The Problem with the 91 Sierra

For those of you who don't know, my job within the army is 91S, Preventive Medicine Specialist. In theory, this job is really important to the army. The job itself is the prevention of Disease and Non Battle Injuries. Anything dealing with the prevention of Disease and Non Battle Injuries is detailed by my job.

The problem with this is it doesn't necessarily need a soldier to do the job. As is evident by the fact that more and more parts of the job is being contracted out to the civilian sector, leaving the crap parts of the job to the soldier. One of the reasons why I didn't particularly enjoy my times in Kosovo.

Another problem with the job is nobody knows what a 91S does outside of the Preventive Medicine Unit. In a hospital, often times everybody looks at the 91S as the red headed step children of the unit. Because we don't deal directly with patients or what not, we often get tasked to do other things. One of the job listings of the 91S should be 'Mundane Details' and 'Peon'. If the first sergeant needed something to get done, she would look first at the people who don't have patient care issues. More often then not, this would be Preventive Medicine.

Because nobody knows what Preventive Medicine does, it is somewhat of a Sham Job. That has its positives, to be sure, but because it is a sham job, it also gives an air of being a job that isn't very important. We could make ourselves as busy or non busy as we want to be. Unfortunately for me, I prefer to be busy when I work. With a goal in sight. I never really felt like I got this from my unit.

So, one of our main tasks in Kosovo tended to be Inspections. I hate inspections. I loathe them with a passion. I even mentioned this. But I didn't complain about doing inspections, I just mentioned that I didn't like them. More of a statement then anything. I just made it to the wrong people. One of the reasons why I hated doing inspections is because a lot about the inspections is its a judgement call on the part of the inspector. I like things to be written down, black and white. when I did inspections and found people telling me that I shouldn't do something, or somebody else putting something down as being a bigger deal then it was, I was always the one who wasn't listened to. My opinion never seemed to matter. And it seemed when we had one big joint inspection, the only person who made any mistakes always seemed to be me, according to the infinite judgement and wisdom of my former NCOIC, who I have mentioned time and again, is an enormous pompous Asshat.

I loathe the man with a passion. Just thinking of him makes my blood start to boil and I want to bash his head in with the buttstock of my M16.

Other people in my section often made mistakes too. I noted them, I mentioned them to the enormous pompous Asshat, but he didn't seem to care. He would turn around and point out my mistakes, because the other people in my section were angels that could do no wrong and I was the bastard stepchild.

Which brings me to another point of what was wrong with my section. It consisted of a number of soldiers from another unit (I can't mention exact numbers because that would be telling unit strength) who had all worked together and knew each other fairly well. Then there was me. I was the bastard stepchild from day one and I never fully fit in. What makes this worse is that this unit was overstrength as it was. The head sergeant, (who is he who I greatly loathe) never really did anything because he was incredibly lazy. I did mundane jobs here and there that really were not that big of a deal, but looked like a lot on paper (I was never really trusted to be able to do my job I think). The other soldiers in the unit could have easily took over my job duties and did their own with plenty of room to spare. What am I driving at? My section was overstaffed. By two soldiers.
I was one of those two soldiers, the idiot who supervised me was the other. Considering how small my section was, this was a lot. And often times we were made to stay a certain length of time just because we had to have somebody man the office. Often times I sat on my ass surfing the internet with lack of nothing better to do.

Another problem with my job? A lot of time is spent cooped up in an office. You know why I joined the army? Because it's the freakin' army! I love the army for the shooting of things that go bang, for the dirt and marching around and doing grunt hooah army stuff. I don't like sitting in an office staring at a screen all damn day. I could never be an office peon because I would so quickly get bored with that.

I need another freakin' job! Unfortunately for me, I'm in a job that is understrength according to army standards. I'm limited to the jobs that I will be allowed to do.

You know, I would go on another deployment in a heartbeat, honestly I would. I just don't want to go as a 91S, which in my opinion, has grown into one of the most pointless jobs in the army. Apparently, there is a lot of that to go around.