In the military, if you don’t make promotion lists at certain junctures in your career, you’re done. Whether or not you make said list depends on your boss’s completely subjective assessment of your performance. My boss was a toxic diversity hire and I knew from the day he took command that it was going to be a rough time for the unit so getting a pair of negative evals from him was kind of like having Paul Ryan tell you that you’re a failure.
I thought I’d be more angry or sad or something but truth be told I’m mostly just relieved. I didn’t want to fight for this new president or this congress and I don’t want to watch the organization I’ve devoted tens of thousands of hours of my life to slowly fall apart over the next decade and now I won’t have to.
So I guess I’ll just take my four deployments worth of combat experience, go back home, play with my kids and wait... for something.
I got an RE04 code at the end of my contract.
Guess butting heads with a First Sergeant will do that to a career.
Funny thing however. I was higher rank than he was by the time I was separated. The same bully tactics he used on me and they allowed him to get away with he decided to use against a First Lieutenant.
Funny how things come around.
I was found to not deal well with authority. That was what they said, I say, I do not do respect idiots, even if they are superior.