Now, I don't mean to boast. However, when you're having a crappy couple of days, and then something small comes along and suddenly you're full of energy, excited, and get a small sense of vindication out of the deal, I feel as though it is blog worthy.
My current job title is the Assistant Manpower/FIT Analyst for a class squadron. What does that mean? I sometimes get to pour over pages of data regarding the training and schools of various ships that my command is responsible for and provide input to my higher ups so they can make decisions regarding policies and, my favorite, funding. Perhapes the favorite part of my job is that when I actually have something to do, my recommendations and research are ACTUALLY USED. I'll give you a quick example. In essence, the Navy tells each ship how many graduates from each school they are required to have. Some are insignificant and 'nice to have' but have little impact, such as PREVENT (PREVENT is like the Navy's version of DARE, plus some financial management type stuff) to things that have a major impact. Say, a Visit, Board, Search and Siezure (VBSS) Boarding Officer, where a shortfall will decertify a ship's VBSS team. This is bad.
Last Thursday we were vetting a request for money from a ship to send people to school. I pulled up the information on their prospective gains and pointed out that they had a person coming with the school which would put them at their optimal numbers for another year, and recommended that we not fund that request. I saved the Navy $8,200 that evening, and you better believe that's going to be a FITREP bullet!
Well, this morning I come into the office and, lo and behold, a similar request for money from USS LASTSHIP! Guess who they came to as the resident expert on USS LASTSHIP/schools in Japan? If you guessed the guy sitting behind me, please assign yourself one demerit. If you guessed this guy, with the thumbs, give yourself a high-five!
I can't say how things will turn out. They may not even tell me what happens. I just know USS LASTSHIP likes really low numbers, like my last eval!
I get to check out on leave this afternoon to go to Missouri for the weekend. It's going to be a really good day.
Keep it in the family.
I should clarify that it's also my job to ensure that money is not needlessly spent, so my recommendations are NOT made on feelings of vindiction, but instead on well justified research and the hard dollars and cents of the matter. The feelings of vindication only came into play afterwords as a, "Huh, you know, this is pretty funny!" kind of thing.
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