5/18

What a crazy day. We had six cancellations, 5 from the dust storm and one from an engine malfunction probably due to the duststorm. It create a butterfly effect, like we went back in time and changed one things, and it changed everything. Plus there were 6 emergency leaves trying to get on planes today. The cancellations forced people off the plane obviously, so we have to try to put them back in the space a system, we have to rotate them off the flight in GATES, make sure they get their bags, plus we have he Army R&R personnel we have to try to put them on other flights because they're higher priority then Space A's. Sound complicated? it is, and everyone did a pretty darn good job adjusting to it. A few were getting frustrated, but i say, "why get frustrated? any time you have cancelled flights things are going to go belly up, why fight it?" We had a inspection tour, the new Deputy commander of the base. He had an entourage and I showed him around the terminal. Beside about two seconds of stage fright, I did fine. I walked them over to the gate, and to my disbelief, TSgt. C isn't there, unbelievable! Thank god I was there, I just did the brief he was supposed to do. What the heck, two days ago the new Chief of the base is doing a tour, I tell Cusick to meet him at the counter so he can take him around. 20 minutes later I'm at the fligthline I look and there walks past an entourage with the new Chief, no Cusick. I look to my left and whose standing there daydreaming, C""!!! I go up to him and say, "the group you were supposed to take on a tour WALKED PAST YOU!!" Now this, to which he said something he was waiting in dispatch for them to go through there, "no that's not what I asked you to do, I asked you to be at the gate." I personally like him but he is KILLING me!. His head sometimes is somewhere else, and he has told me he worries about his grown daughter at home, I get that, but you have to step up dude! I got a pretty cool compliment the other day but I red flag just as well. One of our key airman said, "you are the only reason why we aren't getting our butts chewed out every day, you actually have a back-bone and will stand up for us, you know your s__t and you know how to manage people." Wow, pretty cool. This was in reference to why they are feeling very nervous having C take over my spot. I told this to the superintendent, who suggested maybe I switch my assistant NCOIC, I said, "well he has 14 yrs experience".."exactly, why isn't he a tech now?"...."good point"..."thats a red flag there, we're not sure about some of the things we've seen out of him." so that night he is supposed to make the schedule, he shows up late, he's jerking around getting it done, C looks at me and say's, "do you want to show him?...." to which W says defensively and annoyingly, "I've done a schedule before many many times!!" So we both look at him and say nothing. Well, he jacks the schedule up to kingdom come, has people on there that are off, he forgets to save it in the O drive. He doesn't bother re-typing it, so in the morning guess what our two master sergeants from ATOC ask for, the schedule!! I was pissed!! I told them straight up, I did NOT MAKE THAT SCHEDULE, SSGT. W did. heck ya I threw him under the bus, no way he's going to make me look bad after the nonsense I went through with the last crew. I brought him in later and told him he made me look like a jack-ass in from of them because of the schedule. His first reponse, "why are they looking at the schedule?" That's not the point, the point is you got all defensive when we tried to help you with the schedule like a darn know-it-all and you not only made yourself look bad, you made me look bad! He then says, "when are they leaving again?" Dudddde, you're starting to sound like some of the kids I teach, just refuse to accept responsibility. Well two hours later MSgt. E calls in C first, then W, then S, and when the dust settled, SSgt. S is the new assitant NCOIC with C still taking over for me. He probably thinks i had soemthing to do with it but they wanted to make that change from day one. That's a deployed area for you, very quick to use first impressions and show little patience to allow one to snap out of anything.
SSgt. Wall is slowly starting to come around, a few jokes here and there, it's good to see