn’t.

“Back when I was in the army, my tank driver was someone who you’d really not want to spend time with unless you absolutely had to (like, for instance, if you were in a tank crew with him and needed the tank to actually get from point A to point B).

When it comes to crew breakdown in a tank, it goes like this:

Tank gunner (my position) – coolest job in the tank, you get to shoot the big gun. You also have to do the least amount of maintenance work on the tank.

Loader – does most of the ***** work in the tank. Has to carry and load multiple heavy tank shells (~45-50kg each). Not much maintenance work, but spends like 2-3 hours cleaning the 3 machine guns.

Driver – drives the tank. Pretty simple, but a good driver will give you a smooth ride, a bad driver will make you feel every dip and bump in the terrain.

Does the most maintenance work since they are in charge of the tank tracks and bogies (steel wheels in the tracks).

Tank commander – knows how to do all the positions, doesn’t do any maintenance since they are usually in briefings on maintenance day.

It’s supposed to work flawlessly.

A good crew knows how to begin to think alike, doing things together without asking. It helps that you sleep together in the tank, so you all get to know each other pretty intimately (nothing like peeing in a water bottle to remove any shyness between crew members).

When it comes to maintenance, you can either have all the gunners from the platoon get together and work on all the platoon’s tanks together, same with drivers/gunners, or each crew can do their own tank. Usually we prefer the first option because it goes quicker.

In this case, my crew was sent to support an infantry exercise on a different base in the middle of the desert on our own. We were simulating a whole tank company, but budget cuts meant only one tank was sent.

Sunday we got to base and deployed with our tank down into the exercise area. Monday-Wednesday night we exercised. Thursday morning the drill ended, and it was maintenance day.

Crucial element here is that you don’t get to go home for the weekend until your maintenance is complete, the flip side being that you could leave as soon as maintenance was completed and signed off on.

This guy…

The entire exercise, the driver was being a complete jerk. I don’t know if his girlfriend broke up with him or whatever, but he was even more annoying than usual.

Aside from his attitude, his driving was so bad the TC almost broke a rib one time, and I nearly got a black eye when shooting in motion and he (unintentionally, I’m sure) aimed straight for a small ditch.

By the time Thursday came around, the loader and I couldn’t get rid of him for the weekend quickly enough. But alas – first, maintenance beckoned.

One of the tasks the gunner has to do is clean the cannon with a oiled cleaning rod – this is a three man job, loader in the tank and two people clean it from the outside. It can’t be done by one person no matter how strong they are.

I asked the driver to help me since the loader was inside the tank. The driver angrily told me he didn’t want to hear from me or speak to me. No worries. I found somebody to give me a hand for a few minutes and we got the job done.

I completed the rest of my maintenance work pretty quickly (like I said, not much, actually) with the help of the loader, and then I gave him a hand cleaning the machine guns. The two of us were done before lunchtime, just waiting for the TC to sign off on our work so we could start our weekend early.

Oops!

Driver, on the other hand, realized that he didn’t have any other drivers to help him maintain the tracks (tension, tightening bolts, greasing ports, etc.), and he had told us to **** off.

He was still working on the tank when it got dark and was told to stop for safety reasons. He had to continue the job on Friday morning and missed out on a day of leave.

I wanna say that his attitude changed on Sunday when we got back to base, but you know it didn’t. Thankfully after about two more months of his nonsense he was transferred out. I have no idea where he is today.

I’m still good friends with the loader and TC, the driver can get bent.”

Reddit users spoke up.

This person shared a story.

Another individual spoke up.

And this Reddit user was impressed.

That’s what you get for not being a team player!

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.