Post: #1

I have had this problem ever since joining the military. I joined at 26 and I have noticed this a lot not only at my first unit but the one I am at now. I am currently working on a ship and am trying to learn how to stand watch in order to prevent fire, flooding, etc. as well as routine maintenance. I understand I will not know everything there is in comparison to somebody who has been there longer, regardless of age, but I sometimes feel stupid when I have to be corrected on my job by people barely out of high school. When I take orders from people older than me I don't have this problem.

I am not too sure how to handle it. I think it might be an ego problem that I have to work on. When I am in social situations with people junior to me and we're just hanging out it is much easier to take charge due to life experience. But at work it is harder. I have just entered a new relationship and sometimes it is hard to feel alpha around my girlfriend and at the same time feel beta at work.

Post: #2

Post: #3

Shut up and color.

Post: #4

There will always be someone better than you at one thing or another, such is life.

Try and put your ego aside and be excited about learning new things.

Post: #5

This sounds like bad advice, but get over it.

Whatever you do, do not let your age issues get in the way of your job, especially on a ship.

You are doing that watch duty because it is an extremely important need. If you fuck up, people die.

Aloha!

Post: #6

Let the discomfort of the experience motive you to gain mastery.

This is a problem that will solve itself in time.

Post: #7

Use that discomfort to better yourself and become the master.

Post: #8

(11-27-2016 09:00 PM)MdWanderer Wrote:  I have had this problem ever since joining the military. I joined at 26 and I have noticed this a lot not only at my first unit but the one I am at now. I am currently working on a ship and am trying to learn how to stand watch in order to prevent fire, flooding, etc. as well as routine maintenance. I understand I will not know everything there is in comparison to somebody who has been there longer, regardless of age, but I sometimes feel stupid when I have to be corrected on my job by people barely out of high school. When I take orders from people older than me I don't have this problem.

I am not too sure how to handle it. I think it might be an ego problem that I have to work on. When I am in social situations with people junior to me and we're just hanging out it is much easier to take charge due to life experience. But at work it is harder. I have just entered a new relationship and sometimes it is hard to feel alpha around my girlfriend and at the same time feel beta at work.

How does a person take orders from the horrible HR woman?

How does a waiter take orders from a babyish patron who is trying to make him look bad to impress his date?

How do you take orders from a cop who is using his authority as an excuse to carry out power fantasies?

How do you take orders from a woman boss who is having trouble at home and taking it out on you?

How do you take orders from the punk on the street who you glanced at and is now yelling at you not to look at him?


You make it a game.

The game is to make this person happy while retaining your dignity.

But it is just a game, and the game is to make this person happy.

You have no relationship with them personally. You are not invested. It is just a challenge, like solving a Rubik's cube.

And the skill of not investing in the inter-personal competition bullshit is one that will serve you well all your life.

A younger person has been at the mercy of older people for most of their lives, and very often they cannot help but over do it when correcting an elder they have control over.

They are getting off on it, and part of them is trying to get under your skin and get a reaction.

So you have to be completely separate from all that messy babyish oneupsmanship.

You are there for you, learning a new skill which benefits you, and are getting paid for it, which benefits you.

So who cares if some young dude throws in a "make it snappy" or some such nonsense?

This will have the added benefit of frustrating the hell out of the one giving orders. He knows how much he hates being told what to do, and he is doing his best to make you feel the same way, and when it doesn't work, it makes him feel off balance, like he thought he was on firm ground, and suddenly he is emotionally slipping across the ice.

I once had a boss, a minor manager, try to antagonize me every chance he got, but I was just a happy manatee floating around, doing tasks. He got more and more frustrated, until, finally, when there was no one else around he said:

"God damn you, get mad!"

"Ok," I said, "I will soon," and just kept on with what I was doing.

Is this easy? No. Is it always possible? No.

Overall though, it is a killer skill to have, like a secret super power. Everyone else is in competition in the work hierarchy, as well as socially, and you are totally separate, just playing a game, making them happy without losing your dignity.

They hate it, but they don't know what is going on. They are throwing their best shit at you and it just bounces off. You are just the calm, friendly, happy guy who is there doing his job, helping out when he can.

I once worked at a place where I was pretty much the only one with my skin color, and the people there weren't that fond of my skin color, so they did their best to make my life hell.

If I wasn't constantly moving, my tiny, younger, female boss would say to me, "Oh, you don't have anything to do? I guess you need a special project. Empty all the garbage cans, clean them out, and put new bags in them."

I said, "I am happy to do special projects, and because you are my boss, you are too busy, so you shouldn't have to do a special project."

This fired up her competitive side, so she said, "I will do one too," and then later that night, she saw me talking to a co worker, and she said, "What about your special project?"

"I'm done."

"Maybe you need another."

"Ok. But not you, because you are the boss."

"No! I will do one too."

This went on all night. Until finally it was one in the morning. She told me it was time to close up. I said, "What about special projects? Can't we do another? We could take apart the broiler, and clean it with a wire brush? We could do the windows? What about cleaning behind the toilets in the rest rooms? So many special projects."

She was staring at me like a hypnotized rodent. Tired as fuck. I actually saw her eyelids flutter and her eyes start to roll up.

"No," she whispered. "No more. No more special projects."

"Are you sure?'

"Yes. We go home now."

"Ok."

The victory was so sweet, that it feels as good now as it did all those years ago. She couldn't break me. She couldn't make me mad.

What?

I was just a worker, doing my job as best I could.

How can they fault a guy for doing that?

Post: #9

Man, debeguiled you are funny and a great writer.

Yea, i just laugh and let shit just fly by me.

I really don't give a fk nowadays.

If you are healthy, happy and making $ thats good enough.

Post: #10

(11-29-2016 03:58 AM)DVY Wrote:  Man, debeguiled you are funny and a great writer.

Yea, i just laugh and let shit just fly by me.

I really don't give a fk nowadays.

If you are healthy, happy and making $ thats good enough.

I am sure a dentist knows this stuff inside and out and needs no advice from me.

Post: #11

(11-27-2016 09:00 PM)MdWanderer Wrote:  I have had this problem ever since joining the military. I joined at 26 and I have noticed this a lot not only at my first unit but the one I am at now. I am currently working on a ship and am trying to learn how to stand watch in order to prevent fire, flooding, etc. as well as routine maintenance. I understand I will not know everything there is in comparison to somebody who has been there longer, regardless of age, but I sometimes feel stupid when I have to be corrected on my job by people barely out of high school. When I take orders from people older than me I don't have this problem.

I am not too sure how to handle it. I think it might be an ego problem that I have to work on. When I am in social situations with people junior to me and we're just hanging out it is much easier to take charge due to life experience. But at work it is harder. I have just entered a new relationship and sometimes it is hard to feel alpha around my girlfriend and at the same time feel beta at work.

I joined the Army in my late twenties. It wasn't uncommon to have 2LTs and 1LTs younger than me and I was usually the same age as the company commander. It's a little different from officer to enlisted - career enlisted guys are often led by younger officers at the company grade and below. But for a newly enlisted guy who's younger than the enlisted guy training or evaluating him, that might seem weird. My advice, learn to live with it. There's been other guys who got out after multi-year breaks in service and for whatever reason got back in - they are in the exact same position as you, perhaps worse if they took a bust in rank to get back on active duty.

For me the most frustrating part of the enlisted military was having people in higher ranks (whether older or younger) who's only reason for being ahead of me was that they walked into the recruiting office a couple of years earlier, not because they were necessarily any good, smarter, better, etc. Again, just have to get used to the life for as long as you've agreed to participate.

Post: #12

I am dealing with similar situation. This summer I´ve finished school and as I turned 24, I joined airborne unit as 2LT.
I must say that a lot of those "old" left unit recently, but still there are men, who are much older than me. And even those young are mostly older than me and have several years experience. Part of my unit just got back from Afghanistan.
But actually it is much easier, then I though it will be. I think that the key is to admit, that they are more experienced and learn from them. They know about the military stuff much more than I do, so I keep it simple - when I don´t know anything, I ask one of my sergeants. The beginning is just about gathering the information and I won´t get them without asking. They are used to have younger commanders and they accept me the best if I care of this two things - my knowledge and skill that are growing each day and each exercise and then my men.

Sometimes I have feeling, that I am not strict enough, but I like going to work with this mindset: "Our job is to be here together, so why should we make it unpleasant to each other". So I will see, if it will work this way. On the other hand, it´s imporant to be bad if necessary.

I must confirm, that sometimes it was difficult to be "alpha" to my gf. But I am getting used to do this job, and it´s much better. With exercises I am getting more self-confident and she sees some kind of super-hero in me, that supports me a lot.

Post: #13

If you don't like it do something about it--get better.

Also in sport I learned to adopt the mentality that good advice can come from anywhere--my mentors, my competitors, people worse than me, people that have no idea what they're talking about, etc.
Take it in listen to everyone and then decide what you will do with the information.
You never know when someone is going to make a comment that triggers something within yourself and all the sudden that thing you've been dealing with makes total sense. Once a dude I low key hated getting advice from told me some shit and he ended up solving a technique problem of mine.
Be open to everyones words, you never know who is going to inspire you in innovate and when it happens you want to be open to it.

Post: #14

26... that's not that old -even for the military. When I went through boot camp and when I got to the fleet -USMC grunts, we had much older men than that. In retrospect, you lucked out: imagine being a 26-year-old boot in a Marine Corps Infantry platoon. If you think your life is bad now, you have no idea. Just remember: it could always be worse.

Keep your head down, keep your fucking mouth shut, do as you're told, show up with a good attitude and 15 min early, look professional.

If you do even 3/4 of the above, you'll be in very good shape. In fact, this applies to when you leave the military too. Because nobody is going to give a shit you served. They aren't.

We have 50 year-old apprentices at my company... imagine being in their shoes.